Keywords: Jacques Lacan; Slavoj Zizek
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Keywords: biometry; digital fingerprinting; state controll;
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Poetry by Jean-Pierre Siméon.
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Alin Tat - Creştinismul bizantin. Istorie, teologie, tradiţii monastice (Ed. Cartier, 2005, trad. Al. Cistelecan, prefaţă Cardinal Tomàš Špidlik) by Michelina Tenace; André Scrima, Duhul Sfânt şi unitatea Bisericii. “Jurnal” de Conciliu (Editura Anastasia, Bucureşti, 2004) Iulian Boldea: Balcanologie II de Mircea Muthu, apărută la Editura Libra, în 2004,
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The "Sapientia" publishing House - an example of books that are being advertised but have never been published. What is going on in the publishing world?
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Keywords: Emile Cioran - correspondence;
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Keywords: Eginald Schalttner books and biography; Transilvaina in the writings of Eginald Schlattner;
Short biography of the Romanian priest and refugee, and a dialogue.
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Keywords: imagination; material imagination; Gaston Bachelard;
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Constantin Arcu talks about his newest novel and about the Romanian novel in general. An excerpt: "Judele şi fluturele".
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The "parallel education" in communist Romania: "the teachers were teaching and sustaining one thing in public and something else in private".
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Reply to Marian Draghici's article from Vatra 9-10: "A talk with Carl Gustav the dog"
More...Keywords: monasticism; monastic order; Buddhism; Jainism; idiorrhythmic; cenobitic
Monasticism has always been at the forefront of Christianity. He is the most powerful missionary side of the Christ’s Church. Unlike other religions, Orthodox Christian monasticism implies an assumption of divine life; on the other hand, Hindu monasticism, Buddhist or Taoist ones targets only to the idea of liberation out of the karmic chain. The Orthodox Christian Church is not grouped by monastic orders, as in Western Catholic Christianity. There are a series of problems in Eastern Christian monasticism that must be solved. For example: the temptation to be constantly in a material activism: building, restoring etc. Also, unfortunately, ew can speak about a monastic consumerism, which makes sometimes the monastery become a management institution.
More...Keywords: monasticism; way of being; asceticism; love; contemplation
Even if the rite of monastic initiation is no longer numbered among the Sacrements, a certain grace – a certain awareness of the energies of God – are present in monastic initiation and revealed as a mystery only to the initiated, because he has taken upon himself the cross of monasticism. This mystery testifies to the perpetual dynamism of our being, denouncing idleness and the fall of the spirit into the cosiness of this world. The monk adopts a “whole” way of living to live as Christ did, with Whom he unites himself, to be completely merged with all mankind. Monasticism is born of a kind of angelical “genealogy”, which is why the monk, through his monastic life, contemplates the reality of all things. Ascetic efforts, when properly assumed, denounce romantic, “bourgeois monasticism”, reminding those who are attentive that the reality of all things demands “a permanent strenuousness” of temper. Nevertheless, the categorization of one’s status as a monk in Church (hierarchy), or the comparison of the monk’s life with other ways of living blessed by God, ends in a sterile enumeration of a set of “prerogatives” that do not reflect the complexity of this way of life. Monasticism remains a mysterious way of manifesting the profundity and beauty of our being.
More...Keywords: Isaac the Syrian; Eschatology; love; heaven; hell; salvation; apocatastasis; fire; universal solidarity
One can observe at Saint Isaac the Syrian, a 7th century Christian writer, a very specific way of understanding Eschatology. The very base for his vision is the unchangeable and equal love of God towards all creation, regardless of its response to it. Therefore, on this very base, God, described as love is the “alpha and omega” of every theology and outside that only concepts. In my paper I am going to look into how Saint Isaac describes the reality of heaven and hell, and, in this frame, what kind of relation takes place between God and humans, between humans themselves and between God, humans and creation in the life to come. The conclusions I will draw go in three directions: first, I will try to inquire some of Isaac’s ideas which seem to contradict the traditional view on eschatology; secondly, I will underline the experiential character of Isaac’s eschatology (Christian all- embracing solidarity) and its role for the understanding of the ‘life to come’; and thirdly, I will picture the importance his optimist theology might have for a distressed and confused society, as the contemporary one.
More...Keywords: Vocation; Saint Apostles; following Christ; inspiration; testimony; biblical prophets
Following Christ as His disciple is a commitment to Jesus whose personality had a strong mark upon human history. It is obvious that the commitment to Christ was understood and practiced in various ways and that is why we thought it appropriate taking into consideration the theme of vocation or calling. Among the Christian's duties we have the one of periodically revising one's devotion to Jesus and the analyses of the extent to which the person is involved in this. This is an exam that must be taken starting from the biblical roots of the vocational phenomenon. Today's Christians are not contemporary to Jesus. The impact Christ has upon them is not the same as the impact He had upon His contemporaries. What we know about Him has revitalized man's connection to God through His "new teaching - and with authority" (Mk 1: 27b), this knowledge did not come to us through some reports or some audio-visual documents. Throughout time, Christ's followers had to depend upon the testimony of Jesus' contemporaries who had become His disciples and who, at Christ's commandment, continued His mission of teaching (Mt 28: 19-20). However, the devotion that today's disciples have towards Jesus has to be as strong as the image of Christ as it is presented in the Gospel and in the entire New Testament.
More...Keywords: Romanian War of Independence; service sanitaire; monks; nuns; charity
The Romanian War of Independence took place between 1877 and 1878 and has been waged against the Ottoman Empire. The Romanian state was not prepared for that military confrontation. With the budget at its disposal, the Ministry of War could not meet the needs of the front. They appealed to the spirit of sacrifice of the Romanian people, all walks of life being involved in that process of supporting the military. Responding to the call addressed by the civil and church authorities, the monks and nuns from the Romanian monasteries of Moldavia, Oltenia and Wallachia accomplished their duty to the country and contributed in a special manner to the success of military operations. Thus, leaving the silence of their chinovies, they have activated diligently to serve the army medical service, either as stretcher bearers or as nurses. This article presents in detail the acts and facts of those Church ministers committed to the purpose aforesaid, during the military hostilities of the "Bulgarian plains".
More...Keywords: consecration; monachism; Trinitarian life; divine energies; immanent absolute
Monasticism is a direct, firm and “fast” approach towards the fulfilment of the Orthodox ideal: the consecration of the person. This is the Orthodox perspective upon living “in the Holy Ghost”. Monasticism is the permanent materialization of the process that leads to being part in the Trinitarian life, to “seeing God”, to tasting His grace as uncreated energy that flows from His being. This study is the introduction to a pastoral treaty dedicated to monasticism and it is based upon the thoughts of some brilliant western theologians such as Yannis Spiteris, G.I. Mantzaridis and S. Scazzoso whose works are very well known in Italy where they also worked.
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