A great man is one who collects knowledge the way a bee collects honey and uses it to help people overcome the difficulties they endure - hunger, ignorance and disease!
- Nikola Tesla

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.
- Franklin Roosevelt

While their territory has been devastated and their homes despoiled, the spirit of the Serbian people has not been broken.
- Woodrow Wilson

Bishop Danilo (Krstić)

Born on May 13, 1927 in Novi Sad, Danilo studied law in Belgrade, and graduated from Sorbonne in literature in 1952. From 1954 to 1958 he studied theology at the Saint Sergius’ Academy in Paris. While studying in Paris, he became acquainted with Bishop John of Shanghai, and he underwent a spiritual renewal. His doctoral thesis On Divine Philanthropy: From Plato to John Chrysostom, he completed under Fr George Florovsky at Harvard in 1968 (under the title: St. John Chrysostom as the Theologian of Divine Philanthropy; reprinted in Theologia, Athens, 1983).

Bishop Danilo’s writings, his personal journey, the nuanced theological notions which he attempted to formulate to his disciples and the faithful, testify to an intense theological vision. He took monastic vows in 1960 in St Sava Monastery in Libertyville, IL, and become a priest in 1962. Bishop Danilo was able to magnetically draw his interlocutors into the profundities of his theology.

In 1969 the Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church appointed him the vicar bishop of the Serbian Patriarch, his official title being the Bishop of Moravice. While being in Belgrade as the vicar bishop of the Serbian Patriarch, he used to incite—mostly by his tremendous erudition and pastoral words—great interest of young intellectuals, especially the students of the University of Belgrade, for the word of God and Christ’s Gospel. From 1984 he was the administrator of the Diocese of Budim, and from 1988 he was appointed the hierarch of the Diocese of Budim, being enthroned in 1990 (in a Diocese that had no bishop for over thirty years).

Numerous theological and literary works of Bishop Danilo are dispersed in many publications, magazines and books, published both in his country and abroad. It is noteworthy that he taught Pastoral theology at the Faculty of Orthodox Theology in Belgrade (from 1993 to 1997) and was one of the founders and the first dean of the Academy of the Serbian Orthodox Church for Arts and Conservation. For twenty years (1971–1991) he was an editor-in-chief of the quarterly Theological Views, published in Serbian (with summaries in English) by the Patriarchate in Belgrade. With Metropolitan Amfilohije he published in 1988 a small catechism Nema lepše vere od hrišćanske (There is no more beautiful Faith than the Christian; in French: Rien n'est plus beau que la foi chrétienne, Paris 2007), while in 1996 a collection of his essays was printed under the title U početku beše Smisao (In the Beginning was Meaning; translated into Russian in 2010). In 1973 he prepared a very popular Serbian edition of The Illustrated Bible for the Youth (Ilustrovana Biblija za mlade).

Bishop Danilo entered into the Kingdom of Heaven on Saturday, April 20, 2002, during the fifth week of Great Lent, in Szentendre.


SA

 

People Directory

Ivan Aksentijevich

Ivan Aksentijevich earned his Medical Doctor Degree from the University of Belgrade, Serbia in 1986. He moved to the United States with his wife Ivona in 1989. Between 1989 and 1996, he completed two post-doctoral fellowships at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. He went on and did a residency in Internal Medicine at St Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, MD, and followed this with fellowships in both Hematology and Medical Oncology at Johns Hopkins University Hospital, Baltimore, MD. He is a senior partner and member of the Executive Committee with the Virginia Cancer Specialists, in Alexandria, VA.  He holds the Chair of the Cancer Committee at Alexandria Hospital and is a primary investigator on several clinical trials. His main clinical interrests are in the field of hematologic malignancies.

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Publishing

Sailors of the Sky

A conversation with Fr. Stamatis Skliris and Fr. Marko Rupnik on contemporary Christian art

In these timely conversations led by Fr. Radovan Bigovic, many issues are introduced that enable the contemporary reader to deepen and expand his or her understanding of the role of art in the life of the Church. Here we find answers to questions on the crisis of contemporary ecclesiastical art in West and East; the impact of Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism, Surrealism and Abstract painting on contemporary ecclesiastical painting; and a consideration of the main distrinction between iconography and secular painting. The dialogue, while resolving some doubts about the difference between iconography, religious painting, and painting in general, reconciles the requirement to obey inconographic canons with the freedom essential to artistic creativity, demonstrating that obedience to the canons is not a threat to the vitatlity of iconography. Both artists illumine the role of prayer and ascetisicm in the art of iconography. They also mention curcial differences between iconography in the Orthodox Church and in Roman Catholicism. How important thse distinctions are when exploring the relationship between contemporary theology and art! In a time when postmodern "metaphysics' revitalizes every concept, these masters still believe that, to some extent, Post-Modernism adds to the revitatiztion of Christian art, stimulating questions about "artistic inspiration" and the essential asethetic categories of Christian painting. Their exceptionally wide, yet nonetheless deep, expertise assists their not-so-everday connections between theology, ar, and modern issues concerning society: "society" taken in its broader meaning as "civilization." Finally, the entire artistic project of Stamatis and Rupnik has important ecumenical implications that aswer a genuine longing for unity in the Christian word.

The text of this 94-page soft-bound book has been translated from the Serbian by Ivana Jakovljevic, Fr. Gregory Edwards, and Andrijana Krstic. Published by Sebastian Press, Western American Diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Contemporary Christian Thought Series, number 7, First Edition, ISBN: 978-0-9719505-8-0