Yesterday, 7 March, the 3rd Sunday of the Lent, His Beatitude Daniel, Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church delivered a sermon, during the Divine Liturgy celebrated in the Patriarchal Cathedral, informs the daily newspaper “Lumina”. The Primate of our Church emphasized that now, in the middle of the Lent, it is the feast that shows and urges us to have Christ Crucified and Risen as focus of our life.

His Beatitude showed that on this day we celebrate especially the Holy Life Giving Cross of Jesus Christ, our Lord, and that in the mystery of the Holy Cross revealed in the sky to Saint Constantine the Emperor and then found on the earth by his mother Helen, we are shown the union of the heaven with the earth through Christ, our Lord. “This Sunday, the 3rd in the Lent, called the Sunday of the Holy Cross, was established within the Church, in order to encourage our spiritual ascension to Resurrection, to the Holy Easter. As the Holy Cross is a sign of the victory against the bad spirits, against temptation and all trials caused by the demons or by people in order to separate us from Christ, our Lord. The Holy Cross is worshipped as a sign of victory, not as a sign of sufferance, of victory after we passed through sufferance and this is why we call it the Holy Life Giving Cross of Christ”, said His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel.

Further on, the Primate of the Romanian Orthodox Church underlined the fact that through the sign of the Holy Cross, now, at the middle of the Lent, those who weakened somehow their courage to fast, pray, and repent, are urged to follow their spiritual ascension inside their soul for their meeting with Christ Crucified and Risen.

His Beatitude emphasized the main requirements for those who wish to be true disciples of Christ: “There are three main requirements for any human being who wants to be Christian or disciple of Christ: self denial, taking and assuming the Cross and following Christ, that is to fulfill the commandments of God, to obey Him, to live in communion with Him, to ask for His help to be able to accomplish His commandments in our life. Self-denial does not mean to do a way with oneself, but giving up a selfish way of living. It means to change our way of life, that is not to have our own person as focus of our life, but the relationship of love with the eternal God and with our fellow beings.

If our life is lived selfishly, temporary and limited, it is not on the way of salvation, but if it is focused on Christ, God-the-Man, then it is full of the never-ending love of God and becomes eternal communion with God, even here on earth. In this mutual love we also love our fellow beings.

The second requirement is taking and assuming the Cross. Taking the Cross has a spiritual meaning here. It does not mean carrying the wood on one’s back, but understanding that our life is limited and fragile. The Cross shows us our helpless when trying to be what we want to be and what God wants us to be. The Cross is a helpless that brings about sufferance. The Cross can be a life long incurable disease or a childhood lived as an orphan, it can be a long widowhood or a failure. The Cross always shows us that we miss something, that very often we are crucified between pure desire and failure when trying to reach the ideal desired”, showed His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel.

The Patriarch of Romanian explained: “The Cross shows us that the sin as a disease of the soul is often reflected as disease of the body. Seeing our limits, Christ urges us to take them all to Him, not to carry them alone, as He has known sufferance.

“Loneliness increases sufferance, but if our sufferance is borne in communion of love and prayer to Christ, then our sufferance is diminished. Jesus Christ calls us, when we pass through sufferance, sorrow or disease, not to rebel, but to repent, not to estrange, but to come close to God, to pray, fast, repent and take the Holy Communion more often, namely His Body and Blood. Christ calls us to take our cross, sufferance and helpless and bring them all to Him, so that He can change our sufferance into hope and change the Cross into stair to God”, said His Beatitude Daniel.

Finally, His Beatitude explained that “In today’s Gospel, Christ, our Lord, also shows that man’s care for material things is not useful to man or to win the world if he loses his soul, and in order to win his soul he needs union with God. The Saviour also speaks about the glory of the Kingdom of God, showing in this way the relationship between the Cross and the glory of the Resurrection, between repentance for our sins and the victory over our sins as blessing from Christ and foretaste of the joy of the Holy Easter”.