Year 2025
- significant historical moment for Romanian and universal Orthodoxy -
We are at the beginning of the year 2025. As we do every time, personally or as a community, we think in what way what we are now temporarily begins makes sense for our lives. The year we start is one full of significant historical meaning for the Romanian Orthodox Church. There are two moments that we will consider this year in the Romanian Patriarchate from a homage and commemorative point of view: the celebration of the Centenary of the Romanian Patriarchate (1925-2025) and the commemoration of the Romanian spiritual fathers and confessors from the 20th century. To these two are added two other important moments: the celebration of 140 years of autocephaly of the Romanian Orthodox Church (1885-2025) and 1700 years since the first Ecumenical Council of Nicaea (325-2025). Three of these moments directly concern the Romanian Orthodox Church while the fourth refers to the Orthodox Church as a whole.
From a homage point of view, we will enjoy the celebration of the Centenary of the elevation in rank of Patriarchate (1925) and 140 years of autocephaly of the Romanian Orthodox Church (1885). This is the moment when we recall that the humble and continuous work, marked by numerous blessings and challenges throughout our ecclesiastical and Romanian history, receives full recognition in 1925. The Romanian Orthodox Church has been recognized in the rank of Patriarchate, achieved through its continuous pastoral work carried out with spiritual, theological, and administrative authority. It fulfilled the apostolic mission of spreading the Gospel and working for the salvation of the Romanian and others people, as a member representing the universal Orthodox Church.
The year 1925 means a recognition of the level of maturity and pastoral responsibility which the Romanian Orthodox Church has reached while traversing centuries of challenges, humiliation, appropriation of goods and benefits that should have contributed to its own well-being. Although often the political and social situations were not always favorable, the representatives of the Romanian Orthodox Church in the Romanian provinces, when there was still no actual Romania, showed generosity, support, love and a Christian spirit through the help they offered depending on their means to other Churches in a greater need.
In this sense I will mention just some of the notable hierarchs who represented with dignity Romanian Church over time: Metropolitans Varlaam (1632-1653) and Dosoftei (1671-1674, 1675-1686) of Moldova, Simion Stefan (1643-1656) and Andrei Șaguna (1848-1873) of Transylvania, Antim Ivireanul (1708-1716) and Grigorie Dascălul (1823-1834) of Wallachia and list could be much longer. Some had the gift of ecclesiastical organization, others were noted for their literary talent and the promoting of the Romanian language in the Church worship, some fought for the rights of the Romanians and contributed to the reactivation and recognition of the representative Church and Romanian orthodox structures before the state authorities of the time, others encouraged the effort to keep the Orthodox faith among the other Orthodox Churches in more difficult situations by publishing the Church book in the respective languages and others were dedicated to prayer, the fundamental and constitutive foundation of the Christian identity and of the Church, thus preserving the believers in a direct dialogical connection with God.
All these through their gifts, together with many others, contributed to the growth, maturation, fulfillment and recognition of our Church as autocephalous (1885) in the rank of Patriarchate (1925). All these and many others known and unknown, hierarchs, clergy or regular people, kings and voivodes, monks or nuns, were present and continued through their humble but bold and perseverant work and by their religious, cultural, administrative or organizational contribution to the crystallization of a particular strong identity from a spiritual, religious, institutional and administrative point of view for our Church.
Let's also remember at this anniversary moment the Primates of the Romanian Orthodox Church - Patriarchs Miron, Nicodim, Iustinian, Iustin and Teoctist, and for us, those from Canada and the two Americas - Bishops Polycarp and Andrei and Archbishop Victorin. All of them faithfully continued the mission they received from God in the better or less good conditions of their time.
The year 2025 should be for us all the occasion of joy and giving thanks to God for all the gifts made to us because everything happened and happens with the help of God and under His protection.
In 2025 we will enjoy the commemoration of Romanian spirituals fathers and confessors from the 20th century. The moment when the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church proclaimed the new holy martyrs and confessors from the 20th century, has brought a lot of joy and enthusiasm in our communities. This decision shows that the Church is alive in each epoch and in every social or political system. Often against the adversity of the times, the Church through her most important representatives - the saints - continued the missionary work entrusted by Christ to the Holy Apostles. They, - the saints -, continued to proclaim Christ and confess Him by word and deed. Educated or simple pious people, they were the leaven and the foundation of new generations of believers of our Church. They lived the life in Christ and in the Holy Spirit often at unsuspected heights. Some have suffered prisons, persecutions, beatings, deprivation of the necessary, even death, but they all lived with the hope in the providence of God. Some have managed to cross the period of prisons and fell asleep in the Lord in time of peace, others instead left their lives there, in the obscure cells of physical darkness and of consciences devoid of God. They are the saints who many of us today have met and from whom we received blessing. This strengthened our consciousness that we are living among saints. We are through them and the work of the Church always at the door of the Kingdom of Heaven. We contemplate it closer and closer. We participate mysteriously but in a real way in this divine work of eternity among us. We foretaste the fruits of its action in the Holy Liturgy and the Holy Sacraments, in various sanctifying religious services, prayers and blessings, through the charitable, social-philanthropic, cultural and catechetical work, etc. These saints martyrs and confessors - Sofian from Antim (September 16), Dumitru Staniloae (October 4), Constantin Sârbu (October 23), Arsenie from Prislop (November 28), Ilie Lăcătușu (July 22), Paisie and Cleopa from Sihăstria (December 2), Dometie the Merciful from Râmeț (July 6), Serafim the Patient from Sâmbăta de Sus (December 20), Liviu Galaction from Cluj (March 8), Gherasim from Tismana (December 26), Visarion from Lainici (November 10), Calistrat from Timișeni and Vasiova (May 10), Ilarion Felea (September 18), Iraclie (August 3) and Alexander of Bessarabia (August 8) - are gifts of God made to the Church and to us, fruit of the collaboration between the grace and providence of God and the human freedom and askesis. They are example on our way to God in the Christian life. They become for us incentive and spiritual encouragement, spiritual advisers and guides by word and deed, praying and supplicating God on our behalf. Along with the other saints of the Church, they are the unmeasurable treasure and force that can inspire and guide us to all good work, to encounter God and unite with Him. All these Romanian saints give us the perspective and example of a Christian and Romanian life with valences and taste of eternity. They give us the prospect of a cultural and social life, of a sense of a particular Romanian ecclesial communion fully integrated and significant for universal Orthodoxy.
Also in 2025, 1700 years from the 1st Ecumenical Council (325) from Nicaea will be celebrated. Defining moment for Christian thinking from a dogmatic and organizational point of view, the Council has been the beginning of a series of other similar events that have marked to this day the Christian way of thinking and has given a clear, cultural and philosophical but also organizational thinking framework to the Christian world. Due to the impact that the 1st Ecumenical Council and then the others had, the Roman society was deeply marked and transformed in the sense of biblical and Christian values, opening new perspectives on life and social organization. Certainly, 1st Ecumenical Council as well as the others did not transform our world into the Kingdom of God, but they have brought society closer to the dialogue with God and offered it a more human social and cultural character.
The 1st Ecumenical Council explicitly proclaimed the divine identity of our Savior Jesus Christ. This created the premises of understanding man's identity in its true sense as image and likeness of God and by this to show the nobility and height of the vocation of man granted by God. Christ Jesus, the Son of God, became one of us to make us His brothers and to restore our stature of our human nature as the image and likeness of God. This is truly our Christian identity and our true way of being.
What could this year bring us? In what way will the remembering of these things be able to contribute to a better understanding and experience of our Christian life?
First of all, the events related to the different anniversaries of the Romanian Patriarchate will give us the opportunity to make a historical and spiritual synthesis of our Church and Romanian way of life that will help us to understand who we are as Romanians and Christians and the specific contribution we brought and we will be able to bring in the future to the Christian and social life of the present times. They will help us to specify our Christian identity and our vocation in the broader context of Orthodox Christianity.
Secondly, they will help us to bring to the forefront for us as Romanians, but also for the universal Orthodox Church, the examples of our today saints with their testimony and the contribution they have made to strengthen the Church in time of restraint and needs, of persecutions and desire to destroy any trace of Christian life. Their example shows us the truth of the word of Christ: "And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it" (Matthew 16:18).
Third, they will encourage us to remain confessors of the Christian faith in our time and culture as the Church Fathers were in their times. They will help us to understand that the confession of faith is and must be done in communion, harmoniously, in and beyond the culture of each people, through a dialogue that must go beyond the limits of the Christian world, because this dialogue is part of the mission of the Gospel and the salvation that addresses everyone. The Church is called to transfigure this society as St. Paul says: "For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3: 26-28).
Let us make this year 2025 in the Church and outside it a year of joy, communion, mission and unity in the diversity of confession, a year of reminding the meaning of our Christian calling today, of the fact that in this work we have with us always Christ who accompanies, guides, inspires and helps us.
Let us make our Christian calling today an opportunity for peace, blessing, well-being, spiritual joy, reconciliation, good and charitable deeds, love of God and neighbor, love of foreigners, comfort in suffering, effort and desire to straighten the unfair things in the contemporary society that have their origins in the ideologies arising from the unhealthy reality of our world. There is enough suffering, injustice and violence in our world. Let us dare to assume our responsibility as Christians by fulfilling our inner but also out outer work, because this will contribute to the transformation and transfiguration of our lives and the world in which we live. It is an invitation, a mission and a calling addressed by Christ to all. Following them we will become the contemporaries with the Holy Apostles, martyrs, hierarchs, holy priests and deacons, monks and nuns, simple Christians who have continued the mission they received. We will thus become the people of God.
Many Years to all!
A year 2025 blessed and with many spiritual accomplishments!
† Ioan Casian
The Romanian Orthodox Bishop of Canada
Saint-Hubert, January 1, 2025
The Circumcision of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ
St. Basil the Great
Archbishop of Caesarea of Cappadocia
