With great joy we address You, participants at the 16th International Ecumenical Conference on Orthodox Spirituality, which is themed Spiritual Paternity in Orthodox Tradition.

Certainly, the prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ “that all may be one” is fulfilled in a specific way by those who, after being called upon from above, have sworn the three monastic oaths for the their and their fellow humans’ salvation.

Thus, spiritual paternity – fundamental principle in Orthodox spirituality – represents a manifestation of the relationship between paternal divine love and filial divine love, shared to humans in the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church. The ecclesial spiritual paternity seeks to guide man towards the saving communion with the Holy Trinity while preserving the personality of the spiritual son and his freedom. True spiritual paternity is that which helps man to shun his egotistical passions and gain the authentic love or the ability to love God and his neighbor in a free and unceasing way.

In today’s world, ever more secularized, the need for a spiritual father, a man of God, is all the more stringent, because contemporary man is confronted with the danger of losing his spiritual identity, especially because of the secularization process, a cultural and social phenomenon which seeks to erase and level all that makes up the distinct spiritual traits of a community. Within this context, the significance of Christian spiritual paternity needs to be further deepened and highlighted. With the help of an authentic spiritual paternity, the faithful, supported by his spiritual father, can advance in the communion with the Persons of the Holy Trinity and with the human persons, within the Church and the society.

We pray to Christ, our Lord, to bless all the organizers and participants at this spiritual and missionary reunion, for its works to be crowned with success.

† DANIEL
Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church