Friendship is a relationship of mutual esteem, of mutual help even reaching self-sacrifice, faithful friends are a sturdy shelter, and the only criterion for the final judgment or evaluation of human life on earth is made according to how much humble and merciful love is displayed while living, Patriarch Daniel of the Romanian Christian Orthodox Church told the opening on Thursday in Timisoara of the International Meeting of Orthodox Youth (ITO), write Agerpres.

ITO takes place in Timisoara between August 31 and September 3, bringing together around 5,000 Christian Orthodox youth from all over the world. Daniel said that the theme of the ITO meeting, „You are my friends”, is deeply biblical and the meanings of friendship have been talked about from Antiquity to the Holy Scriptures.

„We note that man’s friendship with God, through prayer, and with his fellow people, through good deeds, is the surest light of life, the light that everyone will bear in their souls at any age, in any place, in time and in eternity. The friendship of the Orthodox youth with the Lord Jesus Christ is cultivated, first of all, through personal and communal prayer, through participation in the Divine Liturgy and other services of the Church, because, as Saint Isaac the Syrian says, ‘pure love is born from prayer’. We are urged to see the mystical presence of Christ in our suffering neighbour, who is poor or sick, sad or discouraged, and to respond with humble and merciful love.

Faithful friends are life-saving medicine, and those who fear the Lord will find them,” the BOR Patriarch said on the stage of the Summer Theatre in Parcul Rozelor. Metropolitan Bishop Ioan of Banat brought in his speech a eulogy to the Romanian language, on its day, as well as to the young martyrs killed in the December 1989 Revolution in Timisoara for freedom and urged the young people to be good Christians in the homelands where they live.