Metropolitan

In mid-December, Metropolitan Amfilohije returned from a one-month canonical visit to the diocese of the SPC for South America, which he personally administers. It has been several years since he devoted his missionary attention to our distant relatives, the descendants of those of our compatriots who left these parts a century ago and settled in Argentina, Uruguay and other South American countries. The Metropolitan's impressions of these relatives of ours say that their Orthodox identity, their national self-awareness, was reduced to "the remains of the remains" and that the second decade of the 21st century was the last time, the so-called. the final moment, for the departure of Orthodox missionaries from Montenegro - among them. Among them who are largely assimilated, both linguistically and culturally and spiritually. That church work and the attempt to unite the local Orthodox community and strengthen it in the faith of its ancestors is a great spiritual feat. It is a work that has been awaited for more than half a century. In that part of the world, the metropolitan appointed his assistants: in Argentina Archimandrite Kiril Bojović (former professor of the Cetinje Theological Seminary and assistant of mathematics at the University of Montenegro), priests Esteban Jovanović, a native Argentine (formerly from Ćeklić) and Branko Stanišić (from Bjelopavlić); in Brazil, priest Marko Obradović (completed seminary of Cetinje seminary); in Ecuador, hieromonk Rafail Čeprnić (from Boka Kotorska)...

One would say that this job is difficult, almost impossible... but Metropolitan Amfilochia seeks and loves such jobs. In these days, when we celebrate the 25th anniversary of his episcopal service in Cetinje (he was enthroned on 30 December 12) and three decades since he was ordained as a bishop, we can be free to conclude that he is characterized by the choice of demanding jobs and the choice of those works that they seem unattainable. Njegoš, his predecessor on the Cetinje episcopal throne, cried out and wished that "whatever cannot happen", described Obilić, the hero of Kosovo, as a man who rushed at the enemy "despising human nothingness and the machinations of a mindless assembly". I would say that these two thoughts of Njegoš (both of which are sung and retold biblical verses) determined Bishop Amfilohi's actions. More precisely, his character and his understanding of serving God fit nicely into those thoughts, like passwords and commandments that had to be fulfilled.

This is not an opportunity to list everything that this Montenegrin metropolitan did and achieved, and we know that he did a lot for the church life of Montenegro. Namely, he is still very actively working. It is, however, an opportunity to look at his work and qualify it as brave. It is a work that serves God and does not seek compromise with the changing human reasons. I made sure that he never sought a compromise either for himself, or for what would be convenient for him at the moment, or what would be easier for him as a person. The Metropolitan's choice is always related to God's Truth and to the action that would show that Truth to the world as soon as possible and as clearly as possible.

The apostle Paul's warning that "the form of this world is passing away" is eternally above his head - which means that there is not much time to wait, but also that we should not be slaves to the forms and fleeting opinions of this world. Namely, they pass and change very quickly... and God's Truth is immutable.

And it is not only Amfilochius's departure to South America that is so brave, but also many other initiatives that he initiated, which, at first, seemed unfeasible. Many who listen to his sermon and see what he does glorify God because of it, and there are also those who do not understand his work. This is, to a large extent, due to the fact that these others, first of all, do not understand God, whom the metropolitan preaches. Christ defied that physical and historical fact of the Cross. The facticity of the Cross was reduced, before Christ, to certain death and imminent destruction, but the Lord saw further and revealed more than that. Following such and such a God, Amfilohije did not retreat before the fact of the nakedness of the Myošići glacier, but he persisted until the irrefutable fact that the Cathedral of the Resurrection in Podgorica is the only temple in Orthodoxy that was jointly consecrated by the patriarchs of Vaseljenski and Moscow! Following that God, Amfilohije renewed the work of the Cetinje seminary in conditions when there were no conditions for it! And so, without conditions (?!), until today, 19 generations of theological graduates, over 350 of them, have graduated from that renovated school... Without conditions, the work of the church radio Svetigora was started, without conditions the litia was renewed in Rumija, and so many, many other litia in every major Montenegrin city...

Nowhere in the solar system, and not even in the wider universe, are there conditions for life. Consequently, there shouldn't be any on this planet either. And yet, miraculously and beyond all human logic, life flourishes here.

Metropolitan Amfilochius serves that life and the One who established it here. Sometimes, miraculously and often, beyond all human logic.