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Covid-19: a conventional medical code that, until the end of 2019, said nothing tous, the Europeans. The disease, which appeared in Asia, didn’t seem to affect the “old continent”, but unexpectedly fast and virulent, reached in all parts of the world; in Europe and in our country, too. Gradual forbid dances followed, and until the setting of the “emergency state”, with its rough restrictions in the confinement months imposed by the sanitary norms, it wasn’t too long. The spectrum of the disease with unknown, unpredictable manifestations, as well as the subliminal tension, with psychotic effect, “fed” by the alarmist news of the media, emphasized the human person’s fear and amplified the social crisis. However, life in Christ continued pulsing, both in the holy places, inaccessible to believers for a time and in all the houses where Christians live. But, in it’s theandric being, the Church was not affected by this crisis! Moreover, the Church has turned the whole situation in the country into a dynamic motivation for its sanctifying mission in the world, for its pro-human work and for maintaining the optimistic perspective that every Christian is called to adopt, especially in painful times. For the all Romanian Orthodox Christians, Lent, Easter, Holy Week and the Easter time (March, April and May of the year of salvation 2020) were times of “enlightenment as through fire” (I Corinthians 1:13) of hope and exercise of “the working faith by love” (Galatians 5:6).It followed a long period (July – October 2020) of “alert status” period, people being tense at the risk of a “second wave of the epidemic“, a foreshadowed aspect by the growing number of diseases (in September between 1.300 and 1.700 people with positive tests per day). It is essential the way we know how to capitalize on the joy and fruits of solitary prayer during the “emergency state”, continued by the “prayer of community prayer” which lit up even more during the “alert status” period. We mustn’t lose the fruits of personal will / need irrigated by the living of the ecclesial life, centered on the Savior Christ, “the Doctor of our souls and bodies” and “the Source of our life”, temporary and – especially – of the eternal one, with Him!This short article tries to show / present, synthesized, the way in which the Holy Archdiocese of the Lower Danube knew how to managed he situation created by the pandemic, through a dense liturgical and spiritual program and through balanced pastoral - missionary - social strategies, to overcome one of the most complicated periods in the recent history, which has brought emotional or physical suffering to many Christians.
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The joy receiving the Eucharist (Christ) should be the first thought when we come to receive the Eucharist and not anxiety for not getting ill by using the spoon successively. If we got ill by using the spoon successively, then the first subject to contamination should be the priests, because they consume after each Divine Liturggy everything that remained in the Holy Chalice, after the believers received the Eucharist by introducing the spoon in it successively. The reality shows us that the situation is different because no priest got ill after consuming the Eucharist from Chalice. The Holy Eucharist is not a cause for the fact that we get ill, but it is the fountain of life and health.
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The efforts to slow down the spread of the new coronavirus (COVID-19) have revived, for certain categories of people well known in the public space, an over 1,000 year old debate in the Christian world: how to offer the Holy Eucharist. This time, the debate was viewed from a “hygiene and health” perspective. Should the Church use a common spoon to offer the Holy Eucharist to those who wish to receive it? Does using it repeatedly, especially in times of pandemic, become a source of infection? The debate resurfaced amid unprecedented measures that are forcing religious institutions around the world to temporarily change some traditional practices. The Eucharistic communion of the faithful during the Holy Liturgy with the same spoon, although not canonically decided by any Orthodox Synod, is still a practice in the Orthodox Church for almost nine centuries. Therefore, this practice cannot be changed, not even during a pandemic, even if epidemiologists demand this change, as a condition to allow the participation and communion of lay believers in the Holy Mass. Representatives of the opposite side believe the contrary: a common Holy Grail, especially a common spoon, used for everyone to receive the Holy Communion, can cause the spread of disease.
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As the Romanian Orthodox Church has declared the year of 2020 as “the referential year of parents’ and children’s pastoral”, aiming to continuously sacralize the family found under the constant influence of the actual secularism, the purpose of this paper is to highlight the cultic details of the Sacrament of Marriage by revealing a series of codices kept in the Christian liturgical archives. We strongly believe that, if we look in our past, through the light of the ritual of Marriage, we can unfold great themes which can be gathered in an authentic pastoral register for our priests. An active knowledge of the mutual sacrificial love shared between the two spouses may bring the family back to its iconic status given by God under the Church’s grace. This can turn into an actual and continuous reality only through a relentless pastoral activity of Christ’s servants. Only by living such virtues coming from the joining of the two – man and woman becoming as “one” by assuming permanently the unseen cross – we can say that the entire pastoral effort of the Church reaches its purpose. Therefore, in the following pages we are going to introduce the grace of love to the contemporary pastoral, by emphasizing those details which have always defined the main horizon – through cult and by living the Orthodox directions in order to keep the Christian family in the light of the Resurrection.
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It is easily noticeable today the almost total disinterest of christians towards their mystical application into the public divine cult. It is observed a bizarre phenomenon: the revival of the ocult by promoting some forms of neo-paganism mixed with formal aspects of traditional christianity and supported by fiction elements from postmodern literature and cinematography, belonging to the SF genus. An eloquent example is the celebration called Halloween, extremely spread in the United States of America through the chain of consumer globalism which has reached all the countries of the world, including in Romania, where it experienced a fast development, in a relatively short time. The present study aims to analyze this phenomenon from the perspective of the Contextual Missiology, with the major purpose of sounding an alarm bell on the prolifiration of the ocultism in Romania. The study will demonstrate that, socially, in Romania there is now an aggressive form of individualism, which leads to the creation of some froms of religion of its own, false. These are facets of postmodernism, destructive by consumer policies and hedonistic mentalities that characterize the world we live in, which is in a spirritual collapse.
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In the “Homage Year of the Pastoral Care of Parents and Children” and the “Commemorative Year of the Romanian Orthodox Philanthropists” we proposed a study on the “culture of philanthropy” in the Orthodox space, because we consider it closely related to pastoral care and education. The etymological meaning of the concept of philanthropy is very complex and simple at the same time. Its significance is: God’s love for people, but also a manifestation of people’s love for their fellow men, a virtue that every Christian should have. We owe to the Cappadocian Fathers (St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Gregory of Nazianzus), St. John Chrysostom – with the “Mystery (Sacrament) of the Brother”, the imposition in Orthodoxy of the idea that philanthropy is a model of to Christ, who loved men, the merciful being thus partaker of the divine philanthropy, for “No one has greater love than this, that he may lay down his soul for his friends” (Jn 5:13). Thus, the Orthodox Christian knows that “he who helps the poor, lends to God” (Proverbs 19:17), and the model of the Christian life is based on the words of our Lord Jesus Christ – “I give you a new commandment: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (Jn 13: 34-35).In time, a true “culture of philanthropy” was established in the Orthodox space – as His Beatitude Father Daniel, Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church – observed which is the basis of communion in the Church through faith, and in society, through education. The promoter of the values of this culture is undoubtedly the priest, about whose mission Metropolitan Antonie Plămădeală wrote that “it is a divine command”. At the same time, Father Dumitru Stăniloae establishes interdependencies between the concepts of communion, love, sacrifice, philanthropy, generosity, race, identity, dignity.In the history of Romanians, Orthodox spirituality, based on the “culture of philanthropy”, made possible a rich philanthropic activity that had several hierarchs of the Orthodox Church, rulers and boyars, who understood that Christian freedom implies responsibility to others. Let us not forget the institutional philanthropic activity of the Church, which is “a community self in Christ” (Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae), brutally interrupted for almost half a century, with the installation of the communist regime (1946-1989), but resumed immediately after his fall.At present, the pastoral care of parents and children can pass on, over generations, the values of the “culture of philanthropy”, which should not be confused or replaced with modern practices of social assistance, the latter being more a strictly professional form of helping each other often without real personal involvement.
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There is almost no thinker in the history of mankind not to be interested in the issue of evil and suffering that accompany man’s life from his birth to his death, just like the shadow never separates from the body. Everybody has tried to unlock this mystery, to reach a deep understanding of it, to uncover its meanings, to identify ways to remove it or, at least, to make it less of an experience. The theme of suffering is recurrent in the texts of the Book of Scripture, touching upon a most complex theological topic and undertaking some of the most unexpected significances: suffering as a punishment for evil doing, suffering as a future reward, suffering as an experience of God’s presence, suffering as medicine both for the body and for the soul, suffering as proof of faith, suffering as a form of purification both of the body and of the soul, suffering because of or for another, Christ’s suffering, suffering as a confirmation of the Christ etc. Illness, pain and the fear of suffering make up a common semantic space in many of the texts in the Book of Scripture. Therein the legitimate question coming from those who less understand the mystery of faith and of man’s relation to God: if God is good, why does He consent to the suffering of the innocent?
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Born of noble parents, the future Bishop Wilfrid of York embraced the monastic life as a teenager, studying in Lindisfarne, Canterbury, Gaul and Rome. He stood out in 664 at the Synod of Withby, which resolved the conflict between Celtic Christians and those under the obedience of the Church of Rome. The following year he was elected Bishop of Northumbria, but, not trusting the validity of the bishops in the island, he went to Gaul, where he remained longer than he should have. Oswiu, king of Northumbria, appointed Ceadda in his place, but in 668 the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Theodor de Tarsus, restored him. Following a conflict with Ecgfrith, King of Northumbria, the diocese was split in two, and Wilfrid appealed to Pope Agatho, who ruled in his favor. On his return from Rome, Wilfrid was arrested and later exiled. During his exile he initiated the Christianization of Sussex, the last pagan Anglo-Saxon kingdom. He was restored again, at Theodor’s insistence. He was later exiled again and went to Mercia. He appealed again to Rome, which decided a local synod to be hold. At this local synod, held at Austerfield in 702, Wilfrid was excommunicated and appealed again to Rome, which ruled in his favor and restored him. He died in 710.
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Stirred by St. Maximus the Confessor and his plan as revealed in Mystagogy, Father Dumitru Stǎniloae has looked into the theme of man as church and also into the topic of one’s liturgy in his paper Spirituality and Communion in the Orthodox Liturgy, constructing his examination on samples of philocalic texts written by Byzantine authors who lived in different periods 2 . The current paper focuses on the research of two anthropological, spiritual paradigms recurrent in the Greek patristic tradition, namely the church and the holy Liturgy, as well as of the semantic correspondences between the liturgical terminology and the spiritual life. The current research embarks upon the patristic period and the first half of the second Christian millennium, insisting upon the comparative analysis of the meanings of the selected Greek patristic texts. Its aim is to bring to the fore the terminological transfer from the sphere of the liturgical life into the hermeneutic context of spiritual life, with a view to insisting on the way how the spiritual meanings of the personal liturgical life have evolved through their recontextualization.
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In the context of theories and discussions about justice, launched and developed over time in the literature belonging to the social sciences, Orthodox doctrine explains justice in close connection to human participation in the life of the Church and his progress to salvation. Thus, in its concretization, justice is not foreign and must not be separated from the reality of subjective correction or salvation, from the reality of man’s vocation. In the Christian sense, both terms – justice and justification – render, in a complementary and solidary way, the same reality regarding the finality towards which the Christian is heading, deification. The concept of justice‑justification has the role of best reflecting the teaching about Christian justice; at the same time, it is the starting point and the core of Christian doctrine of justice.
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The interwar period was an active period, in which the fundamental institutions the Church, the School and the Family sought to follow the path of spiritual, cultural and social perfection. They wanted to transform the Romanian village and align it with modern society, which was emerging in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century. Sociological research in the interwar period was intended to be a way for the country to be better known, in other words, to be better known Romanian realities, especially through monographic research initiated by sociologist D. Gusti, these being considered the birth certificate of the Romanian Sociological School. The study presents some aspects related to the activity of the Church and Cultural Homes in rural areas, along with the presence of Royal Student Teams and the obligation of Social Service in villages.
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The carols, as the joy of humanity, represent the expression of the communication of divine love to man who is willing to a divine-human dialogue, announcing the restoration and redefinition of a new anthropological perspective oriented towards the indestructible values of the divine-human Person of the Savior Jesus Christ spiritual horizon to a happy existence and eternal life. Knowing that the function of carols is the manifestation of the sacred and the internalized and subjective presence of the person or persons evoked, during Christmas, so in winter, the question that arises is how these traditions and customs for spring came to be put into practice in the winter season, even before the middle of the cold season? Most collisions refer to Dalbe Flowers, apple blossoms… (a tree that blooms in March), a prior lamb, although we are on New Year’s Eve, around January 1, and it can not be about the period when the sheep have lambs. In the text of Plugușor we speak of plowing and sowing, being in December, when mud and frost are present. You go with the plow and imitate the plowing gesture and try to pull the furrow into the ground, although most of the time, on December 30, it is frozen and it is blizzard outside. Where does all this come from? The reality of the presence in the texts of carols of some terms from the sphere of administrative organization of Wallachia, from the XV-XVII centuries represents a way of preserving and rooting the Christian spirituality but also of the national values in time, through carols.
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In the circumstances of the war, the Transylvanian Association for Romanian Literature and Culture of the Romanian People (“ASTRA”) intensified their cultural propaganda, a major direction thereof being the organization of an impressive number of schools and courses for young adult peasants in Transylvania. By far, the most prolific field of the association’s activity, with regard to the inter-war and the post-war period, the peasant schools and the hygiene courses were particularly aimed at the female segment in the rural areas. The purposes of the eugenicists Iuliu Moldovan and Gheorghe Preda were to counteract the effects of declining birth rate in some border areas inhabited by ethnic Romanians, deficient nutrition of the rural population and the worrisome increase of infant mortality. The adult curriculum had a very marked practical component, as it aimed at developing skills and habits to bring about effective and prompt changes in the peasants’ everyday life, with an emphasis placed on the women’s role in family and society, in terms of morality, education, housekeeping and nationalism – to empower and regenerate the national people. The collaboration with Marshal Antonescu’s regime drew to “Astra” significant ministerial subsidies, as well as unprecedented financial support from the Patronage Council for Social Achievements led by Maria Antonescu. The teaching and eugenic phenomenon – adult education – was notably successful in Banat, in the counties of Alba, Brașov, Hunedoara and particularly Sibiu.
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Based on the testimony of emperor Constantine the Great himself, Eusebius of Caesarea presented a labarum in the form of crux dissimulata crowned with the Chi-Rho. The continuers of his Church History in the next century, Rufinus of Aquileia, Philostorgius, Socrates of Constantinople, and Sozomen, only kept the cross-shape of the banner, excluding the christogram. This might have happened because in two main sources informing about the vision of Constantine – the accounts of Eusebius of Caesarea and Lactantius – it was not only the monogram of Christ that played a significant role. The motif of the cross also appears in them, in the account of Eusebius directly, and Lactantius indirectly. Furthermore, Christians interpreted the cross explicitly as a sign of victory. Eusebius wrote about the cross as a symbol of immortality, a triumphant sign of Christ overcoming death. In the account of the bishop of Caesarea, on the other hand, Constantine’s supposed vision included a triumphal sign in the form of a luminous cross, or the symbol of the trophy of salvation. Numismatic evidence also cannot be ignored. Already during the reign of Constantine the Great, the Chi-Rho appeared on the coins both on the shields and on the labarum. However, starting from the reign of Constantius II, coins that were minted included the cross instead of the Chi-Rho on the labarum. It also began to be placed on the shields, in their central part, where the monogram of Christ used to be. Over time, the cross replaced the entire labarum. The iconography present on the coins may prove that the phenomenon of identifying the labarum or Chi-Rho with the cross was not limited to church historiography and was more widespread, although it should be remembered that coins continued to also be decorated with the letters Chi-Rho. Therefore, the representation of the cross did not replace this symbol. However, it cannot be ruled out that the increasingly common image of the cross on coins also contributed to the aforementioned perception of the labarum by church historians.
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The article researches and considers the Catechetical Lectures attributed to Cyril of Jerusalem in the light of the problem of knowledge of the truth of Christian faith. Features of this knowledge in the Catechetical Lectures are being analyzed. The analysis reveals that a person’s ontological transformation in the Baptism is the condition for knowledge of the truth of the faith. The main factor of the process is God but human efforts are indispensable as well. The Catechetical Lectures treat them as a prerequisite although insufficient condition for this transformation.
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Basil of Caesarea does not examine meteorological or natural phenomena as such. He focuses on some of the social problems that emerged during the disaster and the possibilities for solving them. It is even more important for him to consider the deeper issues concerning the causes of events and responsibility at the time of disasters. The article analyses Basil of Caesarea’s Homilia dicta tempore famis et siccitatis and other writings. It explores how to resolve the issue of responsibility and discusses the arguments of Basil’s presentation.
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The article discusses a primal relationship with the sea. On the level of the oldest pagan worldview, this relationship is characterized as a closed nature cycle and a perception of personal worth. The relationship with the sea is special and relevant from a scientific, cultural, and educational point of view. Despite the reverent fear of gods, the pagan worldview and attitudes provided an opportunity to go to sea and experience an ambivalent tension full of conflicting feelings, natural fear, traditional mythological images, tribal obedience, and creative determination. Combining maritime activities with sea-gods provided reasons for a personal self-concept, as well as for natural personal and tribal needs and interests.
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This article examines the vision of the Christian family vocation in the teaching of Pope Saint John Paul II. Attention is given to the concept of a Christian family, which is conceptualized in two ways – as a married couple and as a Universal Church, i.e. the People of God. The article deals with the problem of the purpose and mission of a Christian family in the modern world. How do Christian women or men understand their purpose in families and society to which they belong? How does one succeed in being „salt of the earth“, how does one maintain their Christian identity persevering as a good Catholic, Christian and spouse? The analysis of the teaching of John Paul II emphasizes that the family vocation is closely intertwined with the vocations of man and woman and helps to disclose their differences through the communion of two persons. The gift that a man and woman give to each other as spouses performs both the function of procreation the Creator assigned to them and enables them to fulfil their union of love and life. In Gratissimam Sane John Paul II encourages spouses not to fear the demanding and true love which „creates the good of persons and of communities; it creates that good and gives it to others“ (GS 1994, 14). The pope emphasizes also a significant role of the family as a domestic church, urging spouses to pray for their family’s vocation. The main mission of a Christian family as the Universal Church is to preserve the treasure of faith; to engage in a new evangelization process involving not only individuals but also groups of people; to establish an interreligious dialog. Thus, Christian education is perceived as a constant process of personal maturity and identification with Christ.
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A new critical edition of a collection of nearly one hundred Latin prayers connected with Gertrude of Poland (ca 1025-1108), Polish princess, wife of Izaslav of Kiev, has revived an interest in this exceptional example of literature and religiousness o f the eleventh century. The multiplicity of issues connected with the prayer book requires further consideration. An example might be the iconographic concord of prayers both with the accompanying miniatures and the works of art, which Gertrude encountered in the west as well as in the east -from Rhineland, where she was educated to Ruthenia, where she stayed longest. The paper examines the issue in relation to the Marian subject matter. A problem that has not as yet been touched upon is the history o f the prayers in the centuries that followed, as a singular example from the 15th century regarding one such prayer reveals. The prayers are mostly theocentric and Christocentric in character, but in many of them the intercessive role of St. Mary is evoked. In Ruthenia Gertrude was exposed to representations of the Deesis type, characteristic of eastern Christianity. From the prince’s box in St. Sophia’s Cathedral in Kiev she saw them in a form of three tondi, situated on the arch encasing the central apse, while in the apse itself was a monumental depiction of St. Mary-Oranta, eternal and omnipotent advocate in heaven, referred to in prayers as “oratrix celorum”. Of the four prayers directed exclusively to Mary two are laudatory and supplicatory and the other two just laudatory. The latter are characterized by a sophisticated literary form, division into phrases, employment of internal and external rhymes and a number of rhetorical figures (alliteration, oxymorons). A solar epithet appears here among others (“sola pulcherrima super solem”). A lot of Marian epithets, such as the Mother of God, Our Lady and the Queen of the whole world (“Dei genitrix”, “domina et regina totius orbis”) find their equivalent in one of the five miniatures. In prayer no. 86 the praise refers not only to the significance of St. Mary as the Mother of God, but to her purely feminine and maternal functions and her role of a participant and witness to the life and passion of Christ. They find their equivalents in Marian and Christological artistic series of the time. One of them is a series of scenes on the wooden door of the church Sankta Maria im Kapitol in Cologne, made ca 1050. The church was rebuilt by abbotess Ida, one of Gertrude’s aunts, who also funded the door. In this church Gertrude’s mother, Richeza, was buried. Gertrude could see the door during her stay in Rhineland in the years 1075-1076. A number o f depictions are included in miniatures in the manuscripts from the Ottonian epoch, e.g. a Scripture-Book of abbotess Hitda of Meschede from ca 1020, with an Annunciation scene. Gertrude knew a different presentation o f this scene from monumental mosaics in Kiev. The maternity o f St. Mary was presented in many different types of the Nativity. An exceptionally extended depiction in the eastern spirit, including a reference to apocryphal texts, is shown in one o f the Codex’ miniatures. Prayer no. 86 in its Polish, slightly transformed version appeared after several centuries in the so-called Nawojka’s Prayer Book, which most probably belonged to Natalia Bninska, nee Koniecpolska (ca 1463-1531) in a manuscript from the end of the 15th century. The manuscript was lost and today is known from a copy made in the first half of the 19th century, including a copy of the old silver cover - a box from the 17th century. According to the inscription on the box it was supposed to be St. Jadwiga, Duchess of Silesia’s (ca 1178-1243) collection of prayers; a tradition which was immediately questioned. It seems, however, to possess a grain of truth. Gertrude’s Codex, having changed hands many a time, was presented to the chapter o f the Cividale del Friuli Cathedral in 1229, where it has been kept since. It was presented by St. Elizabeth, Princess o f Thuringia at the instigation of her uncle Berthold, patriarch o f Aquilea. Elizabeth was Jadwiga of Silesia’s niece and Berthold was her brother. If the prayer had not been copied at the time when Gertrude’s Codex was in Cracow (and it was there as many as three times), then it could have been Jadwiga’s relatives who had it copied. At an unspecified time it was translated from Latin into Polish for Jadwiga or for the next generations of women in Poland and the translation was transformed until the 15th century version was reached.
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