A
message from Bishop John Elya
Annunciation
Cathedral
2-20-00
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A
message from Bishop John Elya Annunciation
Cathedral 2-20-00 |
Few years back, I wanted to encourage a well-known Melkite family to have a family reunion and to start the reunion in church. Indeed the parish is the extended family, the family of families. St. Paul writes “from God the Father every family in heaven and on earth is named.” (Ephesians 3:15) Family members strengthen the bond of love and solidarity among themselves when they meet in church or in the presence of God. I offered to celebrate the Divine Liturgy in memory of their parents who had passed away a long time ago. The matron of the family said: “Our parents died a long time ago. They should be in heaven by now. Why do they need our prayers?”
I
told her: “Your parents don’t need your prayers
by now. But they deserve your praise.”
We remember our dear ones in our prayer, not necessarily to get them out
of purgatory, but to thank God for all the good memories that we keep of them.
How would you feel, if people remember you fifty years from now and say:
“John or Tom or Rose was a nice person. We thank God for the good life he or
she lived and for all the good things that they achieved.
The world is a better place to live in, because of them.”
As
we celebrate the first anniversary of Archbishop Joseph, we, his spiritual
family assembled in his Cathedral, thank the Lord for all the good memories we
keep of him. I remember telling him when we celebrated his sixtieth Anniversary
of priesthood in 1996: “Dear Sayedna Joseph, you have been for sixty years the
gift of God to His Church of Antioch, but especially to His Church of Newton in
the United States.”
For twenty years, from 1970 to 1990, Archbishop Joseph, Sayedna Joseph, as we called him dearly, served and organized and inspired all of us. He set our Melkite Eparchy on the firm foundation of tradition and dedication. As his successor, I feel as the prime beneficiary of the great strides in which he led his flock in the field of renewal and progress. He made my task easy, because of the clarity and immensity of the task; yet the undertaking was not as easy to fill his shoes. All I had to do in the past six years is to carry on and refine his pastoral vision and his ecumenical dream. Antar, the legendary hero of Arab folklore, said in one of his bragging poems:
“If I send my sword, even with a coward,
With my prestige he would
face the raging lions.”
Every
morning, during the daily Liturgy, I remember Sayedna Joseph, as if he was still
present and “concelebrating” through the internal sound system, while lying
on his bed of suffering. The
Troparion (special hymn) of St. Nicholas Patron of our Eparchial chapel, sung
every day as a part of the Divine Liturgy, describes him perfectly:
“O Father and
Pontiff Nicholas, the holiness of your life was set before your flock as a rule
of faith, an example of meekness and a teaching of temperance; wherefore you
acquired greatness through humility and spiritual wealth through poverty.”
“The holiness of his life”
was inspiring. His teaching through his talks to the clergy, and especially his
courses on Liturgy, Eastern Spirituality and the Fathers of the Church to the
deacon candidates in the Diaconate Formation Program was certainly a
rule of faith in words and in deeds. His example
of meekness was unparalleled and his temperance
was without reproach. His unassuming humility
made him great and his life of poverty made him spiritually wealthier than the
millionaires. He loved us and we loved him in this Cathedral of the Annunciation
where he used to celebrate faithfully the second Divine Liturgy on Sundays and
on the major feasts. Even when he was bed ridden during the past five years of
his life, he enjoyed coming on Christmas and Eastern to “preside” from the
sanctuary. I imagine him looking down from heaven on our celebration today and
blessing those who used to assist him while sitting right there on the right
side – Protodeacon Paul, Abe Zeinieh, Foad Haddad, Abou John Nassar and
others.
We
pray that God may help us to live up to the high standards Sayedna Joseph has
set for us as he served us for twenty years as our Archbishop and for six years
as suffering his slow death for us. We
relied on his teaching and his good example while he was with us.
Now we rely on his prayers and his blessing, as he enjoys the company of
the Apostles and the saints. May
his memory be eternal.