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Death has always been seen as a mystery. Moreover, it has become the pinnacle of philosophical interrogations, and, in a way, of all human thought . The mysterious and equally intense character can be seen in the solemnity and sobriety with which the moment of death is greeted, this being the time of filtering and essentialization. Only what is significant and fundamental for life and for the one who lives this time remains in question. Nowadays, there is talk of “a culture of fear.” But fears of all kinds culminate or are included in the fear of death: “those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to slavery” (Hebrews 2:15). Facing this reality, contemporary man tries to cope by several means. The commemoration of death was one of the constants of ascetic life for the philocalic fathers, with pedagogical value, but also for the process of understanding life. A spiritually mature man is one who considers life together with death, but also sees death in the light of the resurrection.
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This article is an evocation of Bishop Vasile Flueraş. Bishop Vasile had many gifts. The disciples talk about them and have always given touching testimonies about his boundless love. He was a good father whose smile went to heaven. That is where the treasure of his heart was since a long time ago.
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The kind, humble, giver of peace and joy Bishop Vasile lived on the tops of the holy mountain of the Lord through a conduct that will metamorphose in time into pages of contemporary Pateric. He had several calls from the Church: he was the confessor of theologians, abbot of Nicula, ecclesiarch of the Cathedral, exarch of the monasteries of the Archdiocese of Vad, Feleac and Cluj, and since August 15, 1998, Vicar Bishop of the Cluj Diocese. Father Vasile’s humility manifestated in the way he welcomed everyone, giving joy and comfort to everyone and serving everyone. He had a special veneration for the Mother of God, the one who guided his steps.
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On October 8, 2021, His Holiness Vasile Flueraş passed into eternity, after all his earthly life he burned with all his being in the service of God and in teaching the spiritual flock. His words and his advice were always powerful because they came from his kindness, humility, prayer and personal example. Whoever received advice from him sensed that behind that advice was a special authority. His Grace Vasile was, is and will remain for all those who knew him, a true shepherd of the Gospel. He never did otherwise than he preached, and the advice he gave, he fulfilled first. His bright, luminous presence will continue to be of great help to the clergy and to the believers in the work of Christ’s confession.
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Wpływ programu Ułożyć życie z Bogiem na praktykę przygotowania do sakramentu bierzmowania w parafiachConfirmation is one of the sacraments that receives the most attention today. It requires extraordinary pastoral effort related to the catechetical preparation of young people to receive it. That is why the author in the article presents the main guidelines of catechesis for confirmation, contained in the current documents of the Church. Then he classifies programs and catechetical materials used in preparation for this sacrament. In the main part of the article, he analyzes the program of the “Jedność” publishing house, entitled Ułożyć życie z Bogiem (Arrange Life with God), based on the results of surveys carried out by this publishing house. Individual elements of the package of materials prepared for this program are thoroughly described and assessed. The article ends with an analysis of the influence of the program on the catechetical and pastoral practice of preparation for confirmation in parishes.
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It is surprising that Karl Rahner (1904-1984), as a systematic theologian, provided essential impulses for practical theology. But he played an important role in planning and editing the "Handbuch der Pastoraltheologie" (1964-1972). The basis for this work was Rahners view of practical theology as a science of the self-fulfillment of the church in the respective current situation. However, this ecclesial conception of pastoral theology soon encountered opposition. On the other hand, his demand for a “new mystagogy” was often taken up for concepts of mystagogical pastoral care and mystagogical learning.
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The article presents the concept of prayer contained in the works of St. Ursula Ledóchowska. It aims to show how the founder of the Congregation of the Ursuline Sisters of the Agonizing Heart of Jesus defines prayer, how she describes it and what she pays attention, giving recommendations, indications and advices concerning the life of prayer. Saint Ursula underlines not so much the importance of many forms and types of prayer, but she emphasizes the personal relationship with God. This distribution of accents makes more characteristic for St. Ursula to speak about the spirit of prayer than about prayer itself in the strict sense.
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The human condition is now a digital condition, a "digitization of the whole". The digital environment represents a challenge on multiple levels for the Church; it is therefore essential to deepen the knowledge of its dynamics and its significance from an anthropological and ethical point of view. It is also necessary to reread the Bible keeping in mind the completely new perimeters in which we find ourselves in the digital condition and to re-evaluate how much technology continuously crosses biblical data, enriching it and thus allowing us today to reread it carefully. With these premises, the contribution proposes the figure of the anthronome. Anthronomy and the anthronome have the aim of putting the human as a norm, of bringing the human and humanity into the digital condition.
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This article aims to provide the basic elements for a theology of communication. To exhaustively deal with a biblical and theological vision of communication is a daunting task, since, in a certain sense, all Scripture and all theological work is an event of communication.In this contribution, the author seeks to derive fundamental elements from particularly significant biblical passages in this regard. In the first place, he highlights characteristics of the Word of God, through which God creates the world and communicates himself to humankind. Next, he clarifies the sense in which Christ, the incarnate Word of God, reveals himself as the “perfect communicator” and he studies the narrative mechanisms and the theological value of parables and Johannine irony and misunderstanding. Then he considers the difficulty of human communication relying on the biblical episode of the Tower of Babel, and connects this to the proclamation of the evangelical kerygma, to which the figure of the Apostle Paul bears particular witness.At the conclusion of the article, the author proposes some general considerations on communication. The author formulates these as “brief theses”, which not only summarize the itinerary undertaken but also intend to open space for further reflection.
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The Church Fathers have left us immortal pages on how to practice fasting in order to fulfill its spiritual purpose. Unlike the simple medical diet, which has in common the idea of restraint as abstinence from certain foods, fasting is an act of worship aimed at honoring God and a tool that helps us in redeeming our soul. Through fasting we gain restraint and restraint provides the ground for exalting the soul through prayer in the communion of God’s love, making it alive and active in a sinful world. In this regard, we learn from the practice of the philocalic fathers that fasting is a spiritual exercise through which we should acquire the virtue of temperance as a permanence of living in Christ through the Holy Spirit.
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Florina Ilis’s second novel, Chemarea lui Matei (2002), is part of a trilogy, alongside Coborîrea de pe cruce (2001) and Cruciada copiilor (2005). The title itself announces a fictional universe abundant in religious references (the conversion of Matei the publican). In this text, the religious sphere functions as a metaphor for describing the protagonist’s inability to take important decisions. As he does not hear any “calling” for the holy, the only metamorphosis that Matei experiences is that from poet to novelist. Thus, the novel becomes an initiation not in “the mysteries of faith” but in the art of novel writing, defined as a therapy for self-discovery.
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The Lord Jesus Christ, after His birth, with the whole Holy Family, emigrated! They all ate the bitter bread of wandering like the millions of Romanians who, for objective or less objective reasons, leave their country and reach all the corners of the world. Thinking of our emigrants, we do not forget that the year ending is “The year of homage to the pastoral care of Romanians outside Romania”. From the beginning, the Savior child took the bitter yoke of the emigrant. The Holy Scripture does not tell us what the Holy Family did in Egypt. But the tradition is more generous in the Apocryphal Gospels.
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At the Birth of the Son of God in the world, He was not offered a place in the guest house, as the Evangelist Luca tells us and as the Romanian carol teaches us. And as a drama of His birth on earth and incarnation, in order to bring us goodwill and joy, the Son of God must go into exile in Egypt. For humans, wandering is a wound that leaves deep traces in the heart and can only be healed by returning to heaven, the heaven of our birth, the heaven of childhood. Abroad, alienation and wandering can last for a while, but it must not become permanent, it must not become a project of life and abandonment of the parental and Romanian heritage.
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This pastoral letter highlights the personality of the prophet David, showing how God made a simple shepherd who loved Him the most brilliant king of the chosen people and founder of the dynasty, who will talk about how long the world will last, but especially how he was bestowed the honor of being one of the forerunners of the Savior of the world and to enter the kingdom of heaven. The parable of his life, except for the faults, must be a spur for all Christians to keep God’s commandments.
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Contrary to the hundreds of years of efforts undertaken by countless theologians, a common perspective and a unitary practice regarding the worship of the holy icons in Christianity has not yet been reached. The Old Testament prohibition on icons must be understood in the pedagogical spirit of the Divine Providence. Thus, we must not lose sight of the predisposition of the Jewish people to fall into idolatry, to the same extent that we must not forget that, for them, the Incarnation, on which the icons are based, had not yet taken place. Starting from this cornerstone of the Incarnation, we can then observe that between the icon and the archetype there is an existential connection that makes the act of worship pass from representation to archetype, thus beginning a relationship of the believer with Christ and His saints.
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There is no other day more filled with joy and gladness than Easter. Joy is caused by Christ’s resurrection from the dead and His victory over sin and death. Holy Fathers who have meditated on joys divide them into three categories. Starting with the lowest, which are the joys of sin, they continue with the middle ones, which are the pure joys, and end with the highest, which are the holy joys. Pure joy lasts as long as the human life. Such joy has the man who is accomplished, who has a beautiful mission or a happy family. Sacred joys start on earth, they stay with us all life long, but they also pass with us into eternity. Such joy is the joy of Easter. Myrrh-bearing women had such joy on the morning of the resurrection. The Holy Apostle Paul associates these holy joys with prayer. And let us not forget that this year is, according to the Holy Synod, the homage year of prayer. Every Christian and the whole world needs prayer.
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The Savior’s resurrection from the dead is God’s act of proclaiming the end of the slavery in which mankind was held until Christ by satan. Christ’s resurrection gave mankind the hope of redemption and salvation. The whole life of the Savior, since Nativity until Passion, Crucifixion, Death and Resurrection, was full of light, it was the light that brightly illuminated the darkness of the fallen world. All that the Son of God suffered was to pay for our redemption from the sin of disobedience at the price of His own Blood. In Orthodoxy, the canonical icon of the Resurrection is that of Christ’s Descent into Hell, where the Savior continued the unseen war with Satan.
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