Abraham’s faith was based on the close and personal relationship with God. The Bible describes it especially in the scenes of God’s revelation to the patriarch. During this events God gives him orders or promises. These two dimensions are often linked and follow one another. Abraham’s deeds are his response to God’s words. It is worth mentioning that Abraham does not act without a reflection but he asks questions, enters into dialogue with God and has the courage to express his own doubts.

In the Letter of James 2:21 Abraham is called “our father (in faith) who was justified by works (flowing out of faith)”. The necessity of combining faith and works, which must go together, constitutes the foundation of James’s argumentation. The author of the Epistle of James demonstrates that Abraham’s faith was active along with his works. One of them was Abraham’s offering of Isaac as a sacrifice. This is how the Scripture was fulfilled and the faith achieved its goal by becoming perfect and mature which means that it leads to salvation (J 2:21-23). That is why the author of the Epistle of James presents this attitude as a model to follow (James 2:22). The author tries to prove that God justifies the Epistle’s addressees by faith active along with works. “The fulfillment of the Scripture” concerns us – those whose trust in God following the example of Abraham is credited as justification, in other words it brings us salvation. Such a view on faith which must be active along with actions unquestionably does not stand in opposition to Paul’s teaching on faith that justifies. Paul also speaks about faith working through love (Gal 5:6).

Jesus called on the listeners to become like children if they would like to enter the kingdom of God and be there the greatest. It seems then that the children are an essence of the Gospel and that we should look like them. Does the Gospel carry such a message? The analysis of the Gospel texts in which we can find references to the attitudes of the children, demonstrates that the image is more complex. Since we meet there both positive and negative attitudes of the children. Positive attitudes appear more often and should be imitated, but not utterly. Openness to the revelation should not exclude thinking, receiving the costless kingdom – commitment, humbleness – sense of dignity and developing the talents, boldness in confessing Jesus – prudence. But one should defend himself against negative attitudes of a child: capriciousness, contrariness, disobedience, inconsistency. The Gospels do not present a child as an absolute pattern and do not call on to the infantilism, but to the integration of good features of a child into
the mature personality, because only then one can enter the kingdom of God.

In ancient times the Gospel of Mark was understood to be summarized version of the first Gospel – the Gospel of Matthew. Because of that the Fathers of the Church limited to commentaries on the longer Gospel. Theophylact of Ohrid, was the first to write an explanation of the Gospel of Mark in Greek, after he had commented the First Gospel. The Preface to this explanation shows the reasons for explaining these Gospels separately. The Bishop of Ohrid refers to the biblical visions of four creatures (Eze 1:5-6.10; Rev 4:6-7). The symbols of the creatures, according to him, indicate the various contents of the Gospels, which require distinct commentaries.

Sossianus Hierocles was a high official of the emperor Diocletian and an ardent supporter of the persecution of Christians at the beginning of the 4th century. In 303, in order to give propagandistic reasons for the strict repressions towards the followers of the new religion he published a treatise The Lover of Truth in which, among other things, he drew a comparison between Apollonius of Tyana and Christ. From this lost work we know only a few quotations included in the writings of Lactantius and Eusebius of Caesarea. The antichristian treatise of Hierocles must have been dangerous for the doctrine of the Church and must have put forward Apollonius as a strong rival of Christ, since it provoked both Christian writers to make a polemical reply. In this article we try to show the circumstances of the origin of The Lover of Truth and to present its character and contents.

The Second Vatican Council in the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum provided exegetic guidelines on the interpretation of the Scripture. Post-council exegesis focused mainly on the historical-critical method which analyses the human dimension of the Holy Scripture. Therefore, Benedict XVI reminded of the necessity of using theological principles in the exegesis and showed their indepth theological basis. The hermeneutics of faith postulated by the pope includes three criteria that allow to grasp the divine dimension of the Bible; two of them were discussed in this article. “Canonical exegesis” takes into consideration the unity of the Holy Scripture, while the “analogy of faith” enables the believing exegete to interpret properly the text written by the believing author. The article also deals with Joseph Ratzinger’s (Benedict XVI’s) comprehension of the Revelation, as well as the differences between the Revelation and the Holy Scripture. It is hermeneutics of faith that enables one to rise above the “letter” and reach the “spirit” of the inspired texts.

J. Ratzinger/Benedict XVI proposes pneumatology derived from the trinitarian dogma, strictly related to Christology, translated into anthropology, ecclesiology and pastorality (spirituality). All theological sub-disciplines remain orthodox only when strictly interrelated and then they lead to the truth, however, pneumatology is “binding” all the more so because it refers to the Holy Spirit, Who is in essence a communion, a unity. The inter-trinitarian “position” of the Holy Spirit explains the structure of the whole reality (including human and personal one, providing for faith): what is spiritual bonds existence together, unifying it, neither dualising nor dividing it. It does not unite through contradicting identity (of earthly, bodily, historical specificity), as some heresies or ideologies want to, but through establishing ties (communion). As the Holy Spirit always acts in communion with the Incarnated Word, similarly Christian spirituality remains embodied in the historical form of the Church, while charisma is provided inside institutional structures. Closeness to Christ, humility towards humble God constitute a source of real spirituality. 

The starting point of the article is the thesis that Marxist ideology created in the 19th century was realized in the communism of the 20th century. Then we have identified the areas of its further influence: (1) an ideological way of thinking rooted in the dialectics of contemporary media which direct consequence is the Postmodernism characterized by the fatalism of dialectical thinking and the existential scepticism; (2) the constant development of post-Marxist anthropology which treats a human being as a “one-dimensional man”, who can only rely on himself; this way of thinking is connected with the Marxist idea of “earthly salvation”, ultimately leading to the loss of hope; (3) in the culture the emergence of a specific “mechanism of salvage” from difficulties which is very important for many poor people living in the times of “quick transformations.” The article ends with an analysis of the causes and effects of the deformation of human conscience, which arises in the discussed context.

The issue of marital satisfaction arouses today great interest of psychologists. The research that has been carried out in this area has related primarily to spouses in early and middle adulthood. But there are still few studies on the determinants of success in the late phase of marital adulthood. Meanwhile, it is the old age that can be the “golden age” of married life. The purpose of this article is therefore to answer the question if there is any relation between the value hierarchy and the marital satisfaction in late adulthood. To achieve this goal, a study was conducted on 120 people (60 couples) aged 60 to 75. The quality of marriage relationship was examined by means of M. Plopa Marriage Questionnaire. Thanks to Scheler’s Scale of Values in adaptation of P. Brzozowski we have been able to characterize the hierarchy of values of the questioned couples. As expected, the system of values remains in a statistically significant relation to marital satisfaction.

Two weeks after the outbreak of World War II , on 13 September 1939, cardinal priest August Hlond decided to leave Poland. The Primate of Poland hoped that he would render a service to national affairs to a larger extent in exile than in the country. Staying in Italy, and then in France, he was bearing a testimony to the situation in Poland and supporting spiritually and financially the countrymen in exile. He also organized pastoral care for Polish refugees. Arrested by the German police in 1944, he did not agree on a proposal to collaborate with the Nazis. He returned to his homeland in 1945, after about six years of absence in the country. The aim of this article is to supplement the knowledge about the stay of priest cardinal August Hlond in France during World War II on the basis of the materials acquired from the archive of Polish Catholic Mission (PCM) in Paris. The materials retained in the PCM’s archive in Paris allow to supplement the previous knowledge about the life and activity of priest cardinal August Hlond during World War II . These materials are also the testimony to esteem he was held by the representatives of the Church in France.

The article presents a brief episode of the functioning of a pastoral station run by the Discalced Carmelites in Szopienice in the years 1954-1955. In autumn 1954, two monks: Father Daniel Rufeisen and Brother Lawrence Radkiewicz, with the help of residents, repaired the dilapidated barrack and turned it into a chapel. The communist authorities demanded that the monks close the chapel and leave Szopienice. When the additional fines and administrative decisions on the expulsion of the Carmelites were not effective, the authorities decided to seal the chapel. A month later, in December 1955, they conducted the final liquidation of the convent. The policemen led the faithful out of the chapel by force. Despite many petitions and complaints from local residents of Szopienice the chapel was not reactivated and the monks had to leave the city. This previously unknown case of the fight of the faithful for religious freedom depicts in a context of the anti-Church government’s policy during the Stalinist period.

This paper does not aim to describe the events, which the Catholic Church in the Czech lands has undergone during the harshest times of communist persecution. These facts have been already substantially clarified. It is the complex and ambiguous image of the local Roman Catholic Church that has not yet been sufficiently evaluated. The presented study, therefore, attempts to present and consider this image and the change it underwent in the 1950s and 1960s. The paradigmatic change in the Czech Catholicism can be described as a process of personalization of the Christian existence, i.e. the gradual transition from the life of faith based on the acceptance of the institutionally enforced moral principles and their formal adherence, to the life of faith, which perceives a Christian
believer as an unique person, whose faith is personal and internally involved in the community of the Church.