Volume 54 No. 1 Winter 2019
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The Path of Orthodoxy The Official publication of the The Serbian Orthodox Church in North and South America
The Serbian Orthodox Church
1219-2019
JUBILEE YEAR Celebrating 800 Years of Autocephaly
Inside •
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VOLUME 54
NO. 1
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WINTER 2019
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A Conversation with Professor Dr. Milos Kovic
3 Editorial 4 5th Sts. Sebastian & Mardarije Institute 7 In Memorian: V. Rev. Proto Stavrofor Kotorcevic 8
News
9 Meditation on the Sunday of Orthododoxy By Metropolitan Nicolae, Romanian Orthodox Church 11
A Modern Lent By Fr. Stephen Freeman 17 Orthodox Christian Catechism
With the Blessings of the Episcopal Council
The Path of Orthodoxy The Official Publication of the Serbian Orthodox Church in North and South America Editorial Staff V. Rev. Milovan Katanic 1856 Knob Hill Road, San Marcos, CA 92069 Phone: 442-999-5695 frmilovan@hotmail.com
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V. Rev. Dr. Bratislav Bratso Krsic 3025 Denver Street, San Diego, CA 92117 Phone: (o) 619-276-5827 (c) 619-316-2362 FrBratso@aol.com
Разговор са професором др Милошем Ковићем
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COVER: The Icon is the artwork of Alesandar Zivadinovic from St. Sava Church in Phoenix, Arizona
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Monastery Zica
Winter 2019
V. Rev. Thomas Kazich P.O. Box 371, Grayslake, IL 60030 Phone: 847-223-4300 tkazich@owc.net Technical Editor Vesna R. Meinert The Path of Orthodoxy is a quarterly publication and is available in PDF format at www.serborth.org. Letters to the Editor are welcome. All letters and manuscripts submitted for publication must be signed and contain the author’s name and address and maybe edited for purposes of space and clarity. Material must be submitted via email in MS Word format. Business Address: P.O. Box 883, Bridgeport, WV 26330 Email: webmaster@serborth.org
A Conversation
with Professor Dr. Milos Kovic The Holy Assembly of Bishops, in their comminuque at the conclusion of the regular spring session in 2018 announced the 800th Anniversary of the Autocephaly (independence) of the Serbian Orthodox Church, which will be commemorated during the following year. On that occasion we conducted the following interview with Professor Milos Kovic, associate professor at the University of Belgrade School Of Philosophy.
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henever we celebrate a great historical event, such as the 800th anniversary of the autocephaly of the Serbian Orthodox Church, we always recall the historical individuals and conditions of that particular time. Can you describe those for us? It is in our nature to view historical circumstances and individuals from the perspective of our era and in them easily recognize those things, which remind us of our own time. However, oftentimes we do not grasp just how much the past is different from the present. This, in the first place, refers to the middle ages. It truly is not that simple for us today to seek out the meaning of events and the way people thought in that ancient epoch, and to stop measuring it to the criteria of people from the 21st century. Thus, historians recognize in the past diversity and discontinuity, but they also notice similarities and an uninterrupted flow. There are also unusual, lasting phenomena, which, despite the flow of centuries, do not essentially change. The Serbian church, whose 800 years we are now celebrating, is one such amazing example. We need to carefully consider the intentions and actions of St. Sava within the context of the historical circumstances of that time, but also to not neglect the long-lasting durability and vitality of the Serbian Church as his work, as well as the cult of Saint Sava, which has lasted for eight centuries. From the previous founding of Hilandar, the monastery for the Serbian monks on the Holy Mountain, the creation of the cult of St. Simeon and the subsequent work on the acquisition of independence for the Serbian church, we see a clear intention to preserve, shape and even fulfill a special Serbian identity within Orthodox Christianity. In the following centuries, the Serbian Church continued his work, cultivating the cults of St. Sava and St. Simeon, and celebrating new Serbian saints. The leading Serbian medievalists once again, like in the period before the World War II, began calling the autocephalous Serbian church a “national” one. They also stress the role political circumstances played in enabling the success of St. Sava’s mission in Nicea in 1219. That time in history in which independence was acquired was marked by the conquest of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204 and the dominance of the Roman Catholic West in the Balkans and the Levant. In the Serbian lands it was much more Venice than the Crusaders. Through a drama very similar to the one played out in Byzantium, the “Serbian Land and the Littoral,” as it was then called, had already passed in the time of the Roman Catholic, Austro-Hungarian and Papal occupations (1202-1204 / 1205), carried out by the hands of Vukan. In the Hagiography of St. Simeon, Stefan the First-Crowned says that his brother “will bring the tribes of the land to his home land.” He claims that, after he was overthrown and expelled, “the oath and prayers” of his father, Saint Simeon, “brought me back to my homeland.” Stefan the First-Crowned was a patriot, as is clearly seen, but also a statesman, a “realpolitician,” as we say today. He recognized the power of the West with the marriage of Ana Dandolo and the acquisition of the papal royal crown. The structure of the state in the East, however, was modeled after the symphony of the Emperor and Patriarch, which was fulfilled by the church’s autocephaly. St. Sava, the Serbian Church, and with them the spiritual life of the main part of the Serbian people turned to Orthodoxy, the Byzantine East, which at that time seemed to be defeated and completely destroyed. This duality and the final decision are evident in the double baptism of their father, Saint Simeon. In addition, the Nicean Empire, which was struggling to preserve continuity with Byzantium, needed any support they could find in their conflict with the Latins, but also with the rival Despotate of Epirus. The Archbishop of Ohrid, Demetrios Chomatianos, who acted on the part of the Despotate of Epirus and did not conceal his hostility towards the Emperor of Nicea and the patriarch, saw the autocephaly of the Serbian Church as a threat to his rights and accused Saint Sava for having an excessive “love for the homeland.” Continued on P. 14
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Conversation with Dr. Milos Kovic continued from p.
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We need to carefully consider the intentions and actions of St. Sava within the context of the historical circumstances of that time, but also to not neglect the long-lasting durability and vitality of the Serbian Church as his work, as well as the cult of Saint Sava...
Saint Sava was consecrated as the The spiritual and civil life of the Serbs first Archbishop of “all the Serbian and would be regulated by the rule of law of Littoral Lands” in Nicea in the year Saint Sava, based on the canons of the 1219, and upon his return he selflessly Orthodox Church and Roman-Byzantine worked at organizing the church and law. The Serbian-Slavonic redaction of the teaching the Serbian people. The fruits Old Slavonic language, suppressed by the of his apostolic and (Gospel) enlightLatin language in the West and tolerated ening actions are evident and visible in the dioceses of the Ohrid Archbishoptoday. Can you please tell us something ric, became the universal norm of Serbian about the organization of the dioceses at culture and liturgical life. This symphony that time and the relationship between of church and state, founded by the Saintly church and state? father and his brothers, the Archbishop The unusual durability of his work, and King, later to be canonized as Saints, the Serbian Church and with it the spiritual would mark the history of Serbia during orientation of the Serbian people, truly the time the Nemanjić era. When deserves our reflection. This is all the more the kingdom became an empire the interesting when we take into consideration patriarchate would be established. how many terrible and great wars were The Nemanjić era would always be fought, how many countries Serbs lived remembered as the golden age and in and how many empires fell in the past the ideal in future centuries to come, eight centuries. Yet, Sava’s autocephalous when Serbs would lose their state and archbishopric filled the “Serbian Land when they remained, living in foreign, and the Littoral” with the Orthodox Faith, heterodox empires. Historical sources which was united by his father and defended and expanded into a kingSt. Sava, however, in establishing new dom by his brother. The western boundaries of dioceses in the region of his, as he the Sirmium, Raška and wrote, “homeland,” moved the borders Prizren dioceses of the autocephalous Ohrid Archof Orthodoxy westward, beneath the bishopric were at that time walls of the Roman Catholic coastal the borders of Orthodoxy. The Serbian land had been cities. a place of encounter and conflict between Constantinople and Rome for centuries. St. Sava, however, in establishconfirm that the causes for the fall at ing new dioceses in the region of his, as he that time would be sought in the era of wrote, “homeland,” moved the borders of Dusan, Uros and Mrnjavcevic, Lazar Orthodoxy westward, beneath the walls of and Brankovic, in their abandoning the Roman Catholic coastal cities. When the testament of “our holy fathers,” St. he founded the Zeta and Hum Dioceses, Sava and St. Simeon. the Roman Catholic bishops withdrew Throughout its 800-year history from Ston to Korcula and from Trebinje the Serbian Orthodox Church to Dubrovnik, to the island of Mrkan. has always been with the people West of the old Ohrid dioceses, located in since the people, in fact, are the living Ras, Lipljan and Prizren, he founded the church – the people of God. There were dioceses of Dabar, Budimlje and Moravica. times when the Church was persecutBetween the old centers of Ras, Nis and ed, desolate, restricted in its teaching Prizren, he founded the dioceses of Toplica activities, but there were also periods and Hvostno. The Roman Catholic world, when it enjoyed freedom. Today, at least with centers in Bar and Dubrovnik, would externally, the Church in Serbia - with be part of the history and culture of the the exception of Kosovo and Metohija Nemanjić state. The dynasty and the state, and perhaps other regions of the former however, chose their path with Saint Sava. Yugoslavia - have freedom and can
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carry out their evangelical mission. Is that freedom merely superficial and are we, in reality, sacrificing our inner, that is, spiritual freedom for the sake of the external? The “Serbian lands” were destroyed, afterwards medieval Bosnia, the country of a complex but dominantly Serbian identity. Serbian nobility was exterminated and expelled. The writers and experts of the Serbian-Slavonic language died out. The symphony of church and state disappeared. The church, however, survived it all. Firmly placed among the people she preserved
the Orthodox faith, the Serbian cults and traditions. For centuries she gathered Orthodox Serbs, second-class subjects on the soil of other countries, the Islamic Ottoman Empire, the Roman Catholic Habsburg Monarchy and Venice. The Patriarchate of Pec, however, from 1557 until 1766, worked on renewing and strengthening the Serbian cults and traditions in a wide region of land, which Constantine
Porphyrogennetos, already in the 10th century, referred to as Serbia. When the Patriarchate of Pec was finally abolished, when there were clear signs of despair and mass corroboration, in the uprisings and wars of liberation, the Serbian states were restored, Montenegro and Serbia, in which the free Serbian church was restored. Montenegro would remain a theocracy, the last flare of the Patriarchate of Peć, all the way until the death of Metropolitan Peter II Petrović Njegoš. The Serbian Church would remain administratively divided, just like the Serbian people, until the unification and liberation within the Yugoslav state. Together with the Serbian people the Serbian Orthodox Church was united and the Patriarchate of Pec restored. In the Yugoslav state attempts were made to reduce the consequences of corroboration, created in the centuries spent under foreign rule. In order to preserve and consolidate the multinational and multiconfessional state, and incorporate it into the flow of “modern,” “western” cultures, the Serbian elites consciously ignored the Orthodox, ecclesiastical roots of the Serbian national identity. In that, solely secular crucial, historians interpreted also the national history. In communist Yugoslavia the Serbian elites would, under the guise of similar explanations and for the sake of orienting themselves to the “Orthodox” East, and then from 1948 and onwards to the “modern” West, even turning against their own Church and heritage. When Yugoslavia was destroyed the first time, Serbs were divided into different states and subjected to genocide. This was repeated in our time, with the destruction of the second Yugoslavia. Even the ethnic cleansing of the Serbs from Krajina to Kosovo and Metohija was not the end of suffering. Serbs in Croatia today live under enormous pressure and serve as examples of social mimicry and corroborations are all the more common. In Kosovo and Metohija they are literally reduced to ghettos. In Montenegro they are assimilated into a new, Montenegrin nation, established during Tito’s dictatorship. It’s similar in Macedonia. In all of these countries only the Serbian Orthodox Church has remained with the Serbian people. Even in cities and villages where Serbs were exterminated, in Krajina and Kosovo, brave deacons and priests live with their families and serve the services. For this reason the Church is attacked on all sides. Even her relationship with the state of Serbia is complex. Currently, the authorities of Serbia are proposing a “border
partition with the Albanians,” which would leave the largest part of Kosovo and all of Metohija, which includes the Patriarchate of Pec and all the Serbian holy sites and all the people there, subject to Greater Albania. Naturally, the Serbian Church, together with the majority of the public, does not accept this. The government tries to blackmail the church by using all forms of its attachment to the state. All this rehashes the old, basic question of the relationship between the church and state. The Serbian Church has lived for centuries in foreign, at times openly hostile states, from the Ottoman Empire to the Third Reich and the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). She even confronted the Serbian state. We recall, for instance, the conflict between
I often say: all we need to do is be who we already are. We are the people of St. Sava, St. Simeon and the Holy Prince Lazarus. Metropolitan Mihailo and the Austro-phile regime of King Milan Obrenovic or the resistance of Patriarch Varnava to the draft of the Concordat of Yugoslavia with the Roman Catholic Church. How much are the present-day historical frameworks in which we find ourselves essential factors for the continuation of the (Gospel) Enlightenment work in Serbia and beyond? Are they conducive to this work and what challenges do we have in relation to those that Saint Sava had in the thirteenth century? I think that Metropolitan Amphilohije of Montenegro and the Littoral was correct when he said that this age is beginning to resemble the world prior to the Edict of Milan. It is closer to the syncretistic
Hellenistic era during the late Roman Empire era than the pious Middle Ages of Saint Sava. In the once Christian Europe and Northern America not only is atheism in force but an increasingly anti-Christian atmosphere as well. Media figures are proud of things decent people would hide, but that’s why they hide their Christian orientation as if it were something to be ashamed of. Critique of Christianity is considered a sign of emancipation and intellectualism while the critique of other religions is deemed as racism and xenophobia. In the last few decades, churches in the West have seen a rapid decline of the faithful and so they borrow various forms of cultural manifestitations. People are struggling to acquire material goods and pay off credit. The Internet and television is filled with unnecessary information and programs of violent and scandalous content. Their will has been weakened by medication and narcotics supplied by the all-powerful pharmaceutical industry. And worst of all is the systematic destruction of the traditional family. The space for different forms of culture, for religion and traditional religions has been narrowed. Every form of resistance in the public realm, which is under the control of super-wealthy and all-powerful liberal elites, is called “clericalism,” right or left “populism,” racism, homophobia.... These trends in Serbia are mimicked in very often tragicomic ways. That which in the West has already provoked ridicule and resistance, the quasi-elites in Serbia are accepting as the latest fashion and culture. Consumerism, materialism and hedonism, imported from the West, have devastating consequences in Serbia. Nothing is produced there anymore - neither children, nor great ideas, nor material goods. Its demographic collapse is most dangerous, caused by the decline in childbearing and the migration to the West. It is similar in Republika Srpska. The conservative Serbian land has become a typical colony - a market for sub-prime goods and a source of cheap labor. I believe that many solutions, including the problem of the demographic decline, can be found in the renewal of traditional spirituality, which presumes a readiness for sacrifice, a rejection of egoism and living for others. For Serbs this means the renewal of the Testament of St. Sava and Kosovo. The Orthodox faith and way of life represent the only alternative model, rooted deeply in our experience
Continued on P. 16
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Conversation with Dr. Milos Kovic continued from p.
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and culture, which can offer answers to the most difficult questions and to withstand the challenges of the modern world. A large number of the Serbian population today finds itself in the Diaspora. More specifically, we who live in the United States of America where new parishes are still being established, churches built, the Serbian language and traditions nurtured and, most importantly, Svetosavlje is preserved and spread, that is, our Orthodox Faith as experienced by the Serbian people and taught by our first enlightener St. Sava. Looking back at the past, the experience, temptations, sufferings, hardships, the ups and downs, and looking towards the future, what can we do in order to remain faithful to Svetosavlje and to become new zealous workers in the Lord’s Vineyard and in our new homeland where our children are being raised, where they are inevitably under the influence of other cultures and people? Our long history offers us many lessons. Migrations and Diasporas represent an integral part. In the great, powerful and foreign empires, such as the Ottoman or Habsburg, Serbs have continued on over the centuries without their own country, thanks to their Holy Church of St. Sava. Only those Serbs that remained faithful to their Church and Faith survived. Those who withrew themselves from such communities, for whatever reason, by either the first or second generation dissolved into the waters of the ruling religions and fashionable ideologies. Another important condition is the Serbian language. To the children born in the Diaspora or raised there, knowledge of the language opened the doors of a higher, national culture making it easier to get to know the homeland. Of particular importance is that the language skills allow them to meet compatriots and peers, among whom they can choose their life companions, of similar backgrounds and value orientations. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to spend more time with children; the American lifestyle, which consists of working from morning to night, is based on the fact that our children are raised by the media, schools and their peers. It is a very complex equation but I know many Serbian families in North America and Western Europe that have been very successful in solving it.
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Viewed historically, what does the 800th anniversary of the autocephaly of the Serbian Orthodox Church really man? What are the key elements that the youth can understand, accept as their own and continue to, upon them, to build on themselves and future generations of Serbian faithful in the Diaspora? A young person living in the US and sensing that his existence is not merely to collect or cling onto material goods, looking from the Pacific to the Atlantic coasts
at the churches dedicated to Saint Sava and Saint Simeon, to saints who lived a full 800 years ago, will surely ask himself: How is it possible for a nation to preserve and cultivate the cults of its saints for such a long time? How is it that his Serbian Orthodox Church has survived for 800 years despite all the sufferings throughout such a turbulent history? Putting the church’s old age to the side, does it have anything to say to contemporary man and the meaning of his life? I believe that posing such a question is the beginning of a journey in the right direction. It can also be stimulated through an aesthetic experience of spiritual music, icons and frescoes. I think, as a beginning, young people in America might be attracted to works of
high culture, such as literature or musical arts of Orthodox orientation, which are recognized in the West such as, for instance, the works of Dostoyevsky or Tchaikovsky. There are also the works of great, modern homilists and spiritual fathers who were able to convey modern life in the West such as Alexander Schmemann, Anthony Bloom (Metropolitan Anthony Sourozh) or presently Timothy Ware (Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia). Then I would return to what is the Serbian Orthodox heritage of America. The lives of St. Sebastian and Saint Mardarije are closer to their American and Serbian experience than the lives of medieval Serbian saints, even though it is, naturally, of vital importance to read Serbian history and to reside in Serbia. Finally, St. Bishop Nikolaj, in many ways belongs to the history of Serbs in America. Thanks to his western experience and his broad, world perspective, the great works of St. Bishop Nikolaj, addressed to the Serbian reader, deal with the most important topics of today’s world and in many ways exceed Schmemann and Bloom. He offers answers to the deepest questions of meaning and transcendence which young people pose in the most sensitive years of their development. And finally, it is said that history is man’s best teacher. In that respect, what has history taught us Serbs and in what way can this “teaching” help us in the future, more specifically, the celebration of the 800th anniversary of the autocephaly of the Serbian Orthodox Church? In my opinion, this celebration should, at a time of general uncertainty, bring self-confidence and a kind of new spiritual self-awareness. We need to know the world and rejoice in it, but we need to meet again with ourselves, with our ancient traditions, memories and history. To discover whom we are instead of trying to resemble someone else. There are not many nations and churches that can boast of such an anniversary. I often say: all we need to do is be who we already are. We are the people of St. Sava, St. Simeon and the Holy Prince Lazarus. Dr. Milos Kovic (born in Sabac, 1969) is a Serbian historian, associate professor at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade. His research interests are International Relations (at the end 18th century - beginning of the 20th century), History of political ideas (at the end 18 century beginning of the 20th century).