His Beatitude, Metropolitan Tikhon and the delegation accompanying him on his official visit to the Orthodox Church of Poland, at the invitation of His Beatitude, Metropolitan Sawa of Warsaw and All Poland, participated in the annual Pilgrimage to the Saints Martha and Mary Monastery, Grabarka, Poland on Saturday and Sunday, August 18-19,. 2018.
Metropolitan Tikhon and the delegation from the Orthodox Church in America that includes His Eminence, Archbishop Benjamin, Archpriests Alexander Rentel and Daniel Andrejuk, Archdeacon Joseph Matusiak and Subdeacon Roman Ostash, arrived at the monastery on Saturday, August 18, where they were greeted warmly by Igumenia Hermiona.
“It is wonderful to be here at the well-known and revered Holy Mountain of Grabarka, and the monastic community of Saints Martha and Mary,” said Metropolitan Tikhon in response to the warm welcome he and the delegation received. “We look forward to celebrating the Great Feast of Our Lord’s Holy Transfiguration with you, the sisters of this monastic community and all the pilgrims.
“Together with His Eminence, Archbishop Benjamin and the other members of my delegation, we have arrived here also as pilgrims, although maybe not as tired as the others,” Metropolitan Tikhon continued. “While we haven’t traveled with large crosses to plant here, we have arrived with the prayers of all of our clergy, monastics, and faithful of the Orthodox Church in America. It is our hope that our prayers, joined with the thousands represented by the crosses here, will be pleasing to our Lord, and that he will bless, protect and transfigure our hearts and our minds to better serve him and all those who seek comfort in His Holy Church.”
Located near Siemiaticze in eastern Poland on what is known as the “Holy Mountain,” the monastery attracts thousands of pilgrims from across Poland and beyond, many of whom walk from their home towns to Garbara carrying crosses. The mount is covered with thousands of crosses embedded in the ground by pilgrims in years past, especially in the immediate vicinity of the monastery’s main temple, which is dedicated to the Transfiguration of Our Lord. The annual pilgrimage is Poland’s largest.
On Saturday evening, Metropolitans Sawa and Tikhon, together with Archbishop Benjamin and the members of the Holy Synod of Bishops of the Polish Church, concelebrated the festal All-Night Vigil.
On Sunday, August 19—the Great Feast of the Transfiguration—Metropolitans Sawa and Tikhon presided at the celebration of the festal Divine Liturgy. At its conclusion, Metropolitan Tikhon presented an icon of Saint Herman of Alaska to Metropolitan Sawa and a pectoral cross to Igumenia Hermiona after offering formal greetings to his hosts. In turn, Metropolitan Sawa presented an icon of the Transfiguration to Metropolitan Tikhon, who addressed the gathering.
At the conclusion of the Hierarchical Divine Liturgy, Metropolitan Tikhon and the OCA delegation were feted at a luncheon, during which Metropolitan Tikhon especially congratulated Metropolitan Sawa on the recent celebration of his 80th birthday. [The texts of both addresses are available below.]
Official Greeting of His Beatitude, Metropolitan Tikhon to His Beatitude, Metropolitan Sawa
Saints Martha and Mary Monastery, Grabarka, Poland
Great Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord
Sunday, August 19, 2018
Your Beatitude, Beloved Brother in the Lord and Concelebrant:
It is a profound joy to greet Your Beatitude on this Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord Jesus Christ during the annual pilgrimage to this Holy Mountain of Grabarka. Since my arrival here yesterday, through the beautiful All-Night Vigil service and the Divine Liturgies offered to Our Lord and Savior all throughout the night, I have experienced in a very real way the light of the Transfiguration of Christ. Throughout the night and today, during our concelebration of the Divine Services, I could see and feel that light burning in the hearts of all the people gathered here. Truly this is a testament to the holiness of this place, to the faithfulness of the believers gathered here, and of the fatherly love with which you had so skillfully cultivated a life in Christ within the vineyard given to you by our Lord.
By virtue of the autocephaly granted us by the Church of Russia, the Orthodox Church in America understands herself to be an indigenous, multi-ethnic, missionary Church, laboring to bring Orthodox Christianity to all citizens of North America. We live as other self-governing Churches do: electing our own bishops and Primate, maintaining inter-Church relationships with all the other Churches, as well as bearing the yoke of responsibility to Your Beatitude, the Church of Poland, and all the other autocephalous Churches, so as to continue open and regular communication, to become familiar with the life of the local Church, to exchange delegations and to make reciprocal visits of pilgrims, students and youth. Of course, the foundation for this relationship, and what binds us together, is our faith in Jesus Christ and our communion in the Holy Eucharist, which whether we be Polish, Belarusian, American, Ukrainian or Mexican, unite us all as common members of the Body of Christ.
Through our concelebration, by standing together before the Holy Altar, we bring to God both Poland and America. Together we ask God for the wisdom and grace to bring the Word of God to our societies and our world. As two of the youngest autocephalous Orthodox Churches, we find ourselves as minorities in countries which, while having strong foundations in Christian faith and culture, are now experiencing the challenges and struggles of an increasingly secular world. East and West no longer have meaning when it comes to that secular world. Increasingly we are subjected to the same secular culture, the mono-culture. The Church has always had an ambiguous relationship with the cultures and societies within which she sojourns. The tension between the broad ways of the world and the narrow path of the Gospel is often intense, and made more acute by various political, economic, and philosophical currents that make it even more difficult for the Church to articulate a genuinely Christ-centered position on the issues of our day. The difficult question is how to address these issues as Orthodox Christians without first being swallowed up by predetermined and rigid public opinion.
In today’s Gospel, reading we heard the words of the Apostle Peter, “Lord, it is good for us to be here.” Peter, James and John experienced the light of Christ on Mount Tabor. Today, here at this Holy Mountain of Grabarka, we have experienced the joy and the strength that comes through our unity, as a body in Christ, and it is through this experience that we are reminded that the entire historical existence of the Church is founded on experience—the experience of God and His Glory, the experience of life through martyrdom and the experience of healing through struggle. We look to those who have entered this experience—the saints, martyrs, confessors and ascetics—and today we look to each other, for the struggles we share are common to us all, and thus demand from us a common solution. Your Beatitude, we know that it is good for us to be here today.
Your Beatitude, I would like to wholeheartedly express my admiration for what is happening today in the Church of Poland. Truly the world beholds a Church that has been revived and is full of life. Through the great witness of the monastic life, which has grown a hundred-fold under Your Beatitude’s leadership, the creative and God-pleasing work being done for the youth, and the seriousness with which Christian Education is engaged, the Orthodox Church in Poland is transfiguring the world around it to the glory of God.
I would like to convey to all of you the love and blessing from all the bishops, monastics and faithful of the Orthodox Church in America. And I cordially wish you to go from strength to strength. As an expression of our prayers, I am pleased to present to Your Beatitude this icon of the first saint to be glorified in North America by the Orthodox Church in America: the Venerable Herman of Alaska. May God, through the prayers of Saint Herman and of all the saints of North America, protect, keep, and bless the Church of Poland.
80th Birthday Greeting of His Beatitude, Metropolitan Tikhon to His Beatitude, Metropolitan Sawa
Saints Martha and Mary Monastery, Grabarka, Poland
Great Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord
Sunday, August 19, 2018
Near to my chancery on Long Island, New York, is the home of our 26th President Theodore Roosevelt. President Roosevelt was a strong, charismatic and fiery leader who knew how to get things done. He was a devout and fervent Christian as well, one who encouraged participation in Church life. He once said, “In the actual world a churchless community, a community where men have abandoned and scoffed at or ignored their religious needs, is a community on the rapid downgrade.”
He, like Your Beatitude, appreciated the place the military has in the exercise of our commitments to mankind, and its ability to keep peace. President Roosevelt, at the start of World War I, was asked what he thought concerning the independence of Poland, something he was a strong supporter of,. He stated his advocacy for an “armed peace.” It was said of him that he was one of the most picturesque personalities to have ever enlivened the landscape. I don’t often think about President Roosevelt, but in my preparations for my trip here I could not help but make a connection between our former President and Your Beatitude, because indeed it can be said of Your Beatitude, or Vladyka General, that you too are one of the most picturesque personalities to have enlivened the landscape of our communion of Primates in the Orthodox Church.
Your deep spiritual life as a young man in Zamosc, your dedication and excellence in your studies as a seminarian and later as a professor, your commitment to establishing and maintaining good relations between all the Orthodox Churches, your love for the youth, your well-known and good-natured sense of humor, and your stubborn desire to resurrect the Church of Poland from decades of stagnancy, remind me of something else said of President Roosevelt—that he grew from an “insatiably curious child, to an active young man, and finally, a boisterous revolutionary as a politician.”
So, Your Beatitude, as we this year celebrate your 80th Anniversary and the 20th Anniversary of your enthronement as the Metropolitan of Warsaw and All Poland, I would like to offer this small gift. May God grant you many more years of health, and may our Lord grant you every blessing to continue the heavy yoke of Primatial leadership in these times of great challenge and opportunity for the Church in Poland, for the Orthodox Church worldwide and for Christianity in general.
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Photo Credit: Subdeacon Roman Ostash
