Serbian Orthodox Church

Information Service of
the Serbian Orthodox Church
October 24, 2006

ENTHRONNMENT HOMILY
OF HIS GRACE IRINEJ
BISHOP OF AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND

21 October 2006
SYDNEY

IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER AND OF THE SON
AND OF THE HOLY SPIRIT!

YOUR EMINENCES,
MOST REVEREND REPRESENTATIVES OF OUR SISTER
ORTHODOX CHURCHES,
YOUR GRACES,
YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS,
DISTINGUISHED REPRESENTATIVES OF
THE DIPLOMATIC CORPS,
VERY REVEREND AND REVEREND FATHERS,
BELOVED BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN CHRIST OUR LORD:

The great prophet Isaiah, responding to the summons of the Lord, while walking through the valley and seeing about himself his holy flock, the people of God, joyously and with fullness of heart exclaimed: Behold I and the children whom the Lord has given me! (Is. 8:18). And I today repeat those words: Here I am the servant of the Lord! For You have ordained in the Holy Spirit and, in like manner, entrusted my humility with the stewardship of this holy vineyard – The Serbian Orthodox Church in Australia and New Zealand – which You have planted with Your Right Hand. And here, Lord, I shall prayerfully work: plowing, planting, and watering, so that we may together, I and my entrusted children, harvest and find enjoyment in Your sweetest fruit and in the work of Your Right Hand and of our humble hands. For You, Christ, are among us who have gathered in Your Name, and You will be, and remain with us now and unto the ages!

Beloved in the Lord!

Therefore, even I, today, with boundless gratitude to all of my Right Reverend predecessors, standing in your midst as the first among you, in the throne of the Bishops of Australia and New Zealand – myself, being a child of Serbian immigrants, in my journey towards the South, from the West to the East – see you, the faithful pastors and flock of Christ’s Holy Church, gathered around your hierarch, precisely according to the teaching of St. Ignatius the God-bearer, who states: The Church gathers as a community of faithful around their bishop! So also in my heart, I hear echoed the words of the Great Prophet, while at the same time I see opening visibly before my eyes the touching icon of our Holy Fathers, Sava our first archbishop and Simeon the father of our nation, wherein Saint Sava welcomes his father before the Athonite Vatopediou Monastery and receives him in an eternal embrace, for in that eternal moment, a son became a father to his father, and a father became a son to his son.

My most beloved children, rejoice with me, for I have also wholeheartedly accepted you in my fatherly embrace, and pray to the Lord that you have also accepted me, though younger and now first among you, in the warmth of your sincere embrace!

Brother Hierarchs, and Reverend brethren, faithful people of God, Christ-loving assemblage!

His Holiness our Patriarch Pavle has always spoken of and taught us that it is not up to us to determine in which time we will be born, neither into which people we will be born, however how we shall behave, that is up to us. As all peoples are blessed of the Lord, I truly rejoice, take pride in, and am grateful to God for the devout and good people of God, for this Serbian generation, into which I was born and in which I was brought up and in whose Holy Orthodox Faith I was baptized. And as a son of the Serbian Diaspora, I stand before you today, as one among his own, united in the pure confession of Orthodox Christianity as expressed in our local Serbian Orthodox Church. Through our saint and enlightener, archpastor and peacemaker, our Holy Father Sava, together we comprise and enrich each other as a living and continuous expression of the incarnation of Orthodoxy in the one and unique Serbian Church, and in the perfected unity of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

Therefore, it is historically accorded to Saint Sava that he left it to us as an inheritance, through one of his bishops named Irinej, that we are considered to be East by the West and West by the East, while we belong neither to the East nor the West, but only to the Heavenly Jerusalem. With these cited words the fullness of the Way of Saint Sava is understood as an apostolic service from the East to the West, from the North to the South, and even to our Fifth Continent; from Serbia and all of the Serbian lands and dispersion, all the way to Australia and New Zealand!

This is our common and living Orthodox Christian inheritance, and in no way a sealed and isolated lifeless oath. This is our Serbian and Orthodox ethos, our creative might of communion with the world and our unique contribution to the contemporary world, and especially on this Fifth Continent, which is neither East nor West, and which must become in unity, a harmony of elevated emotion, intellect and will power, according to the words of the holy Bishop Nicholai of Zhicha – whose blessing I received while in the womb of my mother, and whose holy presence I feel constantly beside me – who spoke the same long ago describing America: The light of the East and the light of the West will rest at their noon on the continent, which lies between East and West . . . (5 June 1921).

Therefore even we, as a people, in our wholehearted endeavor to define for ourselves a place under this New Sun, in addition to our glorious past, must also see before us a bright future in the New Day of Christ, with the liberating principles of Him who said of Himself: Behold, I make all things new! (Rev. 21:5). And every Christian soul is invited in Christ to eternally renew itself and to reveal in itself the newness of Christian life, for you do not pour new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the skins will burst, the wine will pour out and the wineskins will be ruined. Instead, new wine is poured into new wineskins, and both are preserved (Matt. 9:17). Therefore, nothing by virtue of its being may stagnate and thereby become old, and lapse into the burden of old habits, and in turn into lifeless forgetfulness. And precisely today, I, at the beginning of my new life, of my Archpastoral service to Him who has conquered death and led us into the First Day of the new creation, in the words of the Holy Apostle Paul, exclaim: Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (2 Cor. 5:17). And truly, may this present day, through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos and our holy father Saint Sava, who gave birth to us in Christ, be a new and blessed beginning of a New Life!

And today, celebrating this holy day, which is popularly known as the Lesser Feast of the Protection of the Theotokos, its apodosis, with this enthronement I proclaim this historical first Serbian parish in Australia and its church dedicated to Saint Sava, as the Pro-Cathedral of our God-protected Diocese of Australia and New Zealand. And I wholeheartedly pray: grant us, Mother of God, Mother of our effective salvation – you who have shielded us with your omophorion more spacious than the heavens – the strength to lead this honorable flock of Your Son and our God in this far, and presently close and even closer according to the heart, Australia and New Zealand, on our common sojourn toward the Kingdom of Heaven!

Amen! May God grant that it be so!

[Serbian Translation Services]