On Saturday and Sunday (November 23 and 24, 2024), His Eminence Archbishop and Metropolitan Nicolae visited the Orthodox community of Troy, Michigan, on the occasion of the festive celebration of the feast of the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple. With God’s help and the blessing of His Eminence Metropolitan Nicolae, we celebrated one year since the founding of our parish.
We prayed together during Vespers on Saturday evening, and at the end of it, His Eminence Nicolae inspired us with the longing for holiness, to which we are all called, and guided us to the model of the saints. He reminded us that 2024 was proclaimed by the Romanian Patriarchate as the Homage Year of the Pastoral Care of the Sick and the Commemorative Year of All Unmercenary Doctors. In this context, he gave us as an example the saints commemorated in November, which begins, from the very first day, with the commemoration of the Unmercenary Doctors Cosmas and Damian. He drew our attention to the fact that in the month of November alone, in which we are, there are at least 16 healing saints. Our hierarch listed them and focused only on some of the best known, such as St. Nektarios of Aegina, Venerable Gregory of Decapolis, or St. Catherine of Sinai, and he insisted on biographical data on some of them, unknown to most, but very present, contemporaries of us, such as Olga of Alaska, canonized only last year, or St. Gabriel the Georgian, who suffered under the communist regime, but who acquired from God the gift of clairvoyance and prophecy, with which he helped many by returning them to the faith. We shared a frugal dinner, then our hierarch met, in a small setting, with the members of the Parish Council present.
The next day, Sunday, we celebrated “with small and great”, first as is fitting, with the Divine Hierarchical Liturgy, followed by the traditional festive agape. From the teaching delivered by our Most Reverend Father Nicolae, during the Divine Liturgy, I would like to recall that he urged us “not to waste our time, coming to church for reasons other than those that concern union with God and our inner building”:
“Today’s Holy Gospel urges us to ask ourselves the same questions, whether or not we seek perfection. This question is not an optional one in the life of a true Christian. Christ tells us: “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Christ came to give us the chance to be perfect, to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. To accomplish this, we must identify the problem of our lives. If we were asked: do we leave our wealth, or do we leave a certain attachment to something in this world, and follow Christ, what would we answer? Will we be able to leave everything and follow Christ? The apostles did it: when they were called, they left their families, they left their homes, and became followers of Christ...
Today's Holy Gospel reveals to us the question that we all must ask ourselves: what is stopping us from being truly Christians, disciples of Christ? Each of us is stopped by something: maybe it is wealth, maybe it is something else, but we must find out the answer. And when we find out the answer, let us make the right choice, let us not go away sad and return to our problem, but let us try to solve it. The Holy Gospel also tells us how to solve it: by following Christ. In the Sermon on the Mount we are told: "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you" (Matthew 6:33). The problem of our lives is that before we seek God, we place too many concerns. And that is why we are not able to fulfill the answer to the question of what we must do to gain eternity."
I would like to emphasize how much good it did us, and how much we rejoiced, it filled us with grace and heavenly comfort. Our Hierarch congratulated us, encouraged us and blessed us! We thank you, Your Eminence, and we wish you good health and many joys, such as this one that you have given us through the presence and kindness of Your Eminence!
Archimandrite Simeon Mureșan
