Fără Hristos spiritualitatea nu este decât o iluzie - interviu cu Jean-Claude Larchet
Interview by Pr. Georgian Păunoiu and translated by Ionut Marinescu
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Interview by Pr. Georgian Păunoiu and translated by Ionut Marinescu
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Jesus Christ, Son of God incarnate is an undesirable and disturbing person forthat time. Pharisees and Scribes suspects, monitor and seek to discredit Him in front ofthe masses. All this culminates in the act of crucifixion. Hostility toward Christcontinues after the Ascension, Jewish authorities and the Roman Empire trigger the tenpersecutions. Pagan intellectuals, religious leaders and Islamic mosaic attack virulent.Major outbreak of the attack begins with the Enlightenment, Humanism, Materialism,Darwinism, Atheism, and Communism, Nazism but not absent from Capitalism. Fr.Nietzsche manifests most radical position by his deceiver idea: "Übermensch"(Superman). In the modern world denial of God is essentially human denial.Jesus Christ, Son of God incarnate is an undesirable and disturbing person for that time. Pharisees and Scribes suspects, monitor and seek to discredit Him in front of the masses. All this culminates in the act of crucifixion. Hostility toward Christ continues after the Ascension, Jewish authorities and the Roman Empire trigger the ten persecutions. Pagan intellectuals, religious leaders and Islamic mosaic attack virulent. Major outbreak of the attack begins with the Enlightenment, Humanism, Materialism, Darwinism, Atheism, and Communism, Nazism but not absent from Capitalism. Fr. Nietzsche manifests most radical position by his deceiver idea: "Übermensch" (Superman). In the modern world denial of God is essentially human denial.
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At the heart of Pauline thinking is God and faith in God, a fundamental belief which is everywhere present in his epistles, faith that St. Paul did not try to explain in particular, precisely because it was the fundamental faith of his own tradition. Even if most people were convinced of the existence of God, by Pauline thinking and its Jewish heritage it was reinforced the idea that God is one, as opposed to the polytheism of Greco-Roman world. This One God is the creator of the world and its Judge taking care of all nations, deciding over the place and life duration of each nation. Finally, the Christianity taught by Apostle Paul tries to capture both the best aspirations of the Jews, entrusted by divine revelation and those of the Greek, known from human wisdom.
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Cyril of Alexandria (c. 378-444), known in antiquity as the sphragis ton pateron, the ‘seal of the Fathers’ is one of the most important of the all the Early Christian Greek theologians, and was a major protagonist in the great Christological crisis of the 5th century Church. The conciliar debate which he initiated at the Council of Ephesus (431) went on to determine the agenda of three following Oecumenical councils up to the seventh century. To this extent he is rightly regarded as one of the chief exponents of the Church’s Christology, though his work, of course, built upon important patristic predecessors. The doctrine of the Eucharist were thus the primary methods he used to assess the validity of theological speculation, renewing a pattern of procedure he had inherited from the earliest Fathers, and one which would endure after him as substantive to Orthodoxy. Cyril discusses the Eucharist as a paradigm of incarnate soteriology in several key passages, many of which have been neglected because they did not form part and parcel of his dogmatic controversial works.
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This essay aims at highlighting the missionary implications of the Christian Church in the world in order to achieve perfection of human life. By Christian mission we understand sending the Church in the world for preaching and universalization of the Gospel and integration of people into the kingdom of God, founded by Jesus Christ's saving work, inaugurated as the anticipation of it in the Church by descending of the Holy Spirit, Kingdom that will manifest in its fullness at the second coming of Christ in glory. Understood this way, the Christian mission has its deep foundation and starting point in the eternal communion of the Holy Trinity itself, in the love of the Father for his Son and for the world, a communion full of divine love plenary discovered within the Church. In this sense the Church is the communion of all those who believe in Jesus Christ, adhering to His life full of grace and salvation being in a constant state of mission. For the mission is a dimension and an essential part of the Church. If the Church was founded visibly as a concrete historical community in which the communion of God with men is achieved, or as a sacrament of God's kingdom on earth, by descending the Holy Spirit over the Apostles, the other people share the salvation offered by God in Jesus Christ through Church's missionary activity, becoming permanent the sending of Christ into the world and people sharing the Son of God made a Man in order for all of us to achieve perfection.
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The beauty of our liturgical worship song brings an essential contribution to the Orthodox Church. She has a strong influence on the strength of the faithful soul. Christian Church granted at first, attention and a special place in its worship, religious chanting. During that time the place and importance of music has increased so that today the Orthodox worship uses a rich, varied and valuable production of sacred songs and hymns, many home Bible (Psalms and some songs, like the Virgin Mary in Luke 1, 46- 55) and others, the most numerous books that make up today's ritual content created by Christian musicians and VI century before, such as Roman Melodul (VI century), St. John of Damascus and Cosmas Melodul (VIII century), Saint Joseph and Theodore Studite (VIII-IX century), Andrew Cretanul († 726) and others.
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This study highlights the reality that the media is a huge challenge for the sincere Christian, desirous of spiritual life. If in order to live spiritually, the Christian strengthened by grace must bear the fight with evil impulses of a character paralyzed by sin, the media pushes him in the exact opposite direction, that of a true deep passion. The more we appeal to media and the more complex the media is, the stronger is the negative impact being an illusion and a utopia to believe that someone may be invulnerable. The postmodernism in a multimedia society is a major threat to the mission and life of the Church of Jesus Christ. Also, desacralization, relativization and secularization is an attempt on life and human being aimed at transforming the human being into a profane and profaned or profanatory reality, self-sufficient and in a permanent search for just the earthly fulfillment.
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A very important and relevant aspect for the context of the birth of Christianity is related to the extent to which Primary Christianity is one of Jewish or Hellenistic influence. This double influence, Jewish and Hellenistic, always appears when it comes to the context of the Primary Church, the interpretation and understanding of theological issues.
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A true Christian must have a unitary, plenary, and responsible understanding of life, in general, and of his or her own life, in particular. The only way to acquire such an opportunity is by dedicating one's life to a relationship with the Divine. Even in the New Testament we have the portrayal of worthy elders, involved in the life and activity of Christ the Saviour: Zechariah the priest, the father of St. John the Baptist, Joseph, the righteous and the protector of the mother of God and the baby Jesus, Simeon the just and devout etc. The members of the Sanhedrin, constituted by representatives of religious groups: the Pharisees, Sadducees, and scholars, advocated against Christ, which culminated in a degrading condemnation to human justice – the crucifixion. However, there were some exceptional cases that noticed the divine-human personality of Jesus, appreciated Him and secretly collaborated with Him: Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea and Gamaliel, who defended the Apostles before the Sanhedrin. It is important to view old age and the imminence of death with calm, serene, and happy anticipation.
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The testimony about the existence of the sacramental ecclesiastical hierarchy that the Pastoral Epistles of Saint Paul give us applies to one of their main characteristics. Structured in three steps, which sometimes have common attributions and responsibilities: bishops, priests and deacons, this hierarchy distinguishes them from the other Epistles of the New Testament.. The Pastoral Epistles, therefore, aim to consolidate the missionary work of the Holy Apostle Paul. Therefore, the apostle's interest is to defend the right teaching from heretics and Judaizers. For this purpose, he organizes the life of the primary Church, advising the leaders of the spiritual communities, bishops, priests and deacons, to offer it to those faithful to the sound teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ as a treasure given to preserve life. Here, in the Church, in fact, the whole truth of faith and the most appropriate example of a life in accordance with that proposed by our Lord Jesus Christ, the Head of the Church, His Body, is stored. In the present study, we highlight the profound notion of presbyter and bishop as reflected in the Pauline Epistle to Timothy, where terms such as presbyters and episcopos are found with organizational and sacramental nuances of the life of the early Church.
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Saint John Damascene, the Syrian Monk, is and will always be a prominent personality for the Spirituality and Tradition of the Eastern Church, the most relevant and orthodox source of patristic teaching, the unrivaled benchmark of the confession of the revealed Truth in the Church of Christ at the end of the era. His vast work, so well oriented, systematized and presented so original and unique in its way, is a true manual or treatise of orthodox dogmatics, a faithful echo of the Church Fathers, which he succeeded, in an original and unique way, to synthesize their thinking and the theological system formulated, as well as to ensure the transmission of their relevant ideas for the development of the fundamental dogma in the Church. That is why he is considered to be a systematizer of Christian theology, in general, unitarily and faithfully rethinking what had been dispersed, giving, through his original work, doctrinal and poetic structural coherence, brevity and cursiveness of the Christian teaching of the Church of the East. He is canonized and solemnly honored in the Orthodox Church, with an annual special commemoration on December 4.
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In the present study, I set out to highlight the way in which good deeds, the vehicles of philanthropy, represent a crowning of the collaboration between man and God, a result of synergy, of the cooperation of man's free will with divine grace. To achieve this goal, I treated two of the New Testament parables, namely: "The Parable of the Sower" (Luke VIII; 5-15) and "The Parable of the Good Samaritan" (Luke X; 25-37). I selected these, because I considered them suitable to discuss about the love that should characterize the relationship between man and God, as well as that between man and man. The Holy Apostle Paul states: "faith works through love" (Galatians V: 6), and, according to the Holy Apostle James, "faith without works is dead" (James II; 17, 20). Love, in its deep self, manifests itself through charity, through good deeds, through effective, active participation in the suffering of the other, through sacrifice, following the example of the Lord Jesus Christ, Who, out of love, sacrificed Himself for the salvation of the human race (cf. I Timothy II; 6).
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The present study illustrates the teaching of Jesus Christ as the ultimate revelation about God and man as He, as a Person, is this revelation. In Him the whole prophecies are fulfilled. Jesus Christ is the culminant revelation because He holds the whole knowledge about God and man. This knowledge is communicated directly by Him who is both God Himself and the completely accomplished man.
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The first three centuries of the Christian Church are the period in which the numerical growth, the geographical expansion and the impact of Christ’s Church, were extraordinary. Given the more than precarious conditions and the obstacles that stood against the development of the Church, we can state that surely this has been the golden age of Christianity. The protagonists of pre-Nicaean mission (our Savior Jesus Christ, the Holy Apostles and apostolic disciples, church hierarchy and common Christians) carried out a plenary assumed mission even though, for most of them, realizing that they were indeed missionaries didn’t stand as a major priority. They practiced their faith by doing charity, giving aid to orphans and widows, by giving hope and spiritual assistance to prisoners, by organizing collects and above all by attending to the Holly Liturgy, followed by the so called „love feasts”.
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It is obvious that for achieving the unity of faith, for fulfilling our Lord Jesus Christ’s wish „that all be one” (In 17, 21), a first step would be to get to know each other by the seen presentation of the faith of our denominations, by liturgical acts, forms of worship, liturgical and spirituality, leaving to the theologues the understanding and the approaching of the knowledge to the faith and dogmas. Each religions denomination certainly has its characteristics, which give its identity and uniqueness. The Orthodox Church has its own characteristics and randomly chosen, there would be some of theme: the way of practicing the prayer: “the prayer of the heart”, the cult - tradition and symbol – Vespers and liturgical reconciliation, the painting of the churches, monasteries, icons – „windows to heaven”, the Mystery of the Confession- the role of the confessor.
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Philanthropy has more and more the meaning of divine kindness towards people, that is, of God's love towards people, as Saint Paul teaches us, who writes: ‘...the kindness and love of people of our Savior God have been shown’ (cf. Titus 3,4), but also the more usual meaning, that of the man who loves people, of the good man - who out of Christian love helps his fellow men to save them from hardships, pains, dangers and even from death. In other words, ‘philanthropy’ is both the manifestation of God's perfect love for man, carried to the ultimate sacrifice and revealed by Jesus Christ, for the purpose of our divine salvation, and a form of human solidarity based on a religious doctrine with moral-factual application manifested by the mutual help of the fellow beings, by almsgiving, by diakonia. In the tribute year of the pastorate of the elderly in the Romanian Patriarchate, we aim to highlight in this study the purpose and importance of divine-human philanthropy as we find it in the practice, worship and teaching of the Church of the East, from its origins until today.
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Of great significance for the cultural history of Maramureş are the beginning moments of literature written in Romanian. Many contributions have been made to establish the place and date of the first inscriptions in Romanian. Historiography and linguistics explained them only based on external, religious causes: Hussite, Catholic or Lutheran propaganda. But a change of such magnitude can only be caused by internal circumstances. The removal of the Slavonic language, the cultured language of the feudal lords, and its replacement by the language of the people could only be the result of the struggle for national affirmation. The way in which the liturgical books circulated in this area, shows us the uninterrupted connections of the people of Maramureș with the other Romanian regions.
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Characterized by the phenomen of secularization, desacralization, and globalization, contemporary society lifts the curtain on the religious feeling impregnated in human nature, facilitating the staging of a role play depicted in the forms of syncretism, relativism, and gnosticism. Specifically, 15% of Romania's population did not declare their religious affiliation in the 2022 population census. In other words, 2.7 million Romanians refused to answer the questionnaire in which they were asked to express their spiritual identity. This statistical picture opens up the opportunity to express pertinently, without falling into judicial extremism, what could be the factors that led to this demographic religious decline.
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Părintele Profesor Dr. Vasile Stanciu, fost decan al Facultății de Teologie Ortodoxă din Cluj-Napoca, actualmente director al Școlii doctorale „Isidor Todoran” din cadrul Universității Babeș-Bolyai, nu are nevoie de o prezentare deosebită, reprezentându-l zecile de generații de preoți și cântăreți bisericești pe care i-a format, precum și mulțimea cărților și a studiilor pe care le-a alcătuit.
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Cercetătorul binecredincios, dr. în filologie, profesorul de limba și literatura română, Ioan Dorel Todea, este recunoscut în spațiul Maramureșului voievodal și nu numai, în cultura și spiritualitatea românească regională și națională, ca fiind un redutabil om de cultură, poet și critic literar, jurnalist radiofonic, autor a mai multor volume de cărți științifice, monografii, volume de versuri și memorialistică, poeme și epigrame, dar și literatură și istorie culturală, recunoscut fiind ca un bun cunăscător al valorilor nemuritoare ale artei, culturii și spiritualității maramure șene în special și române ști, în general.
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