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La jumătatea lunii noiembrie a anului 2009 s-a susŃinut la Mănăstireamaramureseană Bârsana un amplu Simpozion NaŃional dedicat Anului omagial al„Sfântului Vasile cel Mare si al SfinŃilor Capadocieni”, organizat de Catedra deTeologie Ortodoxă si AsistenŃă Socială din cadrul UniversităŃii de Nord din BaiaMare, cu sprijinul Episcopiei Ortodoxe a Maramuresului si Sătmarului, undeinvitat de marcă a fost si părintele profesor universitar Theodor Damian din NewYork, SUA, teolog de mare profunzime si elevată expresie lingvistică, poet deexcepŃie si un hermeneut al sacrului în mai multe ipostaze.
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The first part of this study presents St. Gregory's place in the history of the fourth century and the role he played during and after the Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 381 After a brief overview of some biographical data, it is pointed out the education acquired which gave him recognition as a "sophist" of its age. The last part of this study presents the philosophical-theological thinking of the great Cappadocian exemplified by texts of his works.
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Our contemporary society tends to be a worldlier rather than a spiritual one and pays less and less respect to the righteous human values that are supported and promoted by the anthropological Word of wisdom given by the Church of Jesus Christ. It promotes an autonomous human being and rejects God from His own creation by placing Him almost completely out of its life. The abortion – the murder of unborn children or termination of pregnancy – is the sin that has spread so much and has become so frequent that it may be called a real massacre of innocent children, a violent attack on the meaning of life. Preventing the birth of a child is a true calendar of death according to which the maternity of the “modern” and “emancipate” woman has turned out into a cynical child murder. People of our times who represent the contemporary lay world without God are totally disordered from a spiritual perspective and therefore cannot understand that, since the very moment of conception, life in the uterus equals to the individual human life, and what we call “fetal existence” is recognized by God as a fully personal life. The newly created human being reflects the “image” of God and it becomes the “sacred reflection” that defines the personal identity of any human being. According to the Word of Church abortion is a first degree murder as the right to live is taken from a human being that is completely innocent. It can be named genocide because by killing a conceived life one also destroys the lives of possible successors and it may as well be called deicide as the child is taken away the right to share the Holy Spirit during the Sacrament of Baptism, and the blood of Jesus Christ is wasted together with the child’s blood, which is the reflection of the Holy Image. We are created by the Almighty because of His conceiving love, and therefore, we have no right to intervene on any conceived human being, no matter its stage of development. Be it just an embryo, it has life, it is alive, and we have no right to refuse the gift God sends us. It carries the divine image and it is called to the eternal life in the name of God. Therefore, the abortion means murder, and it is a sin against God, who is the source of life and entire existence, it is a sin against the human nature and its never-ending destiny, it is a sin against the institution of family and society which are less vigorous because of fewer and fewer newborns. There is the Lord’s Commandment “You shall not kill!” (Exodus 20: 13) and we should blame this modern sin and fight against this “plague” of our contemporary society. We should take urgent measures against the practice of abortion, and even more against its legalization and we should be highly aware that the willing termination of a pregnancy and murder of an unborn child is the sin that destroys the very essence of humankind.
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Poezia lui Theodor Damian ne surprinde, ne provoacă, ne pune faŃă în faŃăcu realităŃi nu totdeauna comode, într-un cuvânt, poemele sale ne conduc la osinceritate faŃă de sine si faŃă de marele Univers. Nu întâmplător, volumul„Nemitarnice”, de fapt o antologie de o sută unu poeme, se constituie ca unmanifest adresat fiecărui potenŃial cititor de a cântări în cumpăna dreaptă araŃiunii valorile fundamentale ale existenŃei si mai ales, ale rostului de a aparŃinebogatului spaŃiu spiritual românesc.
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Un municipiu ca Baia Mare, o resedinŃă de judeŃ cu centru episcopal, secuvine să aibă si o instituŃie de învăŃământ teologic superior pentru pregătireacadrelor de specialitate si a viitorilor clerici. Realizându
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În calitate de director al proiectului de cercetare stiințifică în domeniulteologie din cadrul Universității de Nord, Baia Mare, si de coordonator editorial,responsabil cu editarea si apariția semestrială a Buletinului stiințific al Catedreide Teologie Ortodoxă si Asistență Socială din cadrul Facultății de Litere,intitulat: „Studia Universitatis Septentrionis Theologia Orthodoxa”, la un nouînceput de drum în domeniul publicisticii de aprofundare teologică țin să aducrespectuoase mulțumiri tuturor celor care m-au sprijinit cu privire la inițiereaacestui proiect,
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Crestinismul este Religia religiilor prin Revelarea deplină a lui DumnezeuTreimea în iubire dumnezeiască faŃă de fiinŃa umană creată, menită să devinăcolaborator al lui Dumnezeu în ordinea existentă a lumii, a creaŃiei si a destinuluipersonal si universa, dar si participant la însăsi viaŃa intratrinitară a lui Dumnezeuprin autoîndumnezeirea sa personală.
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The base unit of the speech is the word, as being specific to human being and the seal of divine image into the human being and therewith the icon of incarnate Word, insofar as the speech reflects the godlike greatness. Man participating to godlike mysteries, collaborating with Christ – incarnate Word, with His Church, integrates in the divine-human dialogue. The effects of desacralisation or secularisation lead to the loss of man’s sanctity and to his decay from the pedestal of human dignity. The epoch of incertitude, confusion and despair where the contemporary man struggles, is due to the fact that he left Christ, the one who stamped balance, sense and creator elan to the humanity through embodiment. Strange to his godlike greatness, the word is no longer creator and redeemer, but tensioning, poisoning and killing. Degradation, aggression and mutilation of words show the abandoning of sacredness or of the incarnate Word. In this secularised and decentred world, the Church must assume a missionary and healing role through the replacement and reconnection of Mankind to the source of Word. In a world that entered into a galloping phase of desacralisation, the Church and Theology must assume its responsibility and vocation to represent Christ – the Word and to prepare all means and competent strategies to announce and transpose into the life of mankind the authentic message of the Word.
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The year of 1918 is the Great Unification’s year for Romanian nation’s history. It is the time when the Romanian borderlines round, the Romanians from all the provinces got together and thus, constituting a united and unitary country – politically, economically, socially, culturally and spiritually speaking. This action of the Romanian people enframed itself within a historical process which was common for all the European countries, concretized during modern age based on peoples’ right for self-determination, an international-law principle recognized and applied up to the end of World War I, too. The 1918 Unification went through three successive stages: Bessarabia’s Unification, North Bukovina’s Unification and Transylvania’s, Banat’s, Crisana’s and Maramures’s Unification, at different dates (the 9th of April, the 28th of November and the 1st of December), realized through representative institutions like: the People’s Synedrium of Bessarabia, the General Congress of Bukovina and the Great National Convention of Transylvania in Alba Iulia. All of them had parliamentarian responsibilities and theirs Unification Resolutions had been forgone encouraged by popular actions with crowd aspect. All of the patriotic actions discovered a “good Mother” response from the Church and this Mother’s servants risen from peasants and living among people, used theirs conscience and fought alongside of the people, in order to timber a better living.
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From the very beginning I would like to point that the history of this Romanian district goes back in time. After 106 A.C., when romans conquered a part of Dacia, our area was inhabited by, so named, “the free dacs”. This thing can be proved today with our local traditions, our folk music and people clothes (unique in Europe). That means that the inhabitants of this area never run away from here. What was their religion is hard to say, because of the lack of documents. This territory, formerly full with forests, was the point of the greed, one after another, of Hun, Slav, Mongol and Hungarian migration. Somewhere at the end of XIII-th Century this territory was integrated in the Hungarian Kingdom. From that time hither we have accounts about the Christian life of our ancestors. Later, in 1391, in a Constantinopolitan document is mentioned the “Peri monastery” whos abbot obtained some rights similar with orthodox bishop rights. Other orthodox monasteries were built in: Giulesti, Cuhea (today Bogdan Vodă), Bârsana, Nănesti and Cornesti – all of them mentioned in different documents of XIII-XIV-th Centuries. Stone churches were built in the same period in: Ieud (1364), Biserica Albă (today in Ukraine-1373), Apsa de Mijloc (Ukraine-1428), Sarasău (1456) s.o. All these things proove that the Orthodox Church was well organised even if we don’t know where was the residence of the bishops in that period. From XV-th up to XVIII-th Century, sometimes, the Ruthenian bishops of Muncaci had jurisdiction over Maramures and Sătmar (Satu Mare). Other times the jurisdiction was held by the bishops of Vad Bishopric (the residence nearby Dej) and other times we had our own bishops - who ruled from one of monastries mentioned above or from other monastries built in this period (Habra, Moisei s.o). The first bishop mentioned is Luca of Muncaci (1485). From this year up to 1739 we know by name 35 bishops: 15 were bishops of Muncaci, 7 of Vad, 12 of Maramures and 1 was the Archbishop of Transilvania Sava Brancovici. Today we are glad to have among us two orthodox bishops in Baia Mare Bp. Justinian and Bp. Justin. The Bishopric consits in 554 parishes and 27 monastries.
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The Christian mission taken into account as being Christic formed contains the following integrant elements: preaching, mandating, evangelization, Church, world, man, Kingdom of Heaven, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit’s Pentecost. The Christian mission issues right out of the divine essence, and so we are qualified to speak about “missio Dei”. The Christian mission dynamics presumes a Son’s and Holy Spirit’s mandating by the Father; this Trinitarian mission was extended to the mandating the Holy Apostles to the world by the Son of God, through the Father’s will and the Holy Spirit’s action within Church’s mission. The Christian mission is based on the communion within the Holy Trinity, within the Father’s love motion towards the Son within the Holy Spirit and, in this manner, God’s love motion towards creation. The “mandating” character of the mission is “participation” to the Son’s mission (cf. John 20, 21-23) and to the Holy Spirit’s mission (cf. John 14, 26). We have also highlighted the special bound between the Son’s and the Holy Spirit’s mission, by pointing out that the Pentecost accomplishes the redemptive act of the Son, man’s salvation being embodied in his actual and personal participation to the life of Christ and in Christ. The Holy Spirit prepares the Son’s incarnation as He is the Spirit of God, while the Son answers by preparing the Spirit’s descending and activity in the world, in and through the Church. The simultaneity of the two events (the Church’s birth and the beginning of the Christian mission) highlights a fact of decisive importance: the Church and the Christian mission are indissolubly bounded one to each other. Once the Apostles have been mandated we are able to speak about the east of the Christian mission itself, as Christ assigned the Apostles with the mission’s main coordinates: the evangelization, the sacramental incorporation in the Christ’s ecclesiastic body, the teaching to observe all things whatsoever He has commanded the Apostles. We have also highlighted the manner of the Church’s participation to the Son’s mission, participation outlined in Church’s missionary actions of evangelization, confession and pastoral care.
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A church represents the beginning of God’s empire on the earth, as a communion between God and people. This communion outruns the past and the future and it lays the paradise’s state, as a continuing present, the communion state which pass through from desire and search to reality; life it isn’t an anxious sea any more, because it sails into Church’s ship without danger as well as Noe’s ark. Church is the shelter and the tent where love for God and fight against everything is counter God, are on the first place bcause it realize the raise to God. Church enters theological in world, in Hristos divine-human person, as a reality, but which is incomplete yet because it isn’t exteriorize and it includes only God (where we all where included). Church passes through into objective reality’s domain, at tenth-fifth when it yield a unique fact in human history: the languages unite into a faith symphony, at Saint Spirit’s voice. Since than, the Spirit remains in it and comes always through Saint Mystery’s paper into a dynamic movement, because it doesn’t come to lay in a static form, but to live in dynamic state to be lived the faith. In this way the Church mission it’s unfold in history; if the history changes, pass from an epoch to another, then the churches does not change. It remains in its permanent dialog with the world and it always keeps the divine message and the morality in front of the world, because Hristos remains always the same. The sky and the new earth are the Churches target in the world. Therefore, the Church promotes in world the moral and spiritual values as: good, harmonious, peace, freedom, faith, love and it straightens the humanity to consummation, to a continuous spiritual and social progress, because the man becomes which Hristos becomes. The touching of this target means the salvation. The Churches mission in the world and for the world is to contemporize Hristos as a brother in a human society as a very complex and dynamic organism. The existence, but more than that, the inexistence of the completions conditions goes to tensions and divergensions between diverse social categories, human groups and behind the person. Because of this, nowadays, people have the idea of substitute the God.
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The present study, “The liturgical hymns of the Orthodox Church – means of preaching the right faith”, has as its purpose the presentation of the very significant role of the hymns in the liturgical life of the Church, in the preaching of the right faith and the protection of the Orthodoxy against any misinterpretation. We initiated this theological project because the Christian hymnology is endowed, apart from its poetical value, with a dogmatic content and a profound theological meaning that are reinforced by a powerful capacity to project believes and emotions with great impact upon the human soul. The etymology of the word “hymn” needed to be illustrated before speaking about the confession of the right faith through the liturgical hymns, as well as the fact that the Orthodox cult is as a rich depository of doctrine and a living catechesis, accessible to everyone. The study also includes a section presenting the historical evolution of the liturgical hymns and their usage in the cult in the first Christian centuries.
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La poèsie de Vasile Voiculescu est une nourriture de l’esprit. Le contenu intrinseque qui fait la substance lirique de son univers poétique surprend quatre principaux thèmes: la nature, l’amour, la religion et la condition du poète dans le monde. Il a assumé la noble vocation de enrichir le trésor de valeurs qui appartient à tous. La lumière de la poésie fend l’obscurité de notre pensée et à la fois ouvre la raison au infini divin. La puissance du mot provient en dernière instance du Mot souverain. Voilà donc la fonction de la poèsie: soulever l’homme par un mot dit dans une forme humaine jusques à Verbe, c’est-à-dire le Fils de Dieu.
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Man’s overvaluing in the modern and contemporary age generated exactly the contrary effect, that is his devaluing. Faith in unlimited possibilities of the human reason, based on the historical optimism and its great conquests in the last two centuries of the industrial age created the belief that man is capable to achieve all his purposes and that the future prepares him the most beautiful perspectives, that this future will be coordinated and controlled by the material forces and the huge scientific potential that man will dispose of. The wealth and the greatness of the knowledge arsenal that contemporary science disposes of still left enigmas and unsolved problems. On the contrary, even more Philosophy and Biology draw conclusions and demonstrate that there is an immaterial, unique and wise reason for living. Beyond this impressive Universe where there is perfect harmony it can be seen a very intelligent designer. The organisation of the micro cosmos and of the macro cosmos is so complex that it is impossible to explain and understand them only on natural causes and principles and it is needed to admit transcendent causes and principles.
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The very first couple of people brought a liturgical relation between them and God. God communicated with people through the first couple’s life, through their own way of living. They were living in accordance with the divine rations which were belonging to their life. The divine rations sustained their existence and showed them how to work and moreover how to keep the Eden’s Garden. The sin’s commission from heaven brings people the impossibility of liturgy on. That’s why the nature is the way in which people communicate with God. People take from nature that thing, Yours from Yours, and they offer it to God. The communication between God and people, people and God, will be done through analogues and symbols. Nowadays are also using the analogy and the symbol. This usage is making to understand the Church’s mystery of Jesus without breaking its miracles. In Church, each truly faithful Christian is like an alight dewberry which is always keeping on by the love of God. The God’s love is communicating to people through His word.
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In the diocese of Maramureş and Sătmar, church chants, although inspired by the Byzantine tradition, passed in the 18th - 19th centuries through the Slavic-Russian chain imposed by the Theological Seminary from Uzhgorod (Hungvar) - today's Ukraine. This was due to the fact that there was no such theological school in the area except in the Roman-Catholic, Hungarian version, and the Mukacevo Diocese was led several times by hierarchs originating from Maramureş, who brought with them several priests and young people willing to prepare for ordination or to serve the Church as choir singers. The situation is also conclusively proven by the chants at the funeral services - burial or parastas, if we accept the fact that a recognized and valuable deacon participated in such services in several villages in a certain geographical area.
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Remaining as one of the least affected lands by the influences of the times, keeper of tradition, Maramureș still breathes in the present era a strong vibration of its ethnic and historical antiquity. Maramureș, the land of the “free Dacians”, considers itself here as a free people, living in an eternity that they included in their clothing, in speech, in songs and faith. Maramureş is protected for the loyalty that the inhabitants show towards tradition. One of the aspects of the Maramureș Tradition is the spiritual part of prayer and the broad ensemble of liturgical, choral or psaltic chants in the church. We evoke the role of monasteries in the affirmation of the chant in Maramureș.
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The Birth - The Byzantine Christmas Oratory was composed in 1947 and is considered a contrasting continuation of the Oratory of the Passion and Resurrection of the Lord. The premiere took place in Bucharest on December 21, 1947, being performed by the State Philharmonic. Paul Constantinescu proposed that in the vocal-symphonic work to combine the essence of orthodox singing with the western form of the oratory, for this reason he attributes the name of Byzantine in the title. As a professor at the Academy of Religious Music in Bucharest, Constantinescu has always had a concern for religious music, so he designed symphonic works that included Byzantine music. In addition to numerous choirs, the most important works in which elements of liturgical music are found, are the Easter and Christmas Oratorios.
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