NR. 4 – 2021

Another essential coordinate of Father Stăniloae’s theology and certainly one of the most characteristic is the rediscovery of the Fathers and the revival and valorization of the Palamite theology. Thus, Father Stăniloae’s way of relating to and appropriating the Holy Fathers enabled him to deepen and carry forward their thought, updating it and making it intelligible and attractive for the 20^th century. The Christological coordinate of Father Stăniloae’s work is the most extensive and consistent, representing together with the Triadological one the central axis of his theological creation. A constant of Father Stăniloae’s thought in the field of Christology is the affirmation of the divinity of the Saviour Christ, the only way to understand His Mystery, which also explains the mystery of humanity and the cosmos. The most beautiful and expressive theology of God’s love was elaborated by Father Stăniloae with regard to the Person and saving work of the Incarnate Son of God. This is because in his Person and in his sacrifice, the total love of the Most Holy Trinity for man was fully and definitively revealed. At the same, the capacity of human beings to receive and gratefully return this love, which is equivalent to the realization of communion between God and man, was also revealed. The Triadological coordinate, which I mentioned earlier is inseparable from the Christological one, occupying the same central place in Father Stăniloae’s theological thought, can be synthetically illustrated by two major themes: the relationship between God’s essence and His uncreated and eternal energies, of Palamite influence, which resolves the antinomy between divine essential transcendence and his energetic immanence or of the uncreated divine grace; and also explains the intersubjectivity of the Holy Trinity, understood as the communional or perihoretic mode of existence of the divine Persons, the source of all communion, on Trinitarian level, and, through grace, on human grounds. Other fundamental coordinates of Father Stăniloae’s work, characterized by the same originality and the same neo-Patristic vision and which were received as such by his contemporaries are: a personalist and dynamic anthropology, deriving from Christo­logy and Triadology and marked by the theology of divine uncreated energies; a theology of creation, structured on the teaching of the rationality of creation and its transparency through grace, with the vocation of transfiguration in solidarity with man; an ecclesiology of communion. Different from the Western ecclesiology, which is defined by a juridical or pietistic spirit, Father Stăniloae’s vision on ecclesiology is based on the correct synthesis of Christology and Pnevmatology and anchored in Triadology. A personalist-spiritual eschatology, in which the theology of resurrection, promoted perseveringly by Father Stăniloae, finds its fulfilment through the revelation of the mystery of the sanctified matter, matter overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit, Christ becoming complete transparent through all. The Gnoseological coordinate occupies a special place because it belongs to the theological method used by Father Stăniloae, distinct from those used before him. His antinomical language has biblical and patristic roots and at the same time correspondes better to the contemporary scientific language, which has become paradoxical through the discovery, by other means than theological, of the rationality of creation. On the other hand, theological knowledge has, in Father Stăniloae’s conception, a stable foundation in the relationship between the natural and the supernatural, which implies a synthesis between the cataphatic and the apophatic, which is exactly what he achieved through all his theological creation. The apophatic attitude, the point of convergence between cataphaticism and apophaticism, is necessary both for the theologian, who is called not only to define God and his creative, healing, saving and judging work, but also to become a witness or testifier of the Church’s experience of the transforming pre­sence of God’s work in people, and, in a general sense, for the faithful. Father Dumitru Stăniloae, through his thought and his theological creation, renewed Orthodox Dogmatics, refocusing it on the Person of the Saviour Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son of God, anchoring it in the mystery and life of the Most Holy Trinity and placing the believer in a living union with God, ecclesially and sacramentally based and missionarily open to the world.

Father Dumitru Stăniloae used to have a very profound preaching, but still accessible, with a common vocabulary, understandable to all kind of listeners, mainly simple believers. Still, one may easily identify in his sermons the power of the theological themes that he developed in a personal manner all along his works. From all those personal themes, the one that explains the teachings of the Church regarding the Holy Trinity as love is, perhaps, Father Stăniloae’s most present theme in his sermons. Actually, explaining God as love, even without talking into account the importance of the biblical relevance for the contemporary theology (1 Jn 3:8), is for Father Stăniloae a very common place in his homiletical activity. This is explained because love represents a very sensitive and pedagogical manner to approach the theological specialized speech on Holy Trinity towards the common vocabulary and understanding of the listeners. Yet, the contents of his preachings on love very often represent only a pretext for deve­loping and understanding of the way God saved all human beings, all dependent to His love, as expressed in His Gospel. Actually, the sermons of Father Dumitru Stăniloae represent alive explanations of Gospel, using Patristic support and in reference with his personal and conscient experience. Another theme present in the homiletical panorama of the preachings of Father Stăniloae is prayer. For Father Stăniloae, prayer is the only valid path for a sincere and true knowledge of God. Father Dumitru Stăniloae often speaks about the way usual believers must learn and practice the worship of the Father in spirit and truth (Jn 4:23). This worship in spirit and truth is related to the knowledge of the Holy Trinity, as prayer addressed to the Holy Trinity is the only way one can receive the benediction of divine love. Father Dumitru Stăniloae also touches another important theme, regarding Holy Cross and the senses of suffering. Jesus Christ assumed the path of death and Cross (Phil 2:8), and Holy Cross became since then the symbol of obedience, sacrifice, but also of the victory over sin and death. There is no Resurrection without Cross, without a real descendance to hell, altogether with Christ, followed by a real release from the nets of the sin. Cross is not a curse, but a chance to liberate ourselves from the prolonged agony of a sinful life. The Holy Cross is like a diamond tool of the will, used to carve in each second of our live, our real image, far way from the unshaped ballast in which it is buried by sin and from which it is longing to reach true light. Following the light of Christ as Life (Jn 14:6), is not possible without assuming the Cross. This constant assuming of Cross is interpreted as a deep constant introspection, self-rebuilding of our being, this time in goodness, peace and beauty. Through Holy Cross we have an opportunity to answer the divine call for a real restoration of our existence. In the second part of the study, some more common issues are being presented. Those themes regard mainly the interwar time and Communist regime that was installed in Romania after the Second World War. One of those themes regards culture. In interwar Romanian intellectual milieu, culture was a very important intellectual theme for searching a special Romanian identity. Modern vs. traditional were directions to be inserted in a special cultural new identity that might have had the role to assure the continuity of the Romanian national conscience after the Great Union in 1918. Father Dumitru Stăniloae involved himself in this enormous intellectual debate, adding some very interesting aspects inspired from his theological formation. Father Dumitru Stăniloae says that culture must nourish the self-conscience of a people, regarding its own purpose. There must be collaboration and harmony between culture and the spirit of the people. If culture does not fit the deep nature and the fundamental aspirations of the people, as it has done all along its history, culture will not have the force to resist and to protect the people in front of the inherent danger of a painful breakup caused by a life without higher aspirations. Culture is the voice by which Romanian soul expresses its purity and discovers, in front of other peoples, its own powerful deep imprinted spiritual dimension. The way Father Stăniloae uses different contexts (for example, speaking before students du­ring the ceremony of the opening of the academic year in the Faculty of Orthodox Theology in Sibiu, 1942) for explaining a theological attitude regarding the experience of war, of the human conflicts and of the devastation of death represents a custom practice for Father Stăniloae, as he uses all kind of contexts to express a possible theological or spiritual interpretation of the contemporary profound human dilemmas. For example, Father Stăniloae explains the relation between the borders inbetween human and divine will, on one hand, and the borders between peoples and nations, that recently have been violated by men. One must understand that a physical border represents not only a human symbol or an outcome of some human choices, but the will of God through which He allows the space for a specific nation to exist, to develop, to manifest itself. Men and their communities are not allowed to change borders as borders are the expression of a higher force that govern the relation between men and nations. This force of life and expression is the work of God who permits manifesting Himself through borders, and by this He makes life of nations possible. The border is the will of God and His reality. Recently, all borders that make possible cohabitation of human beings have been neglected, broken, abolished. Contemporary man has lost the power to feel the absolute character of those borders as it has been blinded by his selfishness. By cause of this deranged selfishness, men cannot accept a superior and transcendent authority over history and borders. Through his own will and independence in action of war against other people, he already declared a deep and sorrowful independence over God. Meanwhile, war itself might be a chance for Christians to overcome the absence of a real and mutual relation with infinity, with absolute, with transcendence. Overpassing a very formal kind of existence, contemporary man can find again in his own life the role of God over Earth and history, over his own life, far away from the model of existence imposed by his inordinate egocentrism. Freedom is not to be gained through war, but through a true sincere relation with Jesus Christ, embodying men with a real freedom over sin, evil and death and with a proper relation with other human beings and peoples. An analysis of those social themes and theological applications on those several contemporary important themes, as culture or war, does not present us Father Stăniloae as an abstract theologian, but one who is interesting in finding transcendent roots in day-by-day life of his own people, proposing not an unrealist exegesis of contemporary events, but a deep spirituality that can inspire each one of his listeners to overpass the sorrow and fear of war and death. Generally speaking, the sermons of Father Dumitru Stăniloae are characterised by a common language which he uses to express very profound theological, mainly dogmatic, themes and concepts. This formidable equilibrium between accessibility and academic approach transforms the corpus of the sermons of Father Dumitru Stăniloae in a valid place to study further his homiletical principles and practices.

In Russia, the issue of the pensions for the persons responsible in Church activity was very strictly organised as part of a special Communist policy directed against the Church. The author presents in Romanian translation some juridical and inner administrative documents within the higher levels of the Russian Communist Party, regarding Church and his role within Russian Communist society. Church is to be tolerated until the complete installation of communist ideology. Its role is considered positive only as a support for those who didn’t yet achieve an integration within so‑called democratic regime. From this perspective, the clerics do not deserve a pension as they did not work for the state, but in a parallel activity. From this point of view, the issues of pensions for the Russian clerics had to be resolved by the Russian Patriarchy, who received the approval for organizing a special Pension Fund. Several other documents are presented showing that, for example, in Polish Orthodox Church, the same issue of pensions was not – at that point – resolved. In the main part of the study, several documents from the Romanian National Archives are presented, demonstrating how Patriarch Justinian has been involved with the Communist authorities in Romania, in order to establish a Pension Fund for the elders and all retired personal of the Church. Also, from own funds, the Church organized special retreatment houses, in all Romanian regions, in order to support the clerics and former employees in their old age and illnesses. The process of initiating the statal approval of the regulations of the Pension Funds includes a parallel Church process, in which the Holy Synod and the National Church Assembly had important roles in proposing the final draft. In the last part of the study, the author again presents the International and Russian contexts. For example, in Communist Russia, there has been later a situation regarding the fact that other employees besides clerics were not allowed to be part of the Church Syndicate, a Russian equivalent for the institution of the Pension Fund, because of the interest people had in not participating in Communist statal social system, but in a parallel one, the one of the Church.

The abba is mainly defined as a πατὴρ πνευματικός, that is, a monk who by his long experience in the desert, has learned the abilities of spiritual life. And indeed, a spiritual father’s authority is not identical to a teacher’s, because what an old man conveys through his word is not a doctrine, but his personal spiritual experience. Briefly, an elder is essentially a „charismatic” and prophetic figure, accredited for his task by the direct action of the Holy Spirit.

From this perspective, the spiritual expertise (διάκρισις) is one of the specific criteria of the elders since they are not sought for theoretical teachings, but mainly for their practical spiritual knowledge. Thus, through his mode of life the old man tacitly provides an example of spiritual life to his disciple.

Our conclusion is that a spiritual father does not simply convey spiritual expertise theoretically, but rather embodies it in his life. We understand that an old man irradiates through his very example and not his discourse, which means the practice of spiritual guidance is placed in sight, it is shown to us. Thus, we conclude that the elder is the best teacher of asceticism and holiness, so that he played a key role in defining the spiritual progress of the disciple. From this perspective, the elder or the spiritual father (γέρων), so prominent in the desert monasticism, has retained its full significance up to the present day in Orthodox Christendom.

The first part of the study describes the visit of Patriarch Justinian Marina to the Holy Mountain, occasioned by the 1000^th anniversary of the foundation of the Great Lavra by St. Athanasius the Athonite. In 1963, Patriarch Justinian Marina, accompanied by a delegation that included Metropolitan Firmilian Marin of Oltenia, Bishop Partenie Ciopron of Roman, Archimandrite Nicolae Mladin, professor at the Theological Institute of Sibiu, future Metropolitan of Transylvania, Fr. Ioan G. Coman, professor at the Theological Institute of Bucharest, Fr. Olimp Căciulă, patriarchal inspector, translator of the delegation and Archdeacon Mihai Marinescu, from the Patriarchal Cathedral. During the official visit Patriarch Justinian met with a group of Romanian Athonite monks in Karyes, deciding to modify the route of the official visit, including Romanian cells. On June 24, 1963, Holy Liturgy was held at the Great Lavra, attended by all the delegations present, including Patriarch Athenagoras Spyrou of Constantinople, as host of the solemnities, Patriarch Benedict Papadopoulos of Jerusalem, Patriarch German Đorić of Serbia, Patriarch Justinian Marina of Romania, Patriarch Cyril Markov of Bulgaria. The Ecumenical Patriarch stressed in his speech that Mount Athos belongs to the whole Orthodoxy and asked the local churches to send monks to Mount Athos, so that the large monasteries belonging to other autocephalous churches do not interrupt the monastic tradition. The next day, Patriarch Justinian visited other Athonite monasteries, such as Vatoped, from where he went to the Cell of St. Hypatios, where he met with the Romanian monks Dometie Trihenea, Ghedeon Chelaru, Dionisie Ignat, Diomid Vălase, as well as other monks from the Cells of St. George – Colciu and St. John the Baptist – Colciu. The Patriarch also visited the Romanian Hermitage Prodromos, where he noted the difficult situation, from a material and financial point of view, but also from the point of view of the poor unity within the community. In Prodromos there has been a schism on the part of the several monks. Finally, the main elements of the Patriarch’s policy towards the Holy Mountain are mentioned. In addition to concrete help, the Patriarch decided to send Father Petroniu Tănase to Prodromos, who, together with five other monks, arrived at Prodromos in 1978, and contributed to the revival of this monastic settlement.