Saturday, 7 September 2013, His Beatitude Daniel, Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church was in the middle of the faithful of the parish of the “Birth of the Mother of God – Ghencea” of Bucharest. Tomorrow, 8 September 2013, the place of worship will celebrate its dedication day.
After the Vesper service, the Patriarch of Romania addressed a sermon to those present. His Beatitude explained why the church year begins and ends with feasts dedicated to the Mother of God.
“The Mother of God is the living icon of the Church and this is why the church year begins with the feast of the Birth of the Mother of God, and on 15 August we have her greatest feast – the Falling Asleep of the Mother of God and her physical movement to Heaven. Thus, the church year is between two feasts of the Mother of God, just because she represents the mystery of the Church, namely the Church of Christ bears Christ inside her and shows Him to the world according to the model of the Mother of God who had Christ inside her, gave birth to Him as Man and then carried Him in her arms and showed Him to the world”, His Beatitude said.
The Primate of the Romanian Orthodox Church has also emphasised the fact that the Mother of God is a guide for us showing us how we should spend our time to reach eternal life, how to use every moment, hour, day, month and year to get the eternal life.
“The Mother of God who stayed 12 years in the temple of Jerusalem will become a temple too due to the fact that God the Word was born Man from her. She bore God the Word in her womb just as the temple of Jerusalem was the place of the most intense presence of God and foretold Christ, our Lord (…). This is why the Mother of God is called in our chants temple, or consecrated church and paradise. She is called colimvitra, namely baptistery in which the humans are baptised, or cup in which salvation was prepared, so there are lots of metaphors from the holy space of the temple and of the Church which refer to her, because she was the one from whom God the Word was made Man for the humans’ salvation”, His Beatitude said.
The Patriarch of Romania has also shown that the Mother of God is both a virgin and a mother: “The Mother of God is venerated in the Church because she was a virgin before birth, during the birth and after the birth. She is both a virgin and a mother. She is the protector of the young people who live in virginity, of the nuns and monks of the monastery, as well as of those who live in a family and give birth to children, of the parents and children, the protector of the servants of the holy altar because her Son, Christ, our Lord, is the eternal High Priest. Therefore, she is the protector of all people, but most of all, having been a merciful mother she is the protector of those whom nobody loves; the Mother of God – the protector of the grieved ones, as one of her akathisoses says – the joy of the grieved, mourning, forgotten, abandoned, lonely, disappointed who expiates our souls from death, as the troparion of the Falling Asleep of the Mother of God says.
The church of the “Birth of the Mother of God” was built from 1942 – 1943, and consecrated in 1945.
