Saint Parascheva celebrated

at the Romanian Parish in Newmarket, Ontario

On October 13 and 14, the Romanian Orthodox Bishop of Canada, His Grace Ioan Casian, was in a pastoral visit to St. Paraschiva and St. Elias the Prophet Parish in Newmarket, Ontario.

The liturgical program began with the service of Anointing of sicks on Friday, October 13. HG Bishop Ioan Casian was accompanied by Rev. Fr. Viorel Țencaliuc - archpriest, Rev. Fr. Mihail Cristea, parish priest, Protos. Corneliu Andrasco, Fr. Emanuel Țencaliuc and Hegumen Polycarp Athenagoras.

On Saturday, October 14, the hierarchical Divine Liturgy was performed. At the end of it a procession with the Cover of St. Paraschiva received by the parish from the Metropolitan Cathedral of Iași was made around the church.

In the sermon that followed at its conclusion, Canada's hierarch said:

"The life chosen by St. Parascheva is a life of askesis, of voluntary poverty, as the monks and nuns still do today, who, beyond the goods of this world and a natural life, which is otherwise not contrary to God. She chose this way of material impoverishment and spiritual growth, which means choosing to live in the presence of God, paying attention especially to this spiritual effort.

St. Parascheva, born into a wealthy family, hears God's call and follows this path of asceticism and humility.

The saints are God's workers in the Lord's field. They are the ones who through their faith open themselves to God, pray and open their mind, heart and their whole person to His inspiration. This in fact is holiness. None of us can produce God's grace. It is like a source of water that springs up continually from God and overflows over the whole world. No matter how hard we try to create it, to produce it, this is impossible to achieve.

A holy person is the one who enters communion with God, receives Him and His grace into the personal life, and from that moment, his life begins to shine. We know from the lives of the saints, from the apothegms of the spiritual Fathers of Paterikon, that the sanctity of life makes their whole being shine in a real and concrete way without their intention. But the holiness of life is not only manifested by the light shining from the person of the saints, because the signs of holiness can be different from person to person. Holiness is measured in good deeds, long silence, and all other virtues. Every virtue that man has is a sign of holiness. There is not a single category of saints. The saint is any person in this world who believes in God and fulfills the work that God asks of him."

The saints freely choose the path of communion with God and work together with divine grace.

"One of the important things for us, says St. Paul in the apostolic pericope read today at the Holy Liturgy from the Second Epistle to the Corinthians is: ‘Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty' (2 Corinthians 3, 17). The saint, as was also St. Parascheva, freely chose to diminish the multitude of possessions she personally had and to occupy herself more with the search for God. This made St. Parascheva in her short life. This search for God in different contexts, living in different places, also looking for the holy places, she does it in order to receive inspiration and to have her faith widened in her heart and mind, in her person, growing each time more and more. She chose this freely. One of the qualities of the saint is freedom: the freedom to choose good instead of evil, the work of God in spite of the things and works of this world, wanting and seeking more and more to share in the work of God's Grace."

Man's holiness is the result of man's union with God:

"Holiness is not a quality that we can offer to ourselves; it is not a product of our intelligence and creativity. St. Paul says that: ‘For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’ (2 Corinthians 4, 6). If in our life we see that our deeds shine, joy and enthusiasm shines, the desire to do good, to create a community, to pray, to do good and blessed things, we understand that these are the result of the fact that God is present and shines in our hearts, that we receive God in our hearts and this grace of God spreads in our own person, in our heart and inspires us the good deeds that God wants from us and that He has always thought in regard of man from eternity."

Further, the hierarch of Canada showed the way in which this transfer can be made from the work of Christ's grace to our lives:

"How can we show God's work in our lives? St. Paul answers: ‘Always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body’ (2 Corinthians 4, 10). In other words, always carrying in our life and mind the crucifixion of Christ and His sacrifice, the life of Christ will be shown in our life. To the extent that we meditate and try to live and understand the sacrifice that Christ made on the Cross for our salvation (a sacrifice that was not made in vain, without it we cannot think of salvation), we also let God's grace work in our lives. Only in this way can we speak of a life of holiness. One's life of holiness is the result of that person receiving God's grace with great joy through faith.

Holiness is manifested when we let God's grace work in everything we do, in all our lives. A man who lives in the synergy with the grace of God, will begin to do good deeds, will have a special care to listen to the need of a more fragile man (perhaps he has no means to help him, but he opens his ear and heart to him listening to his suffering), he will pray to God for the restoration of peace in conflict zones (which we see are increasingly more and more violent) and he will even get involved in these efforts, bringing a word of peace and finding solutions to conflicts of our world. There are others who, for the holiness of God, retire into the desert, as was the case with the great monastic movement, as are the hermits today, but also the nuns and monks from the monasteries, who feel this call of God and wish to sanctify their lives, to live a life of asceticism, of prayer, more rigorous than a man in the world, because they feel that need for a deeper communion with God. These are some of what we consider to be signs or manifestations of holiness."

There are several stages of growth and union with God:

"Man freely chooses the way of God. The Savior says in the Holy Gospel: ‘Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me’ (Mark 8, 34). There are three stages for the one who wants to follow Christ: self-denial, taking up the cross and following Christ. First, in order to follow the way of Christ, we must empty our lives, either as individuals or as a community, of all the evil and darkness of this world, of all the passion of the world that surrounds us or that is present in our heart and person. Evil is not only all around us, but also in our mind and heart. This is observed through the words and deeds we say or do. Self-denial does not mean eliminating one's own person, but eliminating the passions and evils that dwell within us. The renunciation to these passions can only be done by becoming more diligent in driving out these works of evil from us; secondly, to be crucified with Christ, to think and see what Christ has done on the cross, means to be humble in our personal life and to let Christ work in us. Christ's sacrifice must fill our lives. This must be the pattern of our daily and lifelong sacrifice. Without it, nothing spiritually significant can happen in our lives and in society. In vain do we try to free our lives from certain things, if we do not put Christ and His work of grace in its place; thirdly, man must follow Christ. Christ is man's guide. He is the Teacher. If man is not inhabited by God, he is inhabited by the evil one. When man was created by God in Heaven, he was blessed with the grace of the Holy Spirit who inhabited him. But when temptation drew near, when the devil tempted him, doubt and passion were born, and this joy and security of working together with the grace of the Holy Spirit disappeared, and thus darkness and separation arose between the thinking of man and the acting of God. If we want to have a vertical, honest, true life as God wanted for us from eternity, we must follow Christ, fulfill His words in our lives, as did the Mother of God, St. John the Baptist, St. Elijah and St. Parascheva, protectors of your parish, and all the saints. Through their example, we see that God's work is possible in our lives and that this is the true mission desired by God for man from the beginning."

At the end, Fr. Mihail Cristea thanked the hierarch for the pastoral visit and those present received the final blessing. The faithful could venerate the relics of St. Constantin Brâncoveanu, St.  Grigore Dascălu, St. Andrei Șaguna and St. Irodion from Lainici brought from the Diocesan Cathedral.

The celebration was crowned at the end by a fraternal agape prepared with great joy by the ladies' committee.

(notes by Nun Ana)