On Saturday, April 6, 2019, His Grace Father Bishop Macarie of the Romanian Orthodox Diocese of Northern Europe celebrated the Divine Liturgy and the commemoration of those who were asleep in the Lord, in the Chapel of the Diocesan Center in Stockholm.

On the Fourth Sunday of the Great Lent, the hierarch held the Divine Liturgy at the Diocesan Center, where in his lecture he referred to the step of the prayer of the Divine Ascension Ladder of Saint John Climacus honored this Sunday. “In the sacrifice of prayer, you find a parental shoulder that you cry bitterly, a benevolent ear that listens to your voice, a word that lifts your longing, receiving forgiveness. We have no other way of communicating with the Lord than prayer. We have no other weapon to fight for temptation than for prayer. We have no faster means of helping the people than praying. Prayer is not just a good deed we can work for salvation, it is a state of the heart, an orientation of our personality, a tendency from the inertia of matter to the purity of heaven. An old Father of the Church teaches us that the one who prays only at the time specifically designated for prayer does not really pray. The meaning of this apoftegma is deep: we are called to incessant prayer. Not as a primordial virtue of the Christian, but as a need of our soul, a need for ourselves. We need to continually pray, just as we need to breathe in order to live. “Thirst my soul to the living God; when I come and show myself to the face of God? “(Psalm 41: 2), the psalmist also says. Prayer is, indeed, the breath of our soul. We have a living soul, as long as we pray. We fulfill our call to be in communion with God when we join Him in prayer. God rests in us, as do the Mother of God and the Saints, as long as we pray. So, my dear ones, let us pray continually, for prayer cleanses our minds, softens our heart, warms our soul, exalts us and unites us with God. Let us pray for each other and embrace all of them in the embrace of prayer, taking a parable from the Savior who stretched his arms on the cross to open His fatherly arms in heaven! “

These days, the His Grace Macarie confessed the believers in Stockholm and guided the young and the children in the community.