WHEN THE RUMANIANS FACED THE DILEMMA OF EITHER BEING ORTHODOX CHRISTIANS OR ROMAN CATHOLICS

WHEN THE RUMANIANS FACED THE DILEMMA OF EITHER BEING

ORTHODOX CHRISTIANS OR ROMAN CATHOLICS

RUMANIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH

            This is a story that was recently told to a pilgrim on Mount Athos by a monk.  The pilgrim states that I must admit that I did not know that there was a time when Rumania came very close to becoming a Roman Catholic country.  This history was told to me by a monk during my recent visit to Mount Athos.  The monk was telling this story when he was showing me around his monastic complex.  This tour of the Monastery took place after we had attended an all-night vigil.  He said that after the Great Schism between the Greek Church of the East and the Latin Church of the West in 1054 AD, the papists approached the Rumanian Orthodox Church asking it to abandon its connection with the Orthodox Church.  In their effort to do this, they criticized the Orthodox Church about it’s supposed many false teachings and practices.  These attacks were such that the papists almost convinced the Rumanian Orthodox Church to switch its allegiance to Rome.

            It was Divine Providence that enlightened the Orthodox hierarchy of Rumania to offer the following proposal to the Roman Catholics.  They proposed to them that both Churches should perform the blessing of the water service according to the rites of each Church.  This blessing was to be done with large containers of water.  Once the blessing service was completed these containers were to be sealed and after a certain amount of time the containers were to be opened.  When the containers were opened they were to reveal which Church truly dispenses Divine Grace in its services. 

            Both Churches proceeded to do exactly as they had agreed to do.  When the time had come for the unsealing of the large containers of blessed water, they revealed the truth for the whole world to see.  Upon unsealing the containers they found that the water blessed by the Orthodox Church was as fresh as the day it was blessed.  On the other hand, the water blessed by the Roman Catholic Church had turned bad and was not drinkable.  This proved without a shadow of doubt which Church dispensed divine grace during the blessing of the waters. 

 Translated from the Greek by:

+Fr. Constantine (Charles) J. Simones, Waterford, CT. USA, July 14, 2014, cjsimones300@gmail.com