Iași, August 5, 2024
Photo: basilica.ro
It is a great blessing to know people who are in need, and it helps us see the blessings we already have, says the Romanian Orthodox Metropolitan of Moldavia and Bukovina.
Expounding upon the Gospel of the Healing of the Paralytic, His Eminence Metropolitan Teofan encouraged:
Let us ask God to grant us, first of all, the ability to see and recognize the state of paralysis that defines us, to strive and fight to remove from ourselves the inability to love, the inability to rejoice, the inability to forgive. This is accomplished, and we receive the strength to remove this state of helplessness from us, by participating in the Holy and Divine Liturgy, by thinking of God as often as possible during the day.
The Metropolitan added that this is accompanied by fulfilling a piece of advice: “A true Christian must have among his friends a paralyzed friend.”
“That is, to have a special connection with a person who is disabled, with a person who is helpless, with a person in a nursing home, who doesn’t have a hand, doesn’t have a leg, has a great disability, or is very old, because the connection with such a person brings joy to that person, and we recognize what a great blessing we have from God,” explained Met. Teofan.
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