Students at the Faculty of Orthodox Theology in Bucharest are encouraged to preach publicly every year at two important events for the educational institution: the Faculty Chapel’s patronal feast of Saint Catherine and the feast of the Three Holy Hierarchs, the patron saints of theological education.
On Monday, Vlad Iancu, who is finishing his Bachelor’s degree in Theology this year, had the opportunity to deliver a sermon related to the activity of the Three Holy Hierarchs and Ecumenical Teachers Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom.
“We are called to imitate their way of life. They are not only models for the hierarchs of the Church but all theologians and Orthodox Christians. All of us, students and professors, priests and hierarchs of the Church, are called to become the ‹soul of the world› like the ‹triad of hierarchs› we celebrate today,” senior student Vlad Iancu said on January 30.
“Being the soul of the world does not mean differentiating yourself from other people by the space (topos) and time (chronos) in which you live, but by your way of life (tropos),” Vlad Iancu explained.
“Fully detached from the cares and possessions of earthly life, the Three Holy Hierarchs deprived themselves of all material possessions to sweeten with them the deficiencies and needs of people through acts of charity.”
“This feast of the Three Holy Hierarchs invites us to the communion of pure and sincere friendship in the shadow of the light and the beginningless and endless love of the Living God, which we foretaste in this life. But the true veneration of the saints is to turn to their writings, inexhaustible sources of Christian doctrine and morals,” the theology student noted.
“Their theology is in accord with life, and life is in accord with theology, thereby showing us that genuine theology is life. They united counsel with deed, always fulfilling what they learned, thus realizing a cohesion between thought, word and deed. According to the model of the Three Holy Hierarchs, to be a theologian means to practice an interdisciplinary theology, the only one capable of uniting all theological disciplines in a living discourse about God,” Vlad highlighted.
The student wrote his sermon under the guidance of Rev. Nicușor Beldiman, patriarchal adviser and professor of Homiletics at the Bucharest Faculty of Orthodox Theology.
Vlad Iancu is a 4th-year student at the Faculty of Orthodox Theology in Bucharest. He previously studied at Mihai Viteazul National College in Bucharest, then obtained his BA in Physics at Imperial College London and in Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. Finally, he completed his master’s studies at Imperial College London in Theoretical Physics.
Vlad is also a PhD student at the Faculty of Physics of the University of Bucharest.
Photo source: Vlad Iancu
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