Today, 21 April 2013, the 5th Sunday of the Lent, also named of Pious Mary the Egyptian, His Beatitude Daniel, Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church celebrated the Divine Liturgy in the Patriarchal Cathedral of Bucharest, assisted by a group of priests and deacons. <\/p>\n
In the sermon delivered after reading the Evangelical pericope (Mark 10: 32-45), His Beatitude underlined three great truths that the Gospel of the day shows us: “When Jesus Christ, our Saviour speaks about His sufferance and death, He also speaks about His resurrection, so that He never separates the Cross from the Resurrection. Secondly, we learn from the Gospel of the day that Jesus Christ, our Lord, reproves those who wish senseless glory, scolds His disciples who want the honour of the world, and corrects the disciple envious and angry because two of the Apostles, James and John, sons of Zevedeu, wanted to sit on the right side of Jesus Christ, our Lord, in His glory. Thirdly, we learn from Jesus Christ, our Lord that He Himself has come into the world to serve, not to be served and to give His soul as redemption for many. So, we see that the Saviour shows with His own work, life and mission, that lowliness is the only way to take to the eternal life, to salvation, that lowliness is the way of the true love for God and for our fellow beings. When love is not accompanied by lowliness it becomes possessive and rather often destructive.”<\/p>\n
Although the Saviour predicts sad, serious things about His passions and death, two of His disciples asked to sit on the right side of the Lord when He appears in glory<\/em>, showed His Beatitude Daniel, saying that “this attitude and request of the two disciples are the expression of the spiritual misunderstanding of the mystery of the sufferance, death and Resurrection of Christ. They thought that Christ would reign over a political kingdom of the world, and asked Him to sit on His right and left. But the Saviour tells them: “You don’t know what you are asking”,<\/em> And then He asks them: “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?”<\/em> And they answered, maybe not understanding what they were saying: “We can”<\/em>. Then the Saviour prophesises: “You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.”<\/em> First of all we understand that the cup and baptise the Saviour speaks about are the cup and baptism of the sufferance and death. Saint James was really beheaded in the time of King Herod the Great, and Saint John drank the cup of sufferance while he was persecuted in Patmos Island in the time of emperor Dometian, at the end of the first century. So, here is a prediction of the sufferance of the two brothers and disciples and Apostles of Christ, as well as the explanation that to sit on the right or left side of the Saviour in glory does not depend on His personal knowledge. The fact that the two apostles met Jesus is not a merit, the fact that they ask for something is not the way of lowliness, because to sit on the right or left side of the Saviour is not a right that somebody can ask for, but a gift that God is free to give to whomever he wants, to those for whom this gift was prepared”. <\/p>\n To end with his speech, the Primate of the Romanian Orthodox Church emphasised the example worthy following of the life of Pious Mary the Egyptian, who has become a teacher of repentance<\/em> for all those willing to change their sinful lives: “The life of Saint Pious Mary the Egyptian is read in the Church just to encourage the most sinful of the people to convert, repent, change their life through repentance, fasting, prayer and good deeds. Here is hope for any human sentenced to death because of his sins, but due to repentance, fasting, and good deeds he can reach holiness and eternal life. Thus, Saint Pious Mary the Egyptian becomes a teacher of repentance, but not like Saint John Climax, through writings, but through her own life, a holy life after she has lived a sinful life”. <\/p>\n His Beatitude has also presented the faithful the stage of the construction work of the Cathedral for the Nation’s Salvation, where the concrete floor of level 0 was set: “We reached level 0, namely the space where the pilgrims enter the new cathedral. Level 0 means, in our case, 4 metres over the ground. The infrastructure work is finished. Now a new bidding follows for the builder to raise the over-structure, namely the building itself up to the cross on the highest belfry, of the Pantocrator or Saviour.” <\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today, 21 April 2013, the 5th Sunday of the Lent, also named of Pious Mary the Egyptian, His Beatitude Daniel, Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church celebrated the Divine Liturgy in the Patriarchal Cathedral of Bucharest, assisted by a group of priests and deacons. In the sermon delivered after reading the Evangelical pericope (Mark 10:…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74304,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive","category-romanian-patriarchate"],"yoast_head":"\n