PREOCUPĂRI LITURGICE ÎN CORESPONDENŢA EDITĂ A EPISCOPULUI MELCHISEDEC ŞTEFĂNESCU

Abstract

In Romanian Orthodoxy, the 19th century was dominated by several figures of hierarchs with pregnant theological and scientific concerns, among which the personality of Bishop Melchisedec Stefanescu is outstanding. Much has been written about this hierarch of the Lower Danube and Roman in recent decades, with a predilection for his spiritual life, his liturgical, missionary, and pastoral ministry, and
his theological and historical work. The present study is occasioned by the appearance of two volumes of correspondence of the great hierarch with personalities of his time, published by the Archdiocese of the Lower Danube. The liturgical aspects that I try to highlight in the following pages reveal a hierarch who was concerned with seminary theological education. The liturgical aspects that I try to highlight in the following
pages reveal a hierarch who was concerned with seminary theological education (for which he personally and completely wrote or translated the first systematic manuals), fascinated by liturgical worship (to the enrichment of which he contributed with proposals for church books translated into Romanian and Latin) and attentive to the godliness of the people (to which he almost brought competent hagiographic
research). To these must be added his brilliance in what is meant by “ecclesial polity”, that is, fidelity to universal Orthodoxy in general, and his tenacious struggle, with doctrinal, canonical, and traditional arguments, for the affirmation of Romanian Orthodoxy. From all of them one can see the scientific intuition and prophetic vision of this hierarch, to whom we of today are so indebted