On Saturday, November 30 and Sunday, December 1, His Grace Bishop Ioan Casian was present among the faithful of St. Andrew's Parish in Calgary. The joy of the believers was twofold due to the fact that they were able to celebrate two important events: the feast of St. Andrew the patron of Romania and the National Day of Romania.
The pastoral visit of the Romanian hierarch of Canada began on Saturday, November 30, with the celebration of the Divine Liturgy by the bishop, together with the Parish Priest Vasile Moisi and Father Vitalie Manole.
In the homily the hierarch said:
We are in a moment of joy on this day when we have gathered in prayer in the presence and under the protection of God but also to honor St. Andrew the first called between the apostles and protector of your parish. Also, it should be remembered that St. Andrew is the one who, according to tradition, preached on the territory of Romania in Scythia Minor, that is to say today's Dobrogea. Our Christianity is therefore an apostolic one from the first century. A reinforcement of this is the fact that the bishops of Tomis participated in the first Ecumenical Councils attesting to the mature organization and the important number of believers in this part of the Roman Empire. Also the very early presence of monasticism in this area shows the advanced development of the church organization in these territories, evidence of an early Christianity on these lands.
St. Ap. Andrew, as we see from the Gospel account, was a very dedicated man being a disciple of St. John the Baptist. From the apprenticeship of the messianic hope he passes, at the sign of St. John the Baptist, to the anticipated sight and experience of this reality in the presence of the Savior Jesus Christ. His apostolic mission begins with his brother Simon, whom the Savior will rename Peter. The discovery of the Messiah by St. Andrew will be circumscribed later by Nathaniel who identifies Christ with the son of Joseph of Nazareth. So our Orthodox Christian faith is a historical belief based on the concrete, historical finding of the presence of the Word of God in the flesh.
St. Andrew's Apostle after the New Testament is mentioned several times when the Savior performs miracles: the multiplication of the bread and the fish, the prediction about the demolition of the walls of Jerusalem and the visit of the Greek proselytes to the Savior Christ. We see in these hypostases St. Andrew as a practical man, attentive to those around him, ready to receive the hard news to receive as well as his capacity as a mediator and facilitator of those who wanted to meet Christ. This latter quality will become even more evident through St. Andrew's vocation as a Gospel herald particularly in the Greco-Roman world in somewhat contrast to his brother Peter who was rather an apostle of the Hebrew world.
We also honor St. Andrew Șaguna, the Metropolitan of Transylvania, who will embody the Christian faith and action in a different context in the service of whom he was the pastor. A cultivated man who studied philosophy, law and theology, he will support the national revival movement of the Romanians from Transylvania, he will be the one who will reorganize the church life by reactivating the Metropolitanate of Transylvania and the basic education system through the popular schools, through the two gymnasiums and through the practical school and theological school through the three-year Theological-Pedagogical Institute in Sibiu. Also his activism in favor of the rights of the Romanians from Transylvania and the participation in the different national events of his time, among which the National Assembly from Blaj in 1848 saw their fulfillment a few decades later in the Great Union of 1918. His work as it may someone to observe it was a spiritual, prophetic and social preparation for the fulfillment of the great dream for Romanians always to live in one country.
At the end of the service, the faithful were invited to worship the holy relics of St. Andrew Șaguna received from His Eminence Laurentiu, Metropolitan of Transylvania, on the occasion of the Congress of the Romanian Orthodox Diocese of Canada in Windsor 2018.
In the evening of the same day, the service of the Vespers was performed. Speaking about the Church's characteristics, the hierarch of Canada recalled:
In order to be able to speak of a community as Church it is necessary to consider those four characteristics that are mentioned in the Creed and which define the Church. Unity, holiness, universality and apostolicity. A community that is not united with others in the same faith and church life cannot be called a Church. Through this unity the transcendent and invisible unity of God is expressed and reflected immanently and visibly. A community that does not seek to remain and live in the holiness of God cannot be called a Church because it is far from the essential communion that transfigures everything in the original sense intended by the Creator. A community that does not want to be universal, that is to say universal in the inner sense of the inner including of all and of everything, and externally through the desire to proclaim the joy of salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ to all, cannot be called a Church. And finally, a community that does not keep the apostolic teaching, that is, the authentic testimony of those who have known the Son of God incarnate and received the direct faith cannot be called a Church. It loses one or more elements that the Son of God considered essential and necessary for the redemption and restoration of man in order to for him to be saved and gain the eternal kingdom.
Sunday, December 1st, the members of St. Andrew's Parish attended the Divine Liturgy again. At the end of it, a Te Deum service was celebrated on the occasion of the National Day of Romania. In the word proclaimed on this occasion bishop H.G. bishop Ioan Casian was said:
Yesterday we celebrated the unity of faith through the apostolic source of our Christianity come through St. Andrew's Apostle. Today we celebrate our unity as a Romanian nation, a unity whose foundation and source was the Christian faith. The power and grace of the Christian life transfigured an entire geographical space with his people, giving him common characteristics that made it a land called home to Romanians.
We see the expression of this unity based on faith in the structure of the Romanian village. It is the church in the middle of the village that has always set the tone for the spiritual height and moral rigor of those who were part of it. We see this essential unity expressed in the ethos of the Romanian village based on faith, respect, trust, friendship, good neighborliness and honesty. We see it in the Romanian popular vestments varied, multicolored, bright and cheerful, expressing the infinite richness of the work of the grace of God. The dance of the Romanian village is sometimes seen as joyful and very slow, at other times fast and hopping and in which the relationships of the two partners have a clarity, luminosity, serenity and purity that can hardly be described. Nothing remains in the shadow in vestments’ popular design, art and dance of the Romanian village. This popular expression is similar to the iconographic representation in which there is no shadow. There is no shadow in the eternal life. In the same way, the vestments’ popular design and the dance of the Romanian village express this immediacy of the rich spirit of a transfigured world brought to a maximum potential of its capacities through color, singing, vestments’ design, dance and relationships.
The talents that the Savior spoke in today's Gospel can be seen in the realizations of the Romanian peasant in his universe of life and which remains a model for us. St. Apostle Andrew put into the work the apostolic talent of the word of salvation; the other St. Andrew, Metropolitan of Transylvania, many centuries later, put the talents bestowed on him by God in the service of the Church and the nation, proving himself a good church organizer, a person elevating the dignity of the Romanians of Transylvania, a wise man who realized the importance not only of the grace in human growth but also of the effort and the cultural training required for this growth manifested through schools created in the theological or in other fields, a man who knew how to navigate between the difficulties of his time arising from the differences of social categories, legislation and customary habits. All this multiple effort saw their goal achieved in the Great Union of 1918.
Let us also be like St. Ap. Andrew, St. Andrew Șaguna and many others, founders of true churches visible signs of invisible faith lasting for centuries.
The Parish priest Vasile Moisi thanked the hierarch for his participation and his encouragement.
At the beginning of the agape meal, the national anthem od Romania Deasteaptă-te române was sung. It followed an artistic program prepared by the children from the Sunday school. The Romanian repertoire was enriched with carols and Romanian patriotic and popular songs performed by Sunet transilvan band from Calgary.
