Spiritual Ground Zero

Many people would agree that the September 11 terrorist attacks changed not only New York, not only America, but most of the world in many ways. We are involved in a 10 years war in which countless people have lost their lives, soldiers and civilians together; our travel experience hase deteriorated tremendously; our watchfulness level has been raised to paranoid heights; even some people report that church attendance, at least in the United States, might have slightly increased as a result.

The main reason for all this change is that the horrible events in New York shook us all to the core and inflicted a wound that cannot be healed without a visible scar. From an emotional point of… Continue reading

Into the lions den – The passions of Fr. Gheorghe Calciu Dumitreasa

I recently found this article on the wonderful website http://www.orthodoxphotos.com. Fr. Gheorghe Calciu spent 21 years in the communist prisons and was a symbol of freedom fighting for all Romanians. I knew Fr. Gheorghe personally in the last few years of his life.  He went to meet his beloved Lord in November 2006. The story he shares in the following text is a perfect example of human struggle for something better, for something beyond the crude reality of a rejecting world.

You can read more about Fr. Gheorghe at this wiki page:

http://ro.orthodoxwiki.org/Gheorghe_Calciu-Dumitreasa

Note: The photo was taken at the Romanian Episcopate Congress in 2003. Fr. Gheorghe always used to joke… Continue reading