Stefan Florin

God gave man all of Creation, to feed on the great diversity of its gifts, thus experiencing His great goodness and love. Man is not a perfect being, but, on the contrary, a dependent, incomplete, fragile being in a perpetual hunger for meaning. That is why man was defined as an existence that seeks a purpose in life. After the fall, this fundamental need of his being can be corrupted by his biological inclinations or material realities, turning into lust and sinful dispositions. Any material or psychological object can become an object of lust, a goal of our excessive desire, through the irrational attachment we develop to it. Thus, it often happens that man feeds on irrational forms of the world (greed, avarice), and on distorted forms of food (bulimia, anorexia, addictions) on a psychophysiological and spiritual level. Feeling a frustrating insatiability, man tends to become the consumer par excellence of all that the world offers as “food”, compulsively seeking a sense of fulfillment. Seeking spiritual fulfillment in material pleasures clearly diverts the original divine command given to man: to “grow”, to “be” and to resemble God. The enslavement to what is external to him, through toxic attachments, alters his relationship with God and with others, demonstrating that man’s insensitivity to the needs and sufferings of his peers increases in direct proportion to the obsessive focus of his own needs and pleasures. The greatest drama is defined by the case when the human being tries his best to extract joy and life from hyper-consumption and entertaining environments. But the existential objective of man should not be food but feeding the spirit and cultivating the relationship with the Creator and Giver of the world, discovering its spiritual meanings and reasons. To stay alive at the spiritual level, we need food corresponding to its spiritual dimension. Spiritual “meals” nourish and strengthen our soul powers so that, renouncing the matter of the world and its things by assuming a eucharistic ascetic vision and experience, we can free ourselves from the consuming and despotic regime of temporality and the physiological level. It is worth remembering that the old Adam tasted death when he tasted the fruit from the forbidden tree, which became a fruit of corruption, of death, because through this behavior man individualized himself, separated himself from the Source of Life, from his Creator. The objective of deification has been replaced by the self-willed perspective of “having”, “possessing”, by contaminating human perception and by manifesting the condescending and passionate attitude towards the “act of feeding”. Thus, the Fall is closely related to both pride and gluttony, which includes man’s oral cavity, so that death entered his nature through consumption, seeking pleasure outside of God. Fallen man became obsessed with consumption and lustful in relation to material things, fitting perfectly into a hedonistic society based on overconsumption of any kind. God created the world and offered it to man as food, but the world was not to be consumed by an abusive and perverted use, nor in a passionate way, but with a Eucharistic and contemplative attitude. When he rediscovers his vocation as a being seeking deification, his hunger culminates in a hunger for beauty, kindness and love – the hunger for God. Out of this one can see that man can be nourished by the subtle and spiritual forms of the world, by prayer, by the reasons of things, and most especially by the very Source of eternal life. The scriptural text: “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4) denotes a neurophysiologically attested reality, as the word / information has, at the level of the brain, the same nourishing effect as food. “The bread of being” is presented in both a physical and a spiritual form, according to the psycho-physical constitution of the human being. Spiritual food has priority over material food, and the soul has priority over the body. The soul does not annul, does not destroy, but only precedes the body, giving it the privilege of becoming its means of revelation. In relation to God, food and matter are restored and perfected as ways of communion with Him. Therefore, the restoration of the human senses and mind requires an ascetic effort and the anchoring of the human being in Christ, who feeds the human person with the Bread of eternal life. Periods of fasting and individual asceticism achieve this desired goal of suspending for a time physiological needs, in order to voluntarily release from the compelling imperative of biological nature and instinctual impulses, and also to accumulate experience on a spiritual plane, by elevating the mind to God and by the sublimation of self-centered, self-sufficient tendencies, thanks to the exercise of self-restraint. God feeds the human person “with Himself” at the level of all senses, as it can be received and assimilated in the Gospel, in the icon, in the Holy Eucharist, etc. Through the Holy Eucharist, which involves the sense of tasting and, therefore, the oral cavity, God reveals himself to us with all His divine gifts, quenching our hunger and thirst for the Infinite with Himself, who is the Infinite, the Meaning, the Life and the Existence per Se.

Abstract
The present study proposes an analysis of the prayer of petition, relating it to the model of the third petition in the prayer ”Our Father”, which captures the ideal of human requests in the prayer addressed to the Heavenly Father. Instead, the observations, not only contemporary, but also philokalic, highlight the fact that people neglect the deep relationship with God, in favor of superfluous lists of requests, hoping for instant gratification. This type of prayer generates a mercantile mentality in line with an economy of consumption and profit, characteristic to today’s society. The arguments behind our hypotheses are based on the assertions of some researchers in the field of psychology and theology, but especially on the texts of the Philokalic Fathers, which have gained unquestionable authority through the millennia-old experience of praying.
One of the main ideas of the study is that prayer should not be a function of the "earthly economy”, but a function of our inner transformation in our close relationship with God and fellow people. Another important idea of the study is that people become skeptical about the possibility of miraculous healing through prayer, which is why they tend to demand psychological rather than biological effects. This article addresses the prayer of petition at a multidisciplinary level, presenting the reasons why God does not always answer our prayers and, finally, expounding the ideal form of prayer of petition.

Abstract.Word inflation and the moral value of silence.
Silence connects man to another dimension of reality, taking him out of ordinary existence. When it offers the chance to listen, to reflect and to generate new possibilities of awareness and contemplation, the authentic silence differs from the resentful, repressive silence. Silence is associated by the Fathers of the wilderness with loneliness, with peace, but not as simple forms of external isolation, but as resistance against thoughts, as an effort to concentrate inward, as an exercise in vigilance, as an environment conducive to listening to the divine Word. Language has a negative connotation when it envelops us in our own illusion of ourselves, when it builds psychological shields to pamper our own ego. In contrast, silence can be interpreted as a symbol of self-denial. Authentic communication captures, in addition to the joy of meeting the person, its apophatism. In the theological field, the notion of "silence" is understood as a "metaphysical space", in which we step into much deeper realities. The hesychastic typology remains the emblem of the silent man, of the one who focuses on the divine Word.

Abstract: Is thepostmodern man still interested in the inner life?1. The
new framework of the modern world, characterized by an uninterrupted
flow of information, a culture of overconsumption, noise and sensory
hyperstimulation, predispose man's inner life to fragmentation and
scattering, weakening the ability to concentrate the mind and the
efficiency of his cognitive processes. Thus, sensory overload and social
media hold man's attention to the outside, reducing him to a "surface
life". The purpose of this article is to present our observations on the new
context of life of postmodern man and to emphasize the need for
stillness, silence, sensory deprivation and, above all, to focus attention on
the inner life. Postmodern man, subordinated to the conditions of
economic civilization, spends very little time on himself, being
increasingly attracted to the presence of hidden challenges in the setting
of his living environment. In this context, self-reflection, self-knowledge
and prayer, as a spiritual practice with a special role in the attention,
concentration, simplification of the human mind and self-awareness,
seem more than necessary for today's man.

This theme seeks to explore the extent to which the heart of the postmodern man can be sensitized and reconverted from the state of impassivity, which he manifests both to his own existential state and to the needs and sufferings of those around him, and thus to become a heart more sensitive, more empathetic and more sensitive to the world around. In this sense, we propose that the experience of humility be a possible solution to its reconversion, an absolutely necessary phenomenon in a world that is less and less "kind". The arguments we invoke are medical, psychological and theological. Thus, we will refer to the central organ of the cardiovascular system not only as a vital organ, which can suffer as a result of a "closed" life, stressed or depressed by negative emotional states or moods, but also as a spiritual organ that has a role in psychosocial and spiritual life, at least as important as for biological life. Although our life is largely due to the heartbeat, we are too unaware that the way we relate to life contexts, to our fellow men, and especially to God, can definitely affect it. However, this motor of life, which beats in our chest, has a malleable functionality, so that, thanks to prayer and repentance, the vital pulsation of the heart can be closely related to the pulsation of the spiritual life. In this sense, spiritual healing, felt as a renewal of the heart and mind, is also reflected in the biological existence of man, as a restoration of his psychosomatic functions.

Renewing of man - a real psychophysical and spiritual phenomenon, transcending the genetic determinism. New discoveries in the field of medical Sciences, neurobiology and cognitive-behavioral psychology go beyond the concept of genetic determinism that created the impression of cortical rigidity and an impassive fatalism regarding human existence. The present study starts from the premise that neural mechanisms, such as neuroplasticity and neurogenesis, are evidence that the material structure of the cerebral hemispheres, like human personality, is continuously remodeled, starting from the stage of intrauterine life. This process generates both psychosomatic and spiritual implications in human life. The arguments that support our hypothesis are based on specialized works in the field of neuroscience, psychology, philosophy and theology and aim to show the possibilities of change and psy-cho-physical-spiritual renewal of man. One of the main ideas is that there are a number of factors that influence brain plasticity and changes in individual gene expression, including early emoțional relationships, the environment in which we live, experiences that manifest with some regularity and with a certain intensity, as well as the frequency of spiritual practices, such as meditation or prayer. Another important idea is that the veracity of observations from cunrent neuroscience research has been revealed to us since ancient times by the Church Fathers, who say that there are some correspondences between prayer and mental activity, between prayer and the way we use our thinking or to receive reality. Therefore, the concept of metanoia refers to a spiritual renewal of the mind, which also has a material substratum. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to stimulate human awareness and responsibility for how they choose to shape their own psychosomatic structure. He isnot the victim of his genetic baggage, nor can he be constrained by his own flaws or limitations, in which case his existence would remain captive to a fatalistic and nondynamic vision, but man is a malleable matter, framed in an open system, which has a perpetuai chance for change, by claiming a renewed life pn a psycho-physical and spiritual level. In this sense, we can speak of an ontological metamorphosis.

Anachoreism is a fascinating feature of Eastern monasticism. Many of the ascetic treatises, and especially the philocal collection, come from the heroic world of the anchorite monks who lived in uninhabited territories, wild but, above all, desert places. From the first centuries of the Christian Church, there are emblematic figures of the anchorite monk in the Egyptian space, who retreated to the desert, such as St. Paul of Thebes, the first Egyptian hermit known by name. The premise from which our study starts is that the geographical places chosen by the Christian anchorites, in this case the desert, the mountain, the forests, the isolated places, the caves, etc., predispose them to some psychospiritual transformations that they do not it could acquire (easily, or ever) in a very populated and stirred space. We have chosen for analysis and interpretation two habitats very common in the writings of the Desert Fathers: the desert (desert) and the cell. These two "special"...

In this study I started from the assumption that every human being has an existential sense which, throughout his life, is possible to pervert or even lose him. The postmodern era has become incompatible with a noble, transcendent sense of actual man. In this state of confusion, the human person needs more than ever the orientatio, that is, a clear path towards something that does not limit it to materialism and consumerism. One of the factors that positively influence the existential meaning of man is commitment (toward oneself, toward others and toward God). The Christian life has permanently demonstrated that the sense par excellence of man is the eternal life to which it can be directed with the help of a feeling of the ephemeral (world) and immortal (soul). With the loss of the soul balance, man approaches the existential emptiness. The impatient time, the overabundant activities, the sensory over stimulation, the superficiality of the relationships, predispose him to the drama of meaninglessness. Therefore, in this study we will emphasize the current human situation and possible resolutions regarding its inner recalibration. Solutions such as contemplative life, self-discovery through meditation, self-awareness through awareness of its psycho-spiritual contents, disillusionment with the world's offerings, communion with God through prayer, are as many chances of reunion with oneself and with the Source of life, from which the personal meaning of existence certainly emerges.

Prayer and meditative activity remain in the top of human activities even if the phenomenon of secularization affects the entire society, both at the social and the individual level. Modern man spends more leisure time on relaxation an d entertaining activities, to the detriment of his professional and spiritual activities. This article looks for clues in research studies a n d in the Christian theological field to elucidate Christian influence on how Christians spend time or prioritize their activities on a personal and community scale. At the end of the last century, a papal document attempted to find a solution through which contemporary man should not give up the practice of prayer in the context of modernity, when man is physically and mentally required more than in any historical period of the past. The Opus Dei perspective remains controversial. A series of research and studies reveals the interdependence between Christian religion and the principles of recreational leisure. However, the conclusions are a little pessimistic because they are authors who point out that religiosity disappears from the landscape of people’s needs and concerns, and some even have the courage to accuse the Christian Church for this result. Our conclusion is that Orthodoxy is the basis for any human experience a spiritual intentionality.

Anachoreism is a fascinating feature of Eastern monasticism. Many of the ascetic treatises, and especially the philocal collection, come from the heroic world of the anchorite monks who lived in uninhabited territories, wild but, above all, desert places. From the first centuries of the Christian Church, there are emblematic figures of the anchorite monk in the Egyptian space, who retreated to the desert, such as St. Paul of Thebes, the first Egyptian hermit known by name. The premise from which our study starts is that the geographical places chosen by the Christian anchorites, in this case the desert, the mountain, the forests, the isolated places, the caves, etc., predispose them to some psychospiritual transformations that they do not it could acquire (easily, or ever) in a very populated and stirred space. We have chosen for analysis and interpretation two habitats very common in the writings of the Desert Fathers: the desert (desert) and the cell. These two "special" spaces denote some characteristics that imprint special features in the psychology and personality of the needy. Therefore, the main purpose of this article is to present the psychological and practical significance of the retreat of anchorites in the desert and in the cell, respectively, proving, at the same time, that loneliness is for the Fathers of the desert, the element without which it would not have achieved so much spiritual performance in the inner space.

Esse versus Habere-The Duality of Human Will 1. Man's existence for "to be" or for "to have", depends on how he understands his meaning in the world. This study aims to offer the reader an orthodox view on these two terms, in the hope that it touches the existential substance of contemporary man. When man "stole" deification, possession (of having) became an existential archetype in his physical structure. The serpent bound the soul of the primordial man to a phantasmagoria, a magical deification. The principle of possession expresses man's desire to transform the world into an object of consumption. The fundamental difference between possession and being is that things are worn out by their use, while the being exercised day by day develops to perfection. The need of transcendence, intrinsic to man, has undergone an ontological change that has found naive compensation in the field of technology. Fathers of the desert teaches us to evaluate the world through an unpassionate perception. The evangelical and patristic precepts put in contrast the desire for spiritual growth with a desire possession. This vision of detachment, gives man a sort of discernment that makes him responsible in relation to God, nature and to himself. St. John Chrysostom, recommends the desert as a pedagogical school against passions. The decision of the monks to go to the wilderness was motivated by both the desire to give up the world, possessions and honours, and to fully belong to God. In conclusion, compulsive opening to possessions and objects is mental and not spatial. The contemporary man needs to reflect on what really matters in an ephemeral world.

In this study, we assumed that traditional medicine makes little steps towards a wider perspective on the symptoms and diagnosis of diseases. I wanted to emphasize the important role of Christian spirituality in the subjective perception of suffering, especially by exemplifying some biblical episodes in the Old and New Testaments. But the central theme of this article is the reconciliation of man with God and himself who, in the face of illness or disability, begins the journey both retrospective and, most of all, introspective, to the inner depths. Facing his powerlessness, man meets with himself, but also with God. So, I have tried to demonstrate, supported by the visions and writings of leading psychosomatic or Christian theology, that the disease is not a punishment for sin from God, but rather a self-estrangement, a devitalization of energy, an unsolved problem that sank into the depth of being, because man has lost the authentic relationship with God and the others. It has come to the conclusion that man must not necessarily receive healing through his prayer to God, but surely referring to Him during the disease, brings about changes in both the perception of suffering and the relationship with others.

This study aims to analyze a contemporary topic that has become the subject of many research and source for statistics in various fields. It is about the new framing of human experience, after man's existence has entered the era of technologies, in the flow of globalization and has been absorbed by the virtual world, and its emotional features have become addicted to emoticons lacking of expressivity, which induce confusion in choice and in interpretation. The natural environment of the human being, or better said, the setting of a human being in nature, has been distorted. The contemporary man has been affected by urbanization, moving away from both his surrounding nature and his own nature. In this case, the rules of the fortress predisposed him to internal transformations that are compromising both the psychological balance, the original mechanisms of protection and survival, the need for communication, but especially the instinct of belonging. Intrinsically, he feels alone, depressed, isolated, very inactive and without initiative. These ascertainments and remarks will be detailed with arguments regarding the postmodern human's condition which is looking for chemical, physical or behavioral adjuvants to feel the flame burning inside, that he is still full of life, that he still has signs of existential vitality. It is already highlighted in psychiatric treatises a syndrome of meaninglessness that is spreading more and more among the modern societies. The direction of human ascension has been identified as an axiological fact, that's why he discovers his meaning and being in relationship with the greater good. The theological perspective, followed by the neuroscience, offers solid fundamentals of self-revelation through communion with a supreme being, called God.