On Sunday, December 22, His Grace Bishop Ioan Casian served the Divine Liturgy at St. George's Cathedral in Saint-Hubert, Quebec. Together with him served Fr. Daniel Sandu and Protosinghel Nectarie.

Addressing those present at the end of the Divine Liturgy the hierarch said:

“The epistle to the Hebrew read today shows us the importance of faith in God in the Christian life. Faith made Abraham and the other patriarchs, rulers, or kings of the Old Testament enter into a spiritual path that would prepare the coming of the Son of God in the flesh. Due to their faith, they were encouraged to walk on the ways and to make decisions that, apparently from a human point of view, did not seem obvious. But all were done under the guidance of God through His messengers – the heavenly power, the angels - where things were beyond the human power of understanding.

We see in the text of the Holy Gospel the need for St. Joseph, the fiancée of the Virgin Mary, to receive an assurance from the angel that what is happening with his betrothal and with himself goes beyond mere human history. It will fulfill a long-time planned design to save man. And both of them need divine assurance because it goes beyond the order of nature - the Virgin birth according to the flesh of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity.

The prophets had prepared the people by their words, giving clues about the messianic times and about the Messiah in order to be recognized. Man, understanding the prophetic words and following them, could understand and see God's plan in progress. The evangelists cite prophetic texts in support of the holy history of the birth of the Lord to show that there is a continuous presence of God and His providence within human history that prepares it and anticipates it for the fulfillment into Christ not for His sake but for the need for human salvation. Man travels by faith on the path or paths that lead him to the encounter of the One who exist from eternity and who is the only One who can renew and change everything according to His plan and to the eternal house prepared for man."

Speaking about the martyrs in the communist prisons and about the heroes who fell in December 1989 the hierarch said:

“The martyrs in the communist prisons lived in the foreign land of prisons as in a land of the promise of God. The heroes of December believed, their sacrifice proving this, that there is another truer place to encounter God that deserves their full sacrifice.”

At the end of the Divine Liturgy the youngest performed a few traditional carols under the guidance of Mrs. Corina Zosim.