GB 4-6/2022

Scientific papers show that quality sleep helps people live longer and with a higher quality of life, improves memory and creativity, reduces appetite and maintains optimal physical shape, protects against dementia, diabetes and cancer, strokes and heart attacks, anxiety, depression and a whole procession of mental conditions. The overall number of disorders that lack of sleep or poor quality sleep produces is over a hundred.The same researches, however, discovered that in the last hundred years, at the level of mankind, the period of sleep has been significantly reduced, especially in highly industrialized countries, which makes it a real epidemic, with serious effects on the physical and mental health of man. The deliberate choice of shortening the sleep period is therefore a true genetic engineering technique, the results of which are dramatic, an act of self-euthanasia.An essential cause of sleep deprivation or poor sleep quality is the excessive use of digital technology, and especially in the late hours of the series. „Digital blue”, the colour of screens, severely affects the secretion of melatonin, the sleep-inducing hormone, through what scientists call „physiological lying”. Being the colour of the dawn, the blue of the screens „tricks” the pituitary gland, keeping the brain attentive and alert, even several hours after the cessation of their use. Using digital technology two hours before bedtime delays the peak time of melatonin secretion by another three hours, to the early hours of the morning. Against such conduct, some principles of sleep hygiene are recommended, for healthy and natural development, especially of children and young teenagers, the most vulnerable consumers.

This study presents the historical and cultural context in which Tipografia Cărților Bisericești („Church Books Printing House”) was established, pointing out the evolution and changes that took place within it over time until today. We will refer to the first works that appeared from the presses of the Typography, specifying some bibliographical information, some of them correcting the inaccurate data found in the only history dedicated to the Typography, compiled by T. Păcescu in 1933. The present material is enriched with the description of one of the more beautiful prints, Orologiul (1882-1887) – Horologion, which contains the first icons printed in colour, and also beautiful images of some monasteries and churches in the country, both printed in woodblock technique. The appendix includes photos of some title pages discussed in this paper.

The prayer of repentance for public sins – present in several Old Testament texts – raises a number of questions about the nature of sin, how it can be assumed by the people and passed on to their descendants, and ultimately how Jewish theology perceived the need for collective repentance. In this article, I will examine some examples of such manifestations, especially from the post-exilic period, which highlight the communitarian character of God’s people and the fact that correction, salvation is only achieved together with those around you.

The prayer is the light of communion between man and God, because it is an act which belongs to consciousness. The conscience is a human function of his soul, and it is integrated into the person status. Perception of God comes about through arduous practice of prayer, because such perception is the result of the personal experience of the divine. The communion with God is the primary condition of salvation, in fact, it is the salvation itself. Man needs God to accomplish his life’s meaning. Lord Jesus Christ said: „I am the light of the World”, which means that He is the intelligibility of the human being. Concerning that idea, Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae said that without God it is not possible for man to receive his own human status. Only God can give a sense to human being and only Him offers a complete functionality to all human internal structures. Through God, man can valorize his maximum and utmost potentialities as God’s icon.

A remarkable figure of the Eastern spirituality generally, and of the Hesychastic movements in the Romanian Principalities particularly, Saint Basil of Poiana Mărului is known to posterity more from the writings and testimonies of his disciples, especially of Saint Paisie Velicicovski, than from his personal reflections. Considered by his spiritual disciples to be a true milestone of the 18th-century Hesychast revival, expressing the depth of Christian spirituality through his life and guidance, Saint Basil of Poiana Mărului has been brought back to the attention of scholarly theological life by the research carried out in the Christian West. In today’s context, characterized both by theological confusion as well as sincere calls for spiritual knowledge and prayerful guidance among the contemporary faithful, the Basilian teaching stands out for its careful attention to the details of the spiritual life and the way in which the work of Jesus prayer is carried out. With this pastoral background in mind, the present study seeks to bring to the attention of clerics and lay people the teaching of St. Basil of Poiana Mărului on the practice of unceasing prayer. In this sense, the present approach is marked by the attempt to offer answers that respond to the spiritual quests of Christian people nowadays. Who exactly can practice Jesus prayer, the spiritually advanced or the beginners? What are the benefits of the Jesus prayer? What is the relationship between the Jesus prayer and the sacramental life? Etc. In the end, the whole investigation brings out the ascetic dimension given by St. Basil of Poiana Mărului to the “unceasing prayer”, probing the effects of the interiorization and the transformation of the human spiritual powers produced by it in the very depths of the human being.

The fathers of Vatoped Monastery, after many years of thorough and rigorous research, have written down the ordinance of the Divine Liturgy, as they received it from their predecessors, as they studied it and as they put it into practice every day in their monastery. Thus was born the work „Θεία Λειτουργίακατά την τάξιν της εν Άθω Μονής Βατοπαιδίου„, i.e. „The Divine Liturgy according to the ordinance of the Vatoped Monastery of Athos”. In preparing the two volumes, entitled Συλλείτουργον („Sylleitorugon”) and Σύντομα Σχόλια [„Short commentaries”], the monastery fathers, headed by its abbot, Archimandrite Ephrem Vatopedin, called on the advice of renowned liturgists from the East and West, among whom we mention: Nikodimos Skrettas (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece), Panaghiotis Skaltsis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki), Stefanos Alexopoulos (Catholic University of America, Washington DC), Georgios Filias (National and Capodistrian University of Athens, Greece), Hrisostomos Nassis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki), Stefano Parenti (University of Regensburg, Germany), Mikhail Jeltov (Theological Academy of Moscow, Russia) and Elena Velkovska (University of Siena, Italy).

The book deals with the relationship between Orthodoxy and modernity, using the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople as a case study. Despite secular prejudices about the rigidity and inflexibility of Orthodox dogma and canons, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the longest surviving institution in South-Eastern Europe, a survivor of the Roman Empire, has demonstrated over two thousand years („longue durée”) a great capacity to adapt to and understand the secular world.
The volume of Professor Paschalis Kitromilides, member of the Academy of Athens, „Θρησκεία και πολιτική στον Ορθόδοξο κόσμο. Το Οικουμενικό Πατριαρχείο και οι προκλήσεις της νεωτερικότητας”, published by Epikentro in Thessaloniki, comprises seven chapters that were published as studies between 2004 and 2014 in journals in the Anglo-Saxon area.

This volume, „From Gutenberg to the Internet. A History of the Bible in the Printing Age”, published by Ratio et Revelatio, is a remarkable historical synthesis of printed Bible editions from all times and everywhere. Liana Lupaș, a classical philologist, was curator of the American Bible Society’s Scripture Collection, which holds more than 50,000 biblical texts printed in some 2,000 languages. In over 25 years of work, Liana Lupaș has added to the collection, organized exhibitions and printed catalogues. This huge collection includes a copy of the Bible printed in Bucharest in 1688.