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Saint Stefan the Great (2 July)
On July 20th 1992, the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church decided to canonize the righteous Prince Stephen the Great, who led Moldova for 47 years with strong faith in God. Protector of the country, the people and its faith, the Prince was also a defender of Christian Europe, called by Pope Sixt the IV “Christ’s athlete and defender of Christianity”. The worthiness of the Prince is synthesized in the services and songs of praise sung on his holiday, July 2nd. A good example would be the following: “Fearless defender of the right faith and the ancestral country protector, great founder of religious dwellings, Prince Stephen, ask Christ, God, to deliver us from need and troubles”.
In the Mineiul for the month of July (book that holds the liturgies of the saints), the life of Price Stefan the Great and Holy is described as:
“Stefan the Great and Holy fought to defend the entire Christianity “until death” with his head, meaning “with his life”, as it shows in the letter written to all the princes of Christianity, calling them to a holy crusade for the protection of the Christian faith.”
Stefan did not hold his success on his intellectual capabilities, but with modesty on the will and power of God, who has always helped him. The Great prince was not only a defender of the faith, but also a confessor of the faith through the numerous churches and monasteries he has built throughout Moldova and Mount Athos.
With the beauty and the greatness of these places, their adornment with pictures, filling them with those necessary for the holy liturgy, all done with great unsurpassed artistry, Saint Stefan the great brings before God “his people’s worship”, meaning our Romanian peoples.
As a man of prayer, the Prince asked the fathers of the church to pray for the faithful nation of Moldova, for his soldiers, for the living and for the dead. The Prince himself prayed and did a great number of good deeds during times of peril, as it is shown in the icons of his most famous monastery, Putna.
The Saint Daniil “the Solitary Monk” (Sihastrul) was his spiritual father and a good advice giver in the Princes time of prayer and reflection.
He was a just man but also a man who respected love and forgiveness: “I forgave you, and all the hatred and anger I have shed from my heart”, wrote the Prince to his boyar Mihu, one of those who participated in the killing of his father. He was thinking of eternal death, as to him death was, according to Christian teachings , only a move from the temporal level to the eternal, as he himself asked to have written on his epitaph, made 12 years before his death (July 2nd 1504)
The Holy pages of Romanian Chronicles remind us after ages of the profound religiosity of the Romanian People and its consideration for Prince Stephan the Great and Holy: “and they buried Prince Stephan with great grief and cry and the Putna monastery that was built by him. There was so much grief that everyone was crying as if it was their own parent dying”. The Chronicles further say: “ And even after his death they call him Stephan the Saint… for all the good deeds he had done, and no other Lord, before or after him had managed to do. “
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