On the occasion of the start of the new Ecclesiastical Year, Patriarch Daniel of Bulgaria has addressed a message to the Hierarchs, clergy, and faithful people, highlighting the deeper spiritual meaning of the new church period.
In his message, the Patriarch refers to the “acceptable year of the Lord” and to Christ’s call to repentance, spiritual renewal, and bearing fruit in Christ. Drawing on the events and ecclesiastical experiences of the past year, he pays particular attention to the witness of holiness in our own time, to the Saints who were honored, and to the sacred relics that became objects of pilgrimage for multitudes of the faithful in Bulgaria.
A special place in the message is given to Saint Paisios of Mount Athos, as well as to the Holy Myrrh-Streaming Icon of the Iveron Mother of God from Hawaii, whose presence in Bulgaria, as the Patriarch notes, became a source of spiritual strengthening and blessing for thousands of the faithful.
The Patriarch also turns his gaze to the recent ecclesiastical history of Bulgaria, commemorating figures who bore witness to faith and devotion to Christ in difficult times, underlining that holiness is not merely a matter of the past but a living reality of the Church.
The message closes with a call to make good use of the time granted to us by God as an opportunity for repentance, renewal of faith, strengthening of love toward God and neighbor, and the acquisition of divine Grace, together with the wish that the new Ecclesiastical Year may become for all “favorable and blessed for our salvation.”
Read below the message of the Patriarch of Bulgaria:
Most Reverend and God-loving Hierarchs,
Honorable Fathers,
Beloved brothers and sisters in the Lord,
On the first day of September, at the start of the new ecclesiastical year, in our liturgical gatherings we recall the grace-filled words with which our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ announced to the world the coming of the “acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:19). The Lord came among us and proclaimed the Kingdom of Heaven to the poor in spirit; He granted healing to those with a broken heart; He freed the repentant from their sins; He opened the eyes and minds of the faithful, so that with our spiritual vision we might see our incarnate and risen King and God, Christ, so that our feet would not turn aside to works of iniquity (cf. Psalm 15:8); He granted us life, and indeed life “more abundantly” (John 10:10).
Christ’s contemporaries, and especially His immediate disciples, seeing His works and examining His life in the light of Holy Scripture, recognized the divine majesty of their Teacher’s theanthropic personality and were found worthy to behold with their bodily eyes His heavenly glory, “glory as of the only-begotten from the Father” (cf. John 1:14).
Two thousand and twenty-six years after the Savior’s Birth, we too, contemporary Bulgarians, likewise have the opportunity to see the ineffable glory of Christ, which the Lord gave to His disciples, and they in turn to their successors, and so on down to our own days.
During the autumn of last year and the spring of this year, all Bulgarians had the opportunity to become acquainted with, and to see portrayed on the television screen with such vividness and realism, the life of one of the most honored contemporary Saints of the Orthodox Church, Saint Paisios of Mount Athos. We saw how, through one man’s faith, his humility, and his love for God and for people, he himself became a dwelling place, a house of the Holy Trinity!
We saw how, through the struggle against egotism, patience in afflictions, and unceasing devotion to prayer, within a man weak in body and health the mighty power of God was revealed; how in a man unlettered by worldly standards the wisdom of God was made manifest.
Today there are still living eyewitnesses of the Saint’s discernment, the firmness of his faith, and his grace-filled prayers. Countless people have been touched by God, by divine Grace, through this gentle man.
We too became witnesses, even if only to a small but genuine and unadulterated part of his spiritual experience, witnesses of that same glory of Christ which was revealed in this man of God, just as Christ’s contemporaries beheld it during His earthly life. For the Lord had said: “the glory which You have given Me I have given them” (John 17:22), and again: “he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also, and greater works than these he will do” (John 14:12).
In our Metropolis of Sofia, we also had the opportunity to touch and become partakers of the sanctifying power of divine Grace, venerating other Orthodox Saints and holy relics: Saint Gabriel Urgebadze, likewise our contemporary, Saint John the Russian, Saint David of Euboea, and Saint Lazarus the Bulgarian, and to speak with people who were direct eyewitnesses of the works of these Saints, who, though they have departed this world, are always present among us through their God-bearing souls, sheltering us with their prayers before God.
And was it not indeed a great mercy of God that was witnessed before us in the visit to our country of the Holy Myrrh-Streaming Icon of the Iveron Mother of God from Hawaii?
We became eyewitnesses of the manifestation of the power of God, no less than were the contemporaries of the Lord two thousand years ago. The miracle of myrrh-streaming, which took place before our very eyes, is no less wondrous than the miracle by which the Lord blessed and multiplied the loaves, feeding more than five thousand souls with five loaves and two fishes!
Hundreds of thousands of people in our country were satisfied and strengthened in soul by this spiritual nourishment of divine Grace, and carried into our homes living testimony of this miracle: a small icon and cotton wool that had touched the most pure, myrrh-streaming face of the All-Holy Theotokos.
Among the faithful everywhere, a peace was witnessed, a spontaneous, heartfelt glorification of God for His great mercy, while cases of healing from various bodily and spiritual illnesses were also confirmed.
All of this comes to show us that Christ’s words about the coming of the “acceptable year of the Lord”, the favorable time for repentance and for offering worthy fruits of repentance unto salvation, concern and apply to all of us as well!
And this, of course, is made evident not only through the visitations among us of renowned Orthodox holy relics. Over the past year, the life and struggles of faith of a number of our own recent contemporaries were revealed to us with greater depth and fullness.
In the Metropolis of Sofia, several presentations took place: of the book by the Metropolis of Nevrokop on the late Metropolitan of Nevrokop, Nathanael, who truly lived a godly life, free from any deceit; of the book by the Metropolis of Vidin on two clergymen of Vidin, Hieromonk Palladius and Priest Nikolai Milekov, who suffered persecution under the atheist regime; as well as of the film about Protopresbyter Evstati Yankov, “The Wonderworker from Chepelare,” which was also broadcast by Bulgarian National Television.
For all these events we glorify God from the depths of our hearts and thank all those who contributed to their realization: the Holy Synod, the respective Metropolises and institutions, together with their heads and co-workers; the local Churches, Metropolises, and delegations that accompanied the holy relics that visited us; the clergy, staff, and co-workers of the Metropolis of Sofia; and, of course, last but not least, all of you, Orthodox Christians, who with great reverence responded and bore witness to your love for God and His Saints!
Indeed, the memory of our distinguished predecessors also remains alive before us: of the Patriarchs of Bulgaria Maxim and Neophyte; of the humble Abbot of the Holy Monastery of Zograf, Schema-Archimandrite Ambrose; of the selfless benefactor and donor Grandfather Dobri Dobrev; as well as of many other recent contemporaries of ours, sincere servants and friends of the Lord Jesus Christ, who are faithful witnesses and partakers of His uncreated glory and Grace.
Therefore, we too today can say together with the Apostle that we are surrounded by so great a “cloud of witnesses”, recent contemporaries of ours who, although they lived as we do in the world, manifested in their lives something not of this world: the power of Christ to turn away from every falsehood and hypocrisy and to live in truth, and not as each of them individually perceived the truth for himself, but within the unity and life of the Church.
Therefore, just as today, on the first day of September, at the beginning of the new Ecclesiastical Year, we celebrate the memory of a multitude of Saints, and just as the whole ecclesiastical year is full of such rich fruits of holiness, so we can say with confidence that such examples of people known to us, who completed their lives in repentance and holiness, we also have in our recent past.
People who lived in different eras, in times of wars, killings, and political upheavals, in times of faithlessness and persecution, of crises, falsehoods, corruption, and moral decline, and who, nevertheless, preserved their faith until their last breath.
And precisely because the most important thing that guided them in life was how they would stand before the Heavenly King, they prepared themselves to become worthy citizens of Heaven. Thus they made use of the time of each year of their lives, up to their final breath.
Herein lie our hopes as well at the beginning of the new ecclesiastical year: that with the time the Lord opens before us, He also opens the gates for us, offers us the possibility of repentance, the possibility for our faith to be renewed and strengthened, to grow in love toward God and neighbor, and for that love to be made manifest in our thoughts, desires, and deeds; to turn away from our evils, to have our illnesses healed, to have our prayer strengthened, to acquire Grace.
For this the Lord came, and thus He announced to us the coming of the “acceptable year of the Lord,” through His incarnation and His glorification! May He help us to obtain all these things!
Through the intercessions of our Most Holy Lady the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, of the Saints celebrated today, and of all the Saints, may the Lord make the new Ecclesiastical Year now dawning favorable and blessed for our salvation!
Metropolitan Cathedral Church of the Holy Great Martyr Kyriaki,
1 September 2026
