“What is and how is it like to be a Romanian Greek-Catholic in North America? (…) It simply means to be who you are – a human being – in an everlasting love and servitude to Christ, to God!”
On the theme of “cultural” or “spiritual affiliation” we have hundreds of treaties, there is no point for me to insist on this matter! I would like to specify from the very beginning that being Romanian does not mean being Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Neo-Protestant or Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Shintoist, etc. When we talk about a person’s “nationality”, we actually talk about some cultural categories, in short, we talk about a passport, a social identity document, we talk about time and history and some socially inspired cultural feelings and actions, that is from the outside, the fruits of the hazard, or how a Master would love to say, [the fruits of] Divine Providence… but we never talk about its fundamental spiritual aspect. In other words, it is not to confuse sociology with philosophy and spirituality. A “Romanian”, that is, someone born in the limited and geographically delimited space, which we especially like at the second bottle of wine to call it “bucolic”, “sweet”, or [being part of] “the garden of the Mother of God” , or other peculiarities of this kind, can be an excellent Guru in the Eastern European space, as it can excel in the universal art of self-detachment, moving to the Himalayas by repeating indefinitely a ” Om Namah Shivaya ” … or equally so, s/he can be a good Christian, if not a great spiritual master of deep, authentic Christian life … in China, “in the pocket” of a kangaroo in Australia or why not in the footsteps of a polar bear … and anywhere … In brevis, culture is one thing and spirituality something else altogether… And here is where I put my finger on the wound because now we start talking.
(to be continued)