We cannot talk about ourselves without mentioning our readers and, mainly, our Good God, as
the magazine itself was born from a need and a fact of communion. That is to share a particular
way of thinking and feeling, as close as possible to the way of being of our human nature, which
is the Orthodoxy itself, as Father Rafail Noica said.
Last 12 years, we tried to act within the boundaries of this way of being, together with our
readers – by learning about the spiritual life, how to raise our children, how to maintain our God-
given health, or finding out what are the real problems of the world in which we live.
The magazine “Familia Ortodoxă” is also a kind of foray into the interior life of the
contemporary man, with his falls, but also with his spiritual resurrection, troubles, and joys. It is,
perhaps, a reverse path to the mainstream of contemporary media; it moves from outside to
inside, from dissipation to gathering of the mind and concentration in prayer.
And above all, “Familia Ortodoxă” is a love story because everything good in our world exists
because of the love of our God and of his Saints. More than having press, today, Romanians need
love – and love can only exist when you are together with others in the family, whether it is the
small family in which each of us was born or the “big family” of the Church. And, over time, the
magazine became more and more a family. Not one virtualized on the Internet but sedimented,
patiently, in the rhythm of writing old epistles. Letters in which pain and love find the respite so
necessary today to mature and fulfill themselves.
Through our shared sacrifice for our readers, the magazine has become more and more of a
reality. We learned from each other what love is and what it’s like to be or not to be lukewarm cf.
Book of Revelation 3:15 . We met the heroes next to us, learned with joy how many of us came to faith,
participated with compassion to the pain of those who lived their last day of life, and everything
was shared. We looked at the innocent faces of our children, sometimes happy, sometimes
amazed, we kissed the mother’s hands that raised them, and we fell into thoughts, with our eyes
lost in the soft light penetrating through the church windows.
Perhaps, in this introduction, we should have said more about us, those who write here at
“Familia Ortodoxă” magazine, about the meaning we see in our work and other things that are
appropriate for an introduction page. But, after years of turmoil, we understood that, in the end,
the most important thing that remains behind us is how much we loved and how much we
managed to multiply love in the world in which we live. And if sorrowful things appear on the
magazine pages, it is because the equation of love always includes pain and compassion for the
other, but also the Truth. We would like these to be the coordinates by which we guide ourselves
in the composition of this magazine, and we believe that all those we have met in recent years at
the rich meal of our magazine feel the same way.