The riches of diversity
Our provenance, from the very beginnings of our common life, from different Christian Churches has always been for us a stimulus to seek to go back to the common Biblical patrimony and that of the teachings and witness of the undivided Church of the first centuries, as well as an occasion of sharing each other’s spiritual riches.
Our provenance, from the very beginnings of our common life, from different Christian Churches has always been for us a stimulus to seek to go back to the common Biblical patrimony and that of the teachings and witness of the undivided Church of the first centuries, as well as an occasion of sharing each other’s spiritual riches. In this perspective we have sought to make known to a larger public monastic texts of the origins and of the Orthodox East by translating them and having them published, even before the birth of our Edizioni Qiqajon. Thus, when fifteen years ago we began to organize the Conferences on Orthodox Spirituality, in collaboration with the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Patriarchate of Moscow, it was to give organicity and continuity to a deeper study of a spiritual patrimony that belongs to the universal Church. After many years of treating figures, places, and seasons of Orthodox spirituality, this year the conference continued the line taken up in 2007: to treat themes that unite Christian East and West and to enrich them through a complementary reading. Spiritual paternity — the theme examined last September — is one of these elements of Christian and church life that unite us, beyond the different modes in which this ministry of direction and discernment is lived. The conference days, which saw the participation of about 200 persons, representatives of the academic, cultural, and religious world, coming from more than twenty countries, were an occasion for a fraternal encounter between the Churches of East and West; they were dedicated to our dear metropolitan Emilianos Timiadis, who passed away in February, an authentic figure of father capable of generating spiritual children to make them disciples of the one Lord.