APPROACH TO THE SPIRITUAL HERITAGE OF SAINT SILOANOS OF ATHONITIS

On the sixtieth anniversary of the death of the Athonite Saint Siluanos (1866-1938), a memorial conference was organized in the Roman Catholic convent of Bose (Boze) in Northern Italy, in which more than a hundred people, bishops and monks of the Western and Eastern churches took part. historians, theologians and patrologists from all over the world. The texts in this volume come from the presentations of the speakers (Zizioulas, Ware, Clement, Bianchi, Lilienfeld, Tachiaos) who took part in this conference. "Keeping your mind in hell humiliates you not psychologically but ontologically. . . You experience the absence of God as an existential void and there, in this void, you meet Adam lamenting the loss of paradise. You thus identify with all humanity in its fall, gain true self-knowledge, and cease to be proud of yourself - this is true humility. At the same time you feel sympathy for all those who, like you, are sinners, including your enemies, and so you love them all, not emotionally but existentially, not obliged because of some moral imperative, but participating in their own existence, in their separation from God , at their death. . .” (FROM THE PRESENTATION ON THE BACK COVER OF THE BOOK)