Programe pastoral-misionare și filantropice ale Arhiepiscopiei Dunării de Jos, în timpul pandemiei de Covid-19

Abstract

Covid-19: a conventional medical code that, until the end of 2019, said nothing tous, the Europeans. The disease, which appeared in Asia, didn’t seem to affect the “old continent”, but unexpectedly fast and virulent, reached in all parts of the world; in Europe and in our country, too. Gradual forbid dances followed, and until the setting of the “emergency state”, with its rough restrictions in the confinement months imposed by the sanitary norms, it wasn’t too long. The spectrum of the disease with unknown, unpredictable manifestations, as well as the subliminal tension, with psychotic effect, “fed” by the alarmist news of the media, emphasized the human person’s fear and amplified the social crisis. However, life in Christ continued pulsing, both in the holy places, inaccessible to believers for a time and in all the houses where Christians live. But, in it’s theandric being, the Church was not affected by this crisis! Moreover, the Church has turned the whole situation in the country into a dynamic motivation for its sanctifying mission in the world, for its pro-human work and for maintaining the optimistic perspective that every Christian is called to adopt, especially in painful times. For the all Romanian Or- thodox Christians, Lent, Easter, Holy Week and the Easter time (March, April and May of the year of salvation 2020) were times of “enlightenment as through fire” (I Corinthians 1:13) of hope and exercise of “the working faith by love” (Galatians 5:6). It followed a long period (July – October 2020) of “alert status” period, people being tense at the risk of a “second wave of the epidemic“, a foreshadowed aspect by the growing number of diseases (in September between 1.300 and 1.700 people with positive tests per day). It is essential the way we know how to capitalize on the joy and fruits of solitary prayer during the “emergency state”, continued by the “prayer of community prayer” which lit up even more during the “alert status” period. We mustn’t lose the fruits of personal will / need irrigated by the living of the ecclesial life, centered on the Savior Christ, “the Doctor of our souls and bodies” and “the Source of our life”, temporary and – especially – of the eternal one, with Him! This short article tries to show / present, synthesized, the way in which the Holy Archdiocese of the Lower Danube knew how to managed he situation created by the pandemic, through a dense liturgical and spiritual program and through balanced pastoral-missionary-social strategies, to overcome one of the most complicated periods in the recent history, which has brought emotional or physical suffering to many Christians.