UN PRECURSORE DELLA SPIRITUALITÀ ECOLOGICA IN ROMANIA: IL SERVO DI DIO MIHAI NEAMȚU OS BM

Abstract

A Precursor of the Ecological Spirituality in Romania: God’s Servant Mihai Neamtu OSBM. The encyclical letter Laudato Sì approaches the topic of the integral ecology in order to inspire a unitary strategy to deal with the challenges of the social – environmental crisis. In this context, it emerges the necessity for the human person to live in a certain way of being in the nature and in the society, that would lead to specific actions meant to care for the common home. For the Christians and not only, the way of being is linked to spirituality. This paper aims to interpret some of the essential elements of the ecological spirituality from the theological perspective and place them in the context of the life of Mihai Neamtu (1924-2000), a Romanian Greek- Catholic monk of the Order of St. Basil the Great. Posterity remembers God’s Servant Mihai Neamtu as an example of responsible living in the common home. His humble, sober and generous way of life was the expression of a profoundly Christian and prophetic way of being, anchored in the Catholic faith and the Eastern spirituality. His relation with the Creator modelled his interaction with the nature and his fellows. He used his charismas heroically for the spiritual and fleshly good of all, proving that there is a natural link between the care for the nature and the care for the persons affected by spiritual or physical pathologies or by poverty.