My beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ Jesus,

Early this morning (Nov. 15), our Lord Jesus Christ called the soul of His true servant, PAVLE, Patriarch of Serbia, into His Kingdom. As I was reading names during the Proskomide for the Holy Liturgy, one of the sisters brought me a little note as to His Holiness having fallen asleep.

At first I was startled by the news. I had only met this holy Hierarch once, but he made an everlasting impact on my life. As I read the Holy Gospel of the Parable of the Good Samaritan, I could not hold back the tears; once I came to the Lord describing how the Samaritan had deep compassion of the wounded man, and how he took him the Inn and placed him in the care of the Innkeeper. St. John Chrysostomos tells us that the Inn is the Church, and the Innkeeper represents the Holy Bishops. Indeed, my brothers and Sisters in Christ, Patriarch Pavle is a living ikon of the Christ-like Innkeeper, who cares for all the wounded souls in need of healing and forgiveness.

On July 22, 2001, I had the sacred honor to co-celebrate the Holy Liturgy with Patriarch Pavle, when he made a visit to Pittsburgh. Never before have I met a Hierarch so totally focused on worshipping the Holy Liturgy! It was as if I were in the presence of Christ Himself! When, during the Great Entrance, and the serving priests were assigned to carry the miters of the several Hierarchs, this sinful priest rushed to grab the one of the holy Patriarch. I cannot describe in words what joyful sadness I experienced within my heart: joy, because I held the crown of a saintly Bishop; sorrow, because of the realization that I was filled with sin and unworthy to have literally seized His Holiness’ Miter from the Holy Altar Table.

At the end of the Holy Liturgy, His Holiness offered a homily in Serbian. Although I have absolutely no knowledge of the Serbian language, the Patriarch’s words caused spontaneous tears to flow from my eyes to such a great extent that I began to sob! I know that those Spirit-filled words, which were totally unintelligible to my brain, brought healing and living Water into my wounded and parched soul!

During the meal that followed, I went up to His Holiness (who has a Theological Degree from the University of Thessalonike in Greece) to greet him on my Spiritual Father, Geronta Ephraim, and Gerontissa Theophano and her Sisterhood. After blessing me, His Holiness patted my sinful head; and my heart overflowed with joy!

I think that one of the main reasons that I wept during today’s Gospel, was from recalling a story that someone had recently told me — an event in which the Samaritan’s holy compassion was incarnated by the words and actions of His Holiness. When he was the Bishop of Kosovo, he was brutally and severely beaten by a young Muslim man. So intense was this beating, that the frail Bishop almost died; and was in the Hospital for a few months. Upon his dismissal from the Hospital, the then Bishop Pavle went to the prison where the young man was incarcerated. He told the one who had almost killed him that he felt he needed to go home to his parents; because they needed him!

Then he called the warden of the prison and demanded the young man’s release. When the warden refused, Bishop Pavle told him, ‘I have nothing against this young man; and I will not speak against him. Therefore, you must release him now!’

What true Christ-like love, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ — love which bore a very special fruit: the young man was soon Baptized into the Orthodox Faith!

From that glorious day in the Summer of 2001, I have entreated the Patriarch’s holy prayers everyday! Now that his soul is in Paradise, may our All-Merciful Lord Jesus grant him the grace to be His Good Samaritan to all of us — healing the wounds in our souls, and giving us the grace to – at least in some small way – become vessels of compassion to our wounded brothers and sisters.

BLESSED PATRIARCH PAVLE, PRAY FOR US!

Sinful priest, +Demetrios

Father Pat’s Pastoral Ponderings

 

Among the evils associated with the sin of murmuring (arguably the vice most often condemned in Holy Scripture), first place probably goes to the disposition of murmurers to feed the grievances of one another.

Fred and Ralph, for example, may entertain very different grievances against George. Perhaps Fred thinks George too flamboyant, whereas Ralph considers him overbearing. As long as Fred and Ralph don’t meet and talk about George-as long as the two of them just murmur individually-George can probably handle the problem. Kept separate, these two sources of complaint have only an accumulative force-let’s say, seven plus seven. It may be the case that George can handle an accumulated complaint calibration of fourteen.

Suppose, however, Fred and Ralph get together, and the discussion somehow turns to the subject of George. We may construct their conversation as follows:

“Say, Fred, what do you think of George?”

“Oh, George is a very fine gentleman, Ralph, and a real prince of a guy, even if he strikes some folks as a tad flamboyant.”

“Yes, George is a sterling character, an ace of a fellow, which is why people overlook it when he gets a bit overbearing on occasion.”

“Well, that’s how it is with flamboyant people, isn’t it? They don’t know when to stop. Flamboyance leads to an inflated self-image. Before long it can really get on your nerves.”

“That is the truth of the thing. I don’t know many people as nerve-wracking as George. I can hardly stand him.”

“Yep, let’s face it: That George is a real creep. Especially with his bad breath, it’s a wonder he has any friends.”

“Name one. I can’t think of anybody who likes George, or admits it. The jerk has absolutely no redeeming qualities.”

Yep, that pretty much sums up George.

Now this is how it goes when murmurers congregate. The trick of virtue here is to keep Fred and Ralph apart, because the inference of their conjunction is not accumulative, but squared. Their combined number is not fourteen, but forty-nine.

There is a clear example of such a conjunction in Holy Scripture. I am thinking of the marching and camping arrangement of the Chosen People in the desert. According to the Book of Numbers, the tribes of Gad, Reuben, and Simeon marched and camped on the south side of the Tabernacle (2:10-16). The tribe of Reuben, which occupied the middle position, was thus placed adjacent to the Levitical family of the Kohathites, which marched and camped between the Reubenites and the Tabernacle (3:29). As it turned out, this physical proximity proved to be dangerous for some of the Reubenites and Kohathites.

For starts, each group had its own complaints. The children of Reuben, Israel’s first-born son, felt unjustly demoted when Moses gave the position of leadership—on the east side of the camp—to the tribe of Judah (2:3). Two Reubenites, named Dathan and Abiram, especially murmured about this.

Their physical position in camp, moreover, put them right beside the Kohathites, who were nusing a grievance of their own. These murmured that another Levitical family, the family Aaron, was accorded the dignity of the priesthood and were placed to the east of the Tabernacle. One of the Kohathites, a certain Korah, was especially incensed about this.

Unfortunately for all these murmuring individuals, they talked with one another—and compared notes—about Moses and Aaron.

Perhaps neither group, by itself, would have become openly rebellious to the Lord’s appointment, nor did they rebel for a long time.

In due course, however—perhaps when they realized none of them would reach the Promised Land alive (14:28-29)—they began to feed one another’s sense of frustration, finally undertaking a desperate and disastrous rebellion. They all came to a very bad end (16:1-35).

When earth and fire devoured those confederate murmurers, the event simply revealed, for all to see, their actual spiritual state. As each disgruntled element fed on the other, they were both finally consumed. This is what murmurers do. -Fr. Patrick Reardon