Sermon on the Remembrance of Saint, our Mother, Paraskeva [October 14, 2011]

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Beloved brothers and sisters in the Lord,

In short: today, we make remembrance of a young woman that fall asleep in the Lord at the age of 27 years…and whose Holy Relics are in Iași, a city in Romania.

And so, Saint Paraskeva, born in 11th century AD, is contemporary with us, if we remember her, if we come on pilgrimage only for that we pray to her and to kiss his Holy Relics.

And thousands of people come to tell their love at her reliquary…

And is not this a great miracle, that thousands of people to love a girl, that have never met her in their lives? It’s not an immense miracle that love, who wants to touch someone long dead?

For that postmodern man considers dead man a cadaver…and, here, we have a body that spread joy, healing, comfort…and called to communion.

With who? With God and among ourselves. Because the body of Saint Paraskeva is not left by her holy soul. But her soul is working through her ​​body countless miracles.

Born in Epivata, near Constantinople, she understood, miraculously, that charity is living. Reason for that, she shared her wealth, inherited from parents, and lived ascetically in several Monasteries.

She arrived in Jerusalem, she lived in a Monastery in the wilderness of Jordan…but we have no information about how she has sanctified her life. Missing the journal of her life.

We know only, that at 25 years, an Angel of the Lord sent her at her home places. And she was listening…she returned in Epivata…and she was buried as a foreigner.

Then that began the miracles…and they never end!

And the wonders never end…only if there is holy life.

For that her Holy Relics are not a mummy…and the worship in front of her…is not a blasphemy at address to God.

Who made ​​them, my beloved, to be full of grace? We, humans?

The mummy is not a miracle but a retention of a dead body, in certain conditions, due to natural conditions. And the blasphemy against God means to believe a holy thing…something that is far from holy.

But, here, we are dealing with a body full of the glory of God, who shares this glory to all who come and pray with faith.

Saint Paraskeva teaches us to love God with the same forgetfulness of self and spiritual beauty. She teaches us to be together. She indicates us the path of the true life, in Church, namely the transfiguration perspective.

Because our body remains an open lesson for after-ages, if, now, we live with God and we are full of His glory.

No, they are not empty words! The personal soteriology, our salvation is a conscious work, in that we see how our passions/ vices die and how His grace gurgles in us.

By several days, people are at row at her reliquary…It is cold outside…the row also long…But orthodoxies from Romania stay at row, into an immense column, for that to express their love.

Since, if we do not remember the Saints, we will forget them.

Their remembrance is unforgetfulness.

And that we save from forgetfulness…we must to be present.

Anywhere we would, we must to remember to know and to honor our Saints. They are our examples. The examples which are not unfashionable.

And her youthfulness shows us that not the time saves…but the intensity of living.

As far as we are alive now, so we will be immortal. And the Lord give us, all, the joy to be alive, after how we see that she is living and after her repose. Amen!