As Dying, and Behold We Live
In the 1760s, a Hieromonk of Mount Athos, with simplicity in faith, with great fervor and love for his enslaved brothers of our nation, would open another chapter in the modern Ecclesiastical History of Greece, introducing the presence of monasticism in contemporary missionary work.
It was that ascetic yet simultaneously filled with boundless love, figure of Saint Cosmas of Aetolia, who would fill the villages and cities of our homeland with hope. His identity as a monk of Mount Athos did not prevent him from helping and preaching the faith to the enslaved nation, supporting and comforting the people from the pain of Ottoman slavery, cauterizing the people’s estrangement from the Church, like the prophets of the Old Testament, preaching repentance, patience, and faith to the suffering Hellenism, contributing greatly to the education of our enslaved people, and saving the language from impending extinction or at least from alteration and oblivion.
The most important of all, of course, was that he would reach a martyr’s end, for the application of this love toward his fellow human being, which is the highest that can be offered, according to the Gospel word, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
Regarding his additional missionary calling, he used to tell the brothers of the Monastery the following:
“Hearing, my brothers, this sweetest word that our Christ says, to care for our brothers as well, that word was eating inside my heart for so many years, like the worm that eats wood, wondering what I could do considering my ignorance… Therefore, I left my own progress, my own good, and I went out to walk from place to place and teach my brothers.“
While in another passage:
“Let Christ lose me, one sheep, and let Him gain the others. Perhaps God’s compassion and your prayer will save me too”
(teachings, Saint Cosmas of Aetolia, Teaching A4).
How much courage must one have to say such a thing? It reminds us of that great saying of the Apostle: “For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh” (Rom. 9:3).
But have we ever considered what extensions such a statement has? The Apostle tells us to be ready to undergo even this extreme devaluation and not only that, from our Lord Himself for the salvation of our brothers. To accomplish the salvation of our fellow human beings. Why? Because then our hell will become our Paradise through Grace and Divine mercy. The Saints knew well that every hope of our salvation passes through love and self-sacrifice for the salvation of our fellow human beings.
This love will reach death many times. But we will never face death: “as dying, and behold we live” (2 Cor. 6:9). It will reach discipline and hardship, sorrow, poverty, complete deprivation. But we will always be alive, close to Christ, “as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things” (2 Cor. 6:9-10).
My beloved brothers, although the difficulties of recent months are insurmountable, although my sorrow and anxiety have risen to a maximum degree, as the general situation, both in the world that the Lord has assigned me to serve, and globally, is now characterized by uncertainty and insecurity, I am with your prayers, in the struggle, and hope remains unquenchable and undiminished.
But above all, my love and yearning to see our Diocese prosper and grow with the Grace and mercy of the Triune God. Then, when I see this first stage of the foundation of our Diocese completed, let me close my eyes in peace. This is the great and indescribable joy of Missionaries. This expectation, then, is what transforms within us into a celebration over time and waters us with the hope of the Lord, which is the “manna” of the Mission, but also of every person on earth.
Many seek to see a miracle to believe, but when the human mind has secured the valves of entry to the signals that the whole world around us emits daily, then as a natural consequence, we are led to wrong conclusions.
The world around us is a miracle, the like of which, in these billions of years of our planet’s life, the human mind has not yet witnessed. Our earth, each person separately is a great miracle, infinitesimal in size within the universe, but inconceivable in wisdom, in the way of its construction but also in the way of its wondrous survival. But even greater is the miracle of a person who comes to our faith. Of a person who repents and finds their way.
Our churches are filling day by day. I have said many times that the work of founding our newly established Diocese and later its development is not personally anyone’s and certainly not mine. We leave our hands and by extension our whole existence to be directed by the divine will. It is this that will establish and develop our work and not our own labor.
With these thoughts, I share with you my joy that we have completed our first Church of Saint Anna and Saint Catherine, but also my even greater joy and satisfaction that we are beginning the construction of our second Holy Temple of Saint Athanasius and Saint Lazarus.
We do not have much, but with these few things that you give us and divine mercy, we journey and move forward looking at the next day and not today.
Saint Cosmas used to say, that it is preferable to have schools, rather than fountains and rivers, because the fountain waters the body, while the school waters the soul. I would like to ask your love, those who can contribute to the construction of our first school which will be dedicated to Saint Nectarius, please do not hesitate to contact us. A school gives life to the Church, while the Church gives spiritual education to the children.
I warmly thank the Orthodox Missionary Fraternity, for the love and support it provides to our struggle, but also each one of you personally, who with your personal mite contributes to the creation and realization of the miracle:
A new Orthodox Diocese is being born in the heart of Africa. A new Sun rises in the darkness of a world that we are just getting to know and that is getting to know us.
Have a good and blessed Lent.
Bishop Polycarpos of Bunia
