The community of Ss. Constantine and Helen Cathedral in Chicago received, on the weekend of September 14-15, 2019, the visit of Archdeacon Adrian Sorin Mihalache from the Faculty of Orthodox Theology in Iasi. Father Sorin is on a conference tour in the US at the invitation of HE Metropolitan Nicolae.
On Saturday, September 14, on the day of the Elevation of the Holy Cross, Archdeacon Sorin arrived at the Cathedral and presented the workshop "Cultivating Attention". For 8 hours, participants (young people, Sunday School teachers and believers) were engaged in presentations, games, interactions, discussions on the topic of attention. The objectives of the workshop were: to present some information about the mechanisms of attention, methods for improving it, the appropriate conditions and actions for its development. The workshop ended with all the personal impressions and conclusions drawn from the exercises of the workshop.
On Sunday, September 15, the Divine Liturgy was celebrated at Ss. Constantine and Helen Cathedral by HE Metropolitan Nicolae assisted by the clergy of the Cathedral and Archdeacon Sorin Mihalache. At the end of the Divine Liturgy, HE Nicolae performed a Te-Deum service for the beginning of the school year. Then, Archdeacon Adrian Sorin explained the Gospel of the day, the Savior's invitation to take up our cross and become His disciples: In the Holy Gospel we find a spiritual x-ray of the human condition: "What uses man to gain the whole world, if he loses his soul?” (Mark 8:36). And we also find indications regarding the steps of becoming a disciple of Christ: self-denial, the taking of the Cross, and following Christ. Finally, some aspects regarding Creation, the universe of the living world and the life of man were mentioned, in which the theological reflection sees images of the Sacrifice, underlining the mysterious manner in which all these plans are contained in the Christ’s Sacrifice on the Cross.
In the afternoon, Archdeacon Sorin Mihalache presented the conference with the theme "The spiritual life and patterns of the consumer society". After a careful examination of the consumer society, the guest presented, using texts from the Holy Fathers of the Church, especially from Philokalia, the solutions for solving multiple conflicts: striving for virtues versus horizontal performances of professionalization, work of peace versus social over-connectivity, the striving to fulfill the deeds of faith versus over-verbalization. At the end Father Sorin answered with great love the questions of the believers. The next conference of Archdeacon Sorin will be on Tuesday, September 17, 2019, at the Holy Trinity Parish of Troy, MI with the theme "Life in Screen Captivity". You can find the full schedule of Archdeacon Sorin Mihalache's US tour here.
