This Festschrift celebrates the joyful heart and retirement from thirty-five years of university teaching of Bishop Kallistos Ware, a person who has found his monastic "desert" among the "dreaming spires" of academia, and his "cell" in the lecture room. The Festschrift contains articles by renowned academics, which are based on historical, theological, and spiritual themes.

The relation between life and death is a subject of perennial relevance for all human beings--and indeed, the whole world and the entire universe, in as much as, according to the saying of ancient Greek philosophy, all things that come into being pass away. Yet it is also a topic of increasing complexity, for life and death now appear to be more intertwined than previously or commonly thought. Moreover, the relation between life and death is also one of increasing urgency, as through the twin phenomena of an increase in longevity unprecedented in human history and the rendering of death,...