Memory Eternal to His Holiness Patriarch PAVLE

Your All-Holiness Archbishop of Constantinople and Ecumenical Patriarch, Your Beatitudes, Your Graces Archbishops and Bishops of the Church of Christ, Holy Assembly of the people of God,

“You are the light of the world. The lamp that is set on a hill cannot be hidden...”. These words of Christ our God, dear brothers and sisters, are directed to His followers, as a calling and, at the same time, as a truth which over the two thousand year history of the Church of God has been proven numerous of times. One of the life-bearing witnesses to the truth of these words of the Lord rests here before us, his face turned towards eternity, towards the eternal Heavenly Kingdom, as the immeasurable measure of both his life and of the lives of all people from all nations throughout the world.

All of you gathered here today around him are witnesses that this truly humble, quiet man, who through no coincidence was given the name of the Apostle of the people, Pavle, was transfigured into a light for the world and has become that lamp which stands on the hill; also witnessing to this were the tens and hundreds of thousands of people who rushed these past days as a river around his beir, that they might only touch him and see that heavenly rest and peace shining from his reposed image.

The words that Patriarch Pavle of blessed repose spoke himself are clearly being fulfilled: “When a man is born, the whole world rejoices; only he cries. But people should live their lives in such a way that when they die all the world will cry, but they will rejoice.” And truly, had not this man of God Pavle lived a life worthy of his human and Christian calling, how could it be that so much sadness fills this city of over a million residents and even throughout the world? All the more strange is that this all-encompassing sadness is not simple mourning at the loss of someone whom we loved, but it becomes here and now a joyful sadness, a sadness which brings us joy. Sadness because we are parted, but joy because we feel and know that he whom we have lost and who is leaving us, remains with us and among us; remaining, through the Holy Spirit, much more present to us than he was before. when he was alive, when he dwelt and walked among us.

This is and always has been the paradox of the life of true and righteous people: with their departure they not only remain with us, but they become all the more present in our lives, becoming the measure and the criteria of our time and the events of this life.

How can we explain it? How shall we explain the life of Patriarch Pavle? The first and foremost explanation: young Gojko Stojcevic, a monk, a priest, Bishop Pavle, was, like all other truly righteous men and women before him – one who always did that which he said. Above all, this man who is departed before us was a man of deep and firm faith in the Living God present in His Church, that is, of the kind of faith which acts because “faith without works is dead.” In a God-like way, he took his words and turned them into his deeds, giving an eternal and permanent meaning to his actions.

Speaking and preaching the Gospel, Patriarch Pavle incarnated the Gospel, the good news of life eternal, in his own life; he became a walking Gospel, becoming the good news to all people. With his faith and his life according to his faith, he showed the truth of the words of Theophilus of Antioch: “Show me your man, so that I may show you my God.” The heavens preach the glory of God but nothing and no one is in the state to witness the true existence of God and the truth about God, as much as is a true [and righteous] man. In the continuous procession of those who approached the Patriarch these past days, I heard an answer to a question posed by a girl of why this is happening: “Because he was a man of high morals and great respect.”

The words of Patriarch Pavle were gentle while his testimony was strong; what's more the most powerful proof of the truthfulness of his words was his life. For, according to the words of one of his holy predecessors: “Every word has it's anti-word; it is only to true life that nothing and no one can be opposed.”

Patriarch Pavle is a man of active, work-producing faith and spiritual struggle [podvig] and, subsequently, a man of faith in the true God – to his death. In his person, according to the words of the holy prophet, mercy and truth met, righteousness and love embraced. He knew that the evil in men cannot be healed by our own evil, and he lived his life accordingly. “The righteousness of God” of the mother of Jevrosima was the measure he used in his relations with his own people and with others with no discrimination. With that same love, he loved both the people entrusted to him by God and all other people, and in each person he saw as an image of God and God's creation.

Patriarch Pavle judged no one, he only reasoned with them, respecting everyone's freedom. A sober-minded knower of human nature, he never yielded either to his own, nor to the vices, delusions or self-love of others. His entire life was spent trying not to be a burden on anyone. Everything he was and everything he had – he gave to others, in a natural way and unobtrusive way, seeking nothing for himself...

With his selfless and meek way of life, more than through his words, this Holy Elder of the Church of God, roused inside of us these past few days the hidden goodness, a God-loving and brother-loving spirit, in the thousands of souls who recognized and saw in him as he lay in his coffin their closest relative, their brother, father, friend, who will never forget them or leave them.

I wondered during these past two years about his weakness in his old age and his being constrained to a hospital bed: Why? Why did God allow such a temptation to come upon him? At the end of this year's feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, his birthday, I found the answer: It was in this that his Christ-like and Christ-bearing life reached its fullest measure. Namely, if during his enire life he tried to preach and teach and comfort people, it was with his suffering and his illness that he quietly took part in the pain and suffering of those who suffered alongside him at that hospital. Trying his entire life to be “God's co-worker,” he, in the end, was crucified alongside Christ and carried that cross of his neighbors, of those suffering with him.

He was crucified alongside Christ so that with Christ he might resurrect into the joy of His Lord.

May the Lord God grant to His faithful servant and our father, Patriarch Pavle, eternal rest in His Kingdom for which he lived and yearned all the days of his life: the Kingdom of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.