These days, His Grace Father Bishop Macarie of the Romanian Orthodox Diocese of Northern Europe, accompanied by archpriest Andrei Marius Pop, was in a pastoral visit to the Romanians beyond the Polar Circle in Norway. On Saturday, August 24, 2019, the hierarch served the Holy Liturgy and baptized a baby from the Eucharistic community in Skjervøy, and on Sunday, August 25, 2019, he served the Holy Liturgy in the Romanian Orthodox parish “Saint Hermit Sisoe the Great and Saint Lucia from Rome” in Tromsø. On this occasion, the bishop offered several gifts to the children and the faithful – some of them coming from great distances to attend the holy services.
His Excellency Macarie, with emotion and joy, conveyed this exhortation to the Romanians from the distant Arctic lands: “I find you in Christ again, face to face, giving glory to the Savior for another opportunity to bring Him thanks together, to bless you and to make you partakers of His Holy Sacraments. You are one of those whom the sorrows sent all the way beyond the Polar Circle, so far from the native lands, the parental houses, the ancestral church where you were baptized. No matter how far away we were, no matter how hard it might be, stay strong in the faith and do not abandon our country! Let us stand firm in the faith, for this is our dignity. It makes us people, it ennobles us. It is the most valuable asset we have. We can win, or we can lose everything in this world – but faith alone remains our absolute benchmark and way of salvation. Only through faith can we truly live the good life. In the utter disorientation and disorder that has encompassed the world, faith is our only strong foundation, which, if we have it, we will not go astray, we will not get lost in nature, but we will find out from the Good God the right answers at the right time regarding what to do with our lives. Also, let’s not leave our country! Even if some of you have been here for a long time, even if you have brought or founded a family here, we should all remember that we have one country, one alone, and no other! Here we are guests. Maybe we are fine now, here, but the times are now and how they will be latter on is not under our control. Or, almost every one of us has something left there, in the homeland. A household, a land worked by ancestors, a parental home, relatives. Let us not leave these, my beloved ones, for they are the land in which our roots caught life and onto which we rose ourselves. We should not leave them in decay, but intensely cultivate the connections with those left behind at home”, said the Romanian Orthodox Bishop of Northern Europe.
His Grace Bishop Macarie managed to visit a few families at their households, performing the sanctification of their home with holy water.
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