Klaipėdos universitetas

The central principle and goal of Christian life is the lifelong pursuit of Christ-likeness in our thinking and our relationships with people and the world. People are called to grow, to celebrate, to seek true friendship with God in their present life situation. The essence of holiness, the fullness of the Christian life, is union with Christ, living his mysteries, which is possible in every situation of life. The period of widowhood is painful, but it is an invitation to purify oneself inwardly, to grow in love, and to serve one’s neighbours and all other members of the Church and of society. This is the origin of the spirituality of widowhood, a holiness based on faith. Widows can contribute to the holiness of the Church by living in God’s grace, by accepting and managing their situation psychologically, and by giving themselves up to God and to others. Widows often experience the loss of a spouse as an irreversible fact, a loss that matures them, so that, in the light of their faith, they are able to adapt to the changed reality and rebuild their lives.

In today’s productivity-oriented culture, topics related to death, illness, and loss are avoided. However, sooner or later people fall ill, die and various losses accompany everyone’s life. These experiences come together with spiritual pain, grief, tension, anxiety, fear and anger. If not addressed properly, these feelings cause physical and mental illnesses, loss of one’s identity, psychological trauma and interfere with fulfilling relationships. Spiritual health is the most important indicator of human health and the quality of life. It is also vital to the overall health of a person and is related to the essence of a human being and to what is valued and truly cherished by a particular person. This article reveals the changes in the state of a person in the presence of a disease from a psychological and theological perspective by analysing scientific literature, interpreting and systematizing information.

Present social and personal spiritual crises make it necessary to actualize the significance of a personal return to God. The Church invites to evaluate again the importance of religious conversion in preventing various social and personal spiritual pathologies. In this context, discussion and specification of a multidimensional phenomenon of religious conversion is problematic. Following the objectives of the Church to deepen the faith and renew evangelisation, this research aims to answer the following scientific questions: what are the typical features of a religious conversion? What are the factors that can influence the dynamics of this process? What are the changes a personal religious conversion may inspire? This article presents a theoretical analysis of a phenomenon of conversion. The research has shown that personal transformation and existential fulfillment of one’s personal life is an essential meaning of a religious conversion. Religion performs a positive psychotherapeutic function, it gives a meaning to a human existence and contributes to a personal maturity, also leads to a wholesome relationship with God where the meaning of human existence is completely fulfilled. Religious conversion may be considered as one of the fundamental elements of a spiritual health within the context of the present life challenges.

The article analyzes the Christian Church in the first centuries of controversy about the divine mercy and understanding of the operation in the believer’s life. Briefly reviewing the biblical teaching about the divine grace. Highlights the key terms in the Old and New Testaments. It reviews the doctrines of grace in the origins of Gnostic Manichean sects. Discussion about the operation of the grace of one of the greatest the echoes reached the Pelagius and St. Augustine teachings. Their doctrine, especially Augustine, centuries later influenced the development of the Catholic doctrine of grace for the individual man and for the whole Church. Augustine understood the divine grace of anthropological perspectives as a new relationship with God through Jesus Christ’s saving event. This relationship is just a pure gift from God, given to everyone who has faith in the Savior. By their nature the man deserves such a gift, so it is in vain received grace, leads man to the justification, and thus to eternal salvation.

This paper analyses some of the most important features of postmodernism, determining the way of a modern person’s life, relationship with oneself and, ultimately, with transcendence. One of the main aspects of contemporary society is excessive consumption, in fact relativism, secularism and subjectivism. These phenomena, in their psychological and theological sense, promote the disintegration of the integrity of the human person. This phenomenon becomes very visible in cases of illness, suffering and death. The modern man has lost the harmony between the body, the spirit and the soul, and at the same time the right relationship with God. It does arise in human life between the various dimensions of life: personal self-awareness, family, work, business, work, and other fields. Without faith, postmodernism does not accept man’s inevitability of death, strives to ignore it, or simply flee from it. But this does not give peace to human. The search for the meaning of life and death is in the nature of man, so only believing in a supernatural world, the fostering of spiritual values gives real hope.