Monday, 2 March 2009, His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel celebrated the service of the Great Canon of Saint Andrew the Cretan in the Patriarchal Cathedral of Bucharest, assisted by a group of priests and deacons. To end with the Great Compline, attended by a few hundred faithful, the Patriarch of the Romanians explained the spiritual meanings of the Repentance Canon of Saint Andrew the Cretan, read during the first four days of the Lent and entirely in the fifth week of the Lent.

The reading of the Repentance Canon of Saint Andrew the Cretan within the Great Compline, said His Beatitude, “has much significance and brings about much benefit to our spiritual training during the Lent, understood as an ascension to Resurrection, an inner spiritual ascension, to our encounter with the Crucified and Risen Christ”. “The Lent is repentance for the entire Church”, also underlined His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel. This is why we read together the Canon of Saint Andrew the Cretan, as the Great Canon is “urge to repentance and improvement”, as the Primate of the Romanian Orthodox Church emphasised in the end of the religious service.