Analogio, Art and Worship, issue 5 (2003), p. 175.
The 5th issue of Analogio, quarterly edition of the Holy Metropolis of Servia and Kozani, has as its main topic the relations of art and worship in the ecclesiastical past, but also the regenerating proposals for the present. In the foreword, there is an introductive reflection on the tribute of the issue, which is illustrated with the artistic work of Nikolaos Masteropoulos.
In the first essay Petros Vassiliadis pinpoints the ideological reasons of the reactions against the demand of the liturgical renewal of the Orthodox Church in the individualistic approach of worship and the mistaken regard of eschatology. He considers the liturgical renewal as a theological and ecclesiological demand, which leads to the total and equal participation of the people in the life of the Church, principally as a eucharistic gathering, where the Trinitarian life of equality and brotherhood is reflected and the historical and social evil is overcome.
Demetrios D. Triantafillopoulos, from his side, numbers a plethora of counterfeiting in the worship and art of the Church, seeking, at the same time, the authentic eschatological meaning of tradition, while Dimitrios G. Mavropoulos, in the article “Position and content of preaching”, follows historically the decline of preaching from proclamation of Resurrection and coming of the Kingdom to a simple “speech” with socio-moral characteristics.
“The solution to our liturgical problems is interwoven with… the solution of the multifaceted crisis in the theological, ecclesiastical and in broader terms our cultural/existential horizon”, is the main thesis of Fr. Georgios Basioudis.
In his article titled “The reception of the world as element of the philocalic tradition of the Church”, Georgios Fousteris concludes that contemporary ecclesiastic art expresses the isolation of the Church from its cultural environment, which did not happen in the Byzantine past, when the codes of this art were common both in its ecclesiastical and secular expression.
In an extensive liturgiological study Panagiotis Skaltsis discusses Church as the people of God and “πλήρωματουταπάνταενπάσιπληρουμένου” Christ, expressing the theanthropic unity where everyone, clergy and laity, continue, increase and extend eucharistically the Incarnation.
“Directed” is the adjective that Joseph Roilidis uses to characterize the traditionalism of the contemporary “Byzantine-like” temples, claiming that they do not have the least relation with the Byzantine construction of temples, the basic principles of which he briefly exposes. Fr. Nektarios Paris, in a liturgical, but also historical and theological article, exposes the related to the “utterances” issues in the Divine Liturgy.
An abundance of historical, theoretical and experiential elements concerning the music of the orthodox Eastern Church is found in the interview that the associate of the journal Thanasis Nevrokoplis took from the Lord Cantor Leonidas Asteris.
In the theological essays unit of the journal two essays are hosted: the first is by the Metropolitan of Servia and Kozani Ambrosios Yakalis, who delves into the theology of the 7th Ecumenical Council (Nice, 787) and the second, titled “Ontological and cosmological encounters of natural sciences and Theology”, is by Fr. Nikolaos Loudovikos; there he deduces that modern science has slipped out of the womb of the traditional western metaphysical tradition and sends out challenges of fertile philosophical dialogue with the tradition of the Eastern orthodox Christianity.
The journal is complemented with the usual material, the Anthology of poets, Synaxarion, Idiomela, timely and untimely and Vivliostasion.