these days

"My father, my father. The chariots and horsemen of Israel."

I am now under the omophor of His Eminence, Archbishop Demetrios. This can only mean that my bishop has entered into his repose. The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has named his Exarch as Bishop locum tenens over our little, unassuming diocese.

With a few helpers today, I moved the bishop's throne to the side and in front, and shrouded it in black: near, of course, the icon of St. Nicholas, his patron saint.

If you drive up the steep Cable Avenue to the St. John the Baptist Orthodox Church in East Pittsburgh, you will see our new church sign with the icon of the Forerunner and our name. They asked me if I wanted a place to put messages. I said no, as I would run out of clever things to say in a month and a half.

Then you would see our tall thin temple, built out of native yellow brick topped by five small golden cupolas. 

It's different now. Long strips of black cloth drape the two entrances. Small, taciturn signs announce the cancellation of our weekly pirohi sale.

Other signs say why.

* * *

Lent is here, and juxtaposed with it is our forty days of mourning.

Mourning for a bishop who fell asleep on the 28th anniversary of his consecration as an Orthodox bishop ... on the Sunday of Orthodoxy ... at 3:00 pm, the very time of day when our Lord said "It is finished" on the Cross.

Our forty days will end at the conclusion of the St. Basil's Vesperal Liturgy on Holy Thursday. On Holy Saturday, I will change the black bunting into white.

* * *

He died in honor and humility.

He left us lesser -- we who wanted more.

We wanted his Metropolitanate to stretch on indefinitely, naive children we, skipping and playing marbles and scotch while the world spun from noon to twilight.

"I cannot see you."

"That's because it's dark."

"Is this what the adults call night?"

* * *

This is a good death.

My poor Reader, pray for him, he's an AA counselor, and on the same day as the Metropolitan fell asleep, he pled with one of his many phone counselees not to go through with his suicide plan.

My Reader, who is tenderhearted despite his hard life, had to hear the shot from the other end of the line.

He's been up ever since, praying akathists, helping me at the Metropolitan's parastas, warding off the echos of the sounds of a bad death that brings no peace.

It is a miracle that Reader Douglas is still here: the routes of his heart bypasses look like an urban map. Today, he's going in to the hospital. Once again, I don't know how it will go.

Now, Vladyka, pray for your Reader that you tonsured, pray for peace.

This is a good death.

* * *

At Our Sons Diner a few years ago, after his first bout with cancer, he and I went out for a breakfast that was just like him -- wholesome and complete, good and substantial, not effete. No cassock. Even the top button of his black clergy shirt was unclasped, the white tab protruding about half an inch out of his collar.

He is laughing, in this cerebral recording of mine, his eyes twinkling, telling me what I want to order.

That is how it always was with him at the table. "You want this ... yes, you do. Here's some soup, it's good for you. You don't know how to make it right: I do."

A stream of blue-collar retired steelworkers with their wives came stomping in from the Roman Catholic Mass that just let out next door. Every single one of them stopped by, got his blessing, telling him which number to play on the PA Lotto, telling him how glad they were to see him back at Our Sons.

A blue collar bishop.

A bishop who knew how to pray and laugh.

Who could make soup.

Who told you what you wanted to order.

Who did not stand on his office, but did not hide it.

Who knew -- scratch that: who knows -- Jesus.

"It's good for you," he says, in echoes from sunny days in Johnstown.

* * *

God, I will miss him.

I have no problem whatsoever with commemorating Archbishop Demetrios. His yoke, I know, will be easy and his burden will be light.

But you see, I have to transfer the particle that represents Metropolitan Nicholas from one side of the Lamb to the other in the Proskomedia, our service of Preparation on the Oblation Table before the Liturgy. 

I will do that for the first time soon, on Soul Saturday, between his funeral and his burial.

I would like to put this off, because I do not want to list his name amongst the departed.

With them, now, he is, but then it will be tangible. Undeniable. Undismissable.

I will have been pushed out of television and into fact.

The adult world will have broken in.

* * *

These days.

These days are the in-between.

On one side of yesterday, we heard the news of death: and on the other side of tomorrow, we will see it face to face. There will be the last kiss, the absolution, the pouring of the oil and the covering of the head. The intonation of Vicnaja Pamjat, the closing of the casket and the tolling of the bells, the lines of black robes and purple stoles, the clouds of incense, the myriad of faces streaming, the long corridor to the light outside.

I know there's life after death, but these days, that is not the question.

Is there faith after death?

These days, in this sad interregnum, that really is the question.

* * *

I think, frequently, of Elisha watching the chariot swing low, and then up again, his prophetic father carried in a choreography of uncreated light.

He cried out: "My father, my father, the chariots and horsemen of Israel!"

Meaning, I think, that Elijah was all the hope the people had, and when he left, they had none.

I am watching Nicholas go like Elijah. He will be acquainted with the heavenly glory, because he practiced for it in Orthodoxy all his life, and I am sure he has seen it, on occasion, in vision.

I am sure, now, that since his vision is constant, then he can pray without distraction.

So I am deeply persuaded that he will pray for us, a simple and humble diocese. He will pray for another blue-collar bishop who knows his Carpatho-Russian people and their neighbors. He will pray that we remain faithful to our Mother Church and to the witness God has prepared for us from the Carpathian Mountains to these American lands. He will pray that we keep plain chant alive, and that we keep pinching pirohi, that our mission churches will thrive and that our young people keep waking up in Light and Life at our Camp and in our parishes.

That our life will be in Christ, that theosis will translate in ponasemu, our language of the hills and folk melodies transfigured into the eight tones of eternity.

I think he is praying even harder. 

His smile is wider.

He knows, in God's Light, what's good for us.

Even in these days.

Comments

[David and Cheryl Dutko and family]

Your reflections brought tears to my eyes.

As you know, my family and I knew and loved His Eminence as well as anyone and we share in your recollections and remember anecdotes of our own. ....

You wrote, "He will pray for another blue-collar bishop who knows his Carpatho-Russian people and their neighbors. He will pray that we remain faithful to our Mother Church and to the witness God has prepared for us from the Carpathian Mountains to these American lands. He will pray that we keep plain chant alive, and that we keep pinching pirohi, that our mission churches will thrive and that our young people keep waking up in Light and Life at our Camp and in our parishes."

I know with the certainty that only our faith can impart to us, that he is not alone in those prayers.

Together with the brave pioneering priests who formed our little diocese, united with his parents and his beloved spiritual mentors Fr.Irenaeus Dolhy and Fr. Joseph Maczkov from Perth Amboy, his Bishops - Orestes and, yes, John...Fathers Molchany, Yurcisin, Zeleniak, Sopoliga and others and his dearest priest friends, Father Stephen Sedor and my dad, Father Stephen Dutko, with whom he would love to swap 'tall tales' about the old days and sing songs from the heart extolling the Blessed Mother, kraiju and their beloved prostopenije - they are all praying for us and with us.

I sense the end of an era tracing its roots back to the first Sobor of delegates in Pittsburgh so many years ago who gathered as the Committee for the Preservation of the Eastern Rite and who had the courage to face Rome, ignore Moscow, and stand up for the rights that had supposedly been granted under the union of Uzhorod but which had been ignored by Rome when our people came to these shores.

Thus it is altogether fitting that we shall pray and commemorate the Exarch of the Ecumenical Throne as our 'locum tenens' during the coming months as it was through the kind, loving and patient embrace of the Ecumenical Throne that this small, disparate and disillusioned group of Greek Catholics came under the Omophorion of the Patriarch and back home into the Orthodox Church.

Well done, good and faithful servant of the Lord, Vladyko Kyr Nikolai. You have fought the good fight, you have run the race and you have kept the Faith. Eternal be your memory. Vicnaja Jemu Pamjat.

[Elizabeth]

Please know that many many are praying.

[Sr Margaret]

Reader Douglas has my small prayers.

[Elizabeth]

How poignant and beautifully writte, Father.

My sinere condolences on your sad loss, and may His Eminence's Memory be Eternal....

My prayers for you and your parish, and for Reader Douglas.

[FrGregACCA]

What Elizabeth said.

A saintly bishop is a precious treasure.