Today, 5 January 2013, the servant priests of the Patriarchal Cathedral of Bucharest announced the Baptism of the Lord to His Beatitude Daniel, Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church, and consecrated the rooms of the Patriarchal Residence with High Holy Water.
According to the tradition of the Orthodox Church the priests go on this day to the houses of the faithful to announce the Baptism of Jesus Christ, our Lord, and to bless their houses, and themselves, by splashing with Holy High Water around.
After celebrating the religious service for the High Holy Water, the group of servant priests and singers of the Patriarchal Cathedral went to the Patriarchal Cathedral, where His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel met them.
His Beatitude blessed them all and spoke about the importance of the great feast of the Baptism of the Lord: “This great holy feast of the Baptism of the Lord includes the entire spiritual view of the Christian life. The one who is baptised in the name of the Most Holy Trinity must be a confessor of the love of the Most Holy Trinity all his life. The one who joined the Church through Baptism must make all his existence be a church existence.”
The Patriarch of Romania has also explained the significance of “going with the Baptism”: “It is not a simple folkloric custom, but the confession of the Orthodox faith in the Holy Trinity shown at the Baptism of the Lord in the River Jordan, as the feast troparion says, namely the confession of our statutes of Christian. This is why, we renew through this refreshing of the Christian conscience the joy to be loved by Christ and to answer His sacrificial love with our faithful love. The Romanian people say that the man consecrates the place, but from a religious point of view man consecrates the place when he has a permanent living relation with the One Holy God. This is why the houses are consecrated in order to urge the people to intensify their relation with the One Holy God.”
This Sunday, on the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel will celebrate the Divine Liturgy at the Patriarchal Cathedral, and at 12.00 o’clock, will celebrate, in the front of the Patriarchal Residence, the consecration of the High Holy Water. The religious services will be broadcast live by Trinitas Television.
