August 8, 2015
On Friday, August 7, in chapel of the Great Martyr St. George in the Patriarchal residence, His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel of Romania officially commissioned several priests of the Archdiocese of Bucharest as father confessors, as reported on the Patriarchate's Basilica News Agency.
Following the sevice the Patriarch offered advice to the new father confessors, focusing on the responsibilites of serving in a parish and the need for continual growth in one's ministry:
The father confessor’s dignity is great and hard, but everything is possible in the Church with the help of God. The training of the father confessor lasts all his life, just like that of the physician’s. In general, the faithful who repents must feel, through the work of the father confessor, the mercy of God the Father, the advice of Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd, and the warmth of the Holy Spirit given especially through the prayer of the father confessor for his spiritual sons and daughters, as well as through the prayer of the spiritual sons and daughter for their father confessor. This experience of the presence and work of the Holy Trinity in the Church is felt especially through the service of the father confessor who must guide his people to know the mercy of God the Father, speak with them at catechesis and in sermons especially during fasting times about the importance of returning to God, giving up sin and returning to virtue, because this is the mystery of repentance, and about the benefits of Confession, not only as duty, but also as means of spiritual growth.
His Beatitude also urged the fathers to firmly ground themselves in prayer to find the wisdom and strength to fan within the hearts of the faithful the flame of repentance:
The father confessor must be just like a physician who takes into account the characteristic features of every person and avoids both a strictness which can lead to despair and too great a tolerance which can cause spiritual laziness. There is much confusion in today’s society—it is spiritual laziness. This is secularization. It is not quite atheism, but spiritual laziness. The secularized man is not atheist by any means, but it is a man who does not pray. He has secular thoughts, not spiritual ones. May God help us wake up, in a secularized world, the flame of desire for renewal, of changing, so that the father confessor should be understood as a bearer of the flame for the resurrection of souls from the death of sin, from the spiritual death caused by sin, and so have the joy of a community spiritually revived, which is a matter not merely of numbers but of quality.
The new father confessors received a licensing certificate, a blessing cross, as well as the new edition of the Book of Needs on behalf of His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel.
