We all keep words that take us home, don't we? And they bring peace, and prayer, and wonder, and tears of remembrance and longing. And the Day of the Romanian Language is just the right and handy day to refresh the thoughts in each of us.
Reading Words at the vigil vigil, a book signed by His Most Reverend Father Archbishop Calinic, and recently published by Crimca Publishing House of the Archdiocese of Suceava and Rădăuților, I had the feeling that words that can take us home, in the meaning that Emil Cioran gave to his beloved Romanian language, are flowing like grains in a grapevine: „Dear, for me words are heavy, they have meaning. My words do not fly, they are true. For me, every word in Romanian hurts. (...) Every word in Romanian takes me home.” This is the confession he made, when he was in Paris, to the master Tudor Gheorghe, and it hides in it the depth of his longing for an identity that was beginning to be „of yesteryear”.
I felt, at the same time, that I was convinced that there are pages of those, which St. John Chrysostom evokes, referring to the benefits that can bring to man in life the careful and persevering study of the theological text, „full of divine light and soul-strengthening power, which illuminates souls on the good paths of life” (Homily LIII, 3, on John).
It is the joy of reading pages in which the words seem to be taken from the time when the saints of the temples in our villages were sitting down to talk with souls who were seeking and desiring salvation above all else. Words with a heart and light and a myriad of words that many of our ancestors knew and lived by heart. As is the high and surprising emotion of reconsacrating meanings and mysteries preached, and learned, and hardened by time and experience over thousands of years, in a contemporary lexical register, neologic, courageous and scintillating.
Among the first ones, which seem to see Nichita Stănescu's emancipated passion for the language he learned first and which gave him the ghes to say that „talking about the Romanian language is like a Sunday” and that „the Romanian language is my homeland”, I have chosen only as a reminder of a language that the pilgrim soul knows well on the path of personal Damascus: spel, gospel, humility, birth, birth, birth-bearing, life, incarnation, glorification, redemption, preaching, worthiness, sacrifice, Eucharist, deliverance, surah, beginners, hermines, ark, ark, candlestick, vision, abode, abode, rost, vision, guidance, guidance, cherubim, adversity, adversaries, mercy, mercy seat, jilting, naming, synox, synoxing, stratillation, thaumaturgist, theophor, the theophor, the unshaken, heresies, vain glory, subduing, subduing, subduing, obedient, righteous, righteous, Healing, mercy, mercy, oil, sanctuary, mercy seat, mercy seat, praeses and Preacher, founder and foundation, persecuted and persecutors, virtue, virtuous, virtuous, steadfastness, kingship, scepter, „anointed of God”, pisanii and urice, caznă, donation, foundation, settlements, hospitals, calligraphy, manuscript, theophany, stihiri, stichuri, pripeale, miniaturists, miniaturists, saltire, paraclis, trapeza, canonization, magnanimity.
He chose them with the radiance of the Holy Spirit sitting on his shoulder Father Archbishop because the utterance of each of these words is the utterance and utterance of the soul; the word itself turns into a whole and edifying speech, reconfirming the truth that there are, in our language, words that are just „like a honeycomb”, as metaphorically recognized our incomparable „voivode of the slovaks” in Epigonies. Words that cannot be replaced by anything because they themselves seem to have a body, an almost palpable materiality.
Then anchored in the solemnity and complexity of modern and contemporary lexicon: community and communion, infinity, eternity, narration, record, angelology, hymnography, myriads, revelation, perihoreosis, Attribution, contemporaneity, messianic, succession, restoration, epistolary corpus, apostate, philanthropy, counter, counter, desideratum, authority, hypothesis, jurisdiction, intuitive, statuary, statuary, validity, abdication, charity, legitimacy, sacrality, suzerainty, autonomy, patronage, renaissance, symbolism, symbolism, grandeur, autochthonous, Byzantine-Balkan, everyday, metaphor, lecture, consolidation, justness, celebration, paradox, paradox, reward, invocation, evocation, evhology. Anchor-words for the logic of argument, persuasion, facilitating comprehension and for, cleverly slipped in, the temptation and imperative to re-read.
Or the evocation of some of the most surprising etymologies, unexpected associations of words from semantic fields so different from universally consecrated syntagms, concepts and inter and transdisiplinary reasoning, embraces of words continuously balanced between denotation and connotation: the first synaxis of the angels after the fall of Lucifer; the icon-statue; their apparent poverty (of saints) spiritually enriches those around them; the gift of prophecy was not the exclusive preserve of men, but of women too; pobedonoseit or bringer of victory; prophetic abilities; symbolic and prefigurative elements in their prophecies, such as the ermines' guidelines for church painters; frescoes in which the prophets hold unfolded phylacteries with fragments of their messianic or Marian prophecies; the Holy Evangelists knot the biographical thread for the Mother of God; the Savior gave to common men the authority of great spiritual rulers and leaders; (....) in the process of their training, the Savior's graceful, that is, sanctifying, pedagogy intervened to mold their characters; the vocation of martyrdom is a constant in the life of the Church; the development of architectural and pictorial culture has been on the attention of many archpriests; He wished to decipher mysteries beyond their capacity of understanding; real world - virtual world; materiality-immateriality; the nine beatitudes, recognized as the pendant of the Decalogue; the prospect of acquiring the Kingdom of Heaven. A topic of the sentence that gives a special rhythm to thoughts and makes them slow down and really think.
Words that meet Christ and transform you, words and ideas that know how to spell thoughts, words and ideas that know how to spell thoughts, follow one another unhindered between the tabs, in a well-dimensioned cadence, but not at all ostentatious: the existence of God cannot be scientifically proven, because it is a postulate of faith (p. 21); Certainly, as long as we leave ourselves in Christ's care, he can make us strong rocks in the foundation of his Church (p. 66); the encounter with Christ transforms you; the saints imitated Christ's sacrifice (p. 71); health was mirrored by the continual spiritual or spiritual growth of man's life, soul and body, in cooperation with divine grace, towards eternal life; we are dealing here with what we might call the effect of insistent repetition („For to write the same things to you is not to me to be in vain, but to you it is profitable” - Philippians 3:1); to see God's face you have only to make a small gesture and He will look at you (p. 106); it is in that atmosphere of the setting of the sun that mankind will be reunited with the incarnate Son of Man (p. 107); the foundations, donations and monastery worships made over the centuries to the Holy Places of Orthodoxy constitute a glorious chapter in the history of our Orthodox nation (p. 134); the icon renders a historical reality, a historically verifiable reality, as are the Incarnation of the Lord, His Crucifixion, His Death and Resurrection (...)(pg. 178-179); meekness is a prerogative of holiness (pg. 187); peace is both but and inheritance (pg. 189); forgiveness out of love, that it may be complete (...) is the only cry that can free your conscience (pg. 197).
I have just a few lines, as an epilogue to a reading cuminecare. And I think that every single page Words at the vigil vigil is an occasion to reminisce about words that celebrate great ideas. You'll believe it.
