Hierarchical Liturgy and Anniversary of Bishop Ignatije of Branicevo, Serbia

“Yet a time is coming and has now come” (John 4:23)

Pozarevac, Serbia. The Sunday of the Samaritan Woman (May 26, 2019) was the occasion for spiritual joy for the Orthodox believers from the church dedicated to Saint Paraskeva in Pozarevac, Serbia. The Divine Liturgy was celebrated by local Bishop Ignatije of Branicevo together with Bishop Siluan of the Romanian Orthodox Diocese of Hungary and the Bishop of Dacia Felix, and Bishop Maxim of Western America, and other priests and deacons belonging to the Episcopate of Branicevo.
This service marks the beginning of the celebration of Bishop Ignatije’s 25 years of episcopal ministry.
The liturgical responses were given in Serbian and Church Slavonic by the mixed choir of the church, and the service was attended by many believers of different ages who offered a very beautiful picture of a living parish community.
The word of edification of the day was offered by Bishop Maxim, immediately after the reading of the Holy Gospel. It evoked the joyful significance of the period after the Resurrection of the Lord, in which we find the edifying power of Gospel story on the Samaritan Woman. The bishop emphasized that Christ engages in dialogue not only a woman but a Samaritan woman presenting us with the first example of what we might call today an inter-faith dialogue. Christ suggests a radical movement away from the uncritical adherence to religious traditions and idolatrous preoccupations that split our reality into sacred and secular places.
“Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth” (John 4:23). This Johannine formula invokes the time-difference between the ultimate that is coming and therefore, as expected, is not yet, and the penultimate which is, precisely, the time of this expectation. Yet, St. John invokes it only in order to transcend it in the blatant assertion of the gap’s closing: the ultimate is now (καὶ νῦν ἐστιν), already in the already. Christ’s assertion that the ultimate is here, now, already in the penultimate, makes us uncomfortable.
Bishop Ilarion of Timok was present on the eve of this feast. There is something promising on the horizon from the encounter of Bishops: Ignatije, Siluan and Ilarion. Hopefully, some uneasy aspects of the relationship between Romanian and Serbian Church we be resolved soon.
May God grant many years of episcopal service to Bishop Ignatije!!

Pozarevac, Serbia