Our St. Herman of Alaska Monastery in Platina, California joined the Serbian Orthodox Church in 2000. Since then, we were blessed to meet several times with His Grace Bishop Atanasije. In 2006, I went to his monastery of Tvrdoš near Trebinje, Hercegonia, where he received me graciously and spent a good amount of time talking with me, struggling with his “Tarzan English,” as he called it. In 2009 I was again in Trebinje, this time with my parents and their kuma, Radmila Tarailo, who grew up in that city.

In 2006, a spiritual son of Bishop Atanasije, His Grace Bishop Maxim, was enthroned as our Diocesan bishop. Before Bishop Atanasije’s repose, Bishop Maxim was able to bring him twice to America, and on one of those trips Bishop Atanasije visited our monastery.

Bishop Maxim’s eulogy at the funeral of his spiritual father touched on the key aspects of Bishop Atanasije’s life and personality. The elder hierarch had given himself over totally to Christ, and he breathed the spiritual atmosphere of the Church. He was a great Churchman who understood that our Orthodox Christian Faith must touch and infuse all aspects of our lives.

To my mind, Bishop Atanasije was, first of all, a Liturgist. This was not because he possessed great knowledge of the Divine Liturgy and had written a voluminous work on the subject. Rather, it was because he lived the Liturgy. His life outside of the church building was liturgical, in that he consciously had Christ before him. Likewise, his life inside the church building was essentially the same as his life outside.

In his eulogy, Bishop Maxim noted that his spiritual father’s actions were viewed as contradictory or paradoxical by certain people. These people would murmur about the bishop doing unexpected things during a Liturgy. They did not understand that, for Bishop Atanasije, the celebration of the Liturgy should be dynamic and living, not static.

At times during a Liturgy, he would give lessons on the meaning of what was happening. The lessons were brief, so as not to interrupt the flow of the Liturgy, which he valued highly. For example, I recall that at one Liturgy, with priests gathered around the altar table, he explained why the antimens and eiliton are folded so that they first open on the left side. Texts in the Hebrew language, he said, are written from right to left in horizontal lines. This explains why Hebrew books open the opposite way that ours do — since we write from left to right horizontally. By teaching us this, Bishop Atanasije showed us one more instance in which are our Orthodox liturgical practices are rooted in the practices of the Jews of the Old Testament.

Our monastery received a good taste of Bishop Atanasije’s unexpected behavior when he served a Liturgy at our monastery. He was joyful, even buoyant during the service, but there was one thing that bothered him: our “bishop’s throne.” At the time, we had not begun ordering church furniture from suppliers in Orthodox countries, so our “throne” was nothing more than a large wooden armchair in the traditional style. At first, before the Liturgy began, Bishop Atanasije told us to move the armchair from the high place in the altar, so we set it aside and provided a smaller chair instead. Later, when the Epistle was being read, he looked over at the offending armchair and told us to take it from the altar area entirely. Immediately we carried the large chair out the side altar door and set it next to the church.

Bishop Atanasije’s reaction to the chair might seem excessive to some, but it had its effect. One of the first things I did after becoming abbot was to order an Orthodox bishop’s throne from Romania.

Another instance of his “paradoxical” personality occurred when I first visited Tvrdoš Monastery in 2006. It was great Lent, and a Presanctified Liturgy was scheduled. In informing me about the upcoming service, Bishop Atanasije said something to the effect of, “The Presanctified Liturgy is not really a Liturgy, but … we have it [i.e., as part of our tradition].” From this statement, one might draw the conclusion that Bishop Atanasije did not properly value this part of our tradition. However, such a judgment would only be according to appearances, and not righteous judgment (cf. John 7:24), as could be seen by what happened next. At the Presanctified Liturgy, I recall only the serving priest, Bishop Atanasije and myself being present (the monks were obviously at their obediences). His Grace stood at the north side of the church, staff in hand. The priest celebrated the service, and Bishop Atanasije was the choir, singing in his deep voice, which filled the monastery church. He sang and chanted all the parts of the Liturgy that were not said or chanted by the priest. Amazingly, the venerable bishop did not have a reading stand in front of him, nor did he have a book at hand. He sang and chanted everything from memory, or “by heart,” as we say in English. The English idiom is quite apt here, since Bishop Atanasije did not merely remember the hymns and prayers; he had internalized them in the closet of his heart (cf. Matt. 6:6).

Some years later, when Bishop Atanasije visited America, I served at another Liturgy at which he was the chief celebrant. As was my wont during hierarchical Divine Liturgies, I was flipping through my service book, trying to keep pace with the service so as not to make a mistake when it was my turn to say an Exclamation, etc. Seeing me do this, His Grace said to me, “Less book.” This counsel, I knew, arose from his belief that the Liturgy should be a living celebration, not something that is served by rote. The celebrant should at least be able to say parts of the Liturgy “by heart.”

In sharing my reminiscences of Bishop Atanasije, I would like to add a few more incidents that may be of interest to future biographers. The first occurred during my first visit to Trebinje in 2006. As I recall, it was after I gave a talk on the co-founder of our monastery, Fr. Seraphim Rose, at the St. Justin of Ćelije Center on March 11. I was seated at a table, having dinner with Bishop Atanasije and some believers who had attended the lecture, when it was reported to us that the former prime minister of Serbia Slobodan Milošević had just died in his prison cell in the Hague, having been on trial there for five years. Bishop Atanasije’s comment was terse but loaded with meaning: “Milošević was bad, but those who put him on trial were worse.”

The second incident is illustrative of Bishop Atanasije’s theological acumen. Once, during one of Bishop Atanasije’s visits to our Diocesan Cathedral in Alhambra, California, I asked him a question that had arisen while editing a book on marriage and virginity, namely, “Does marriage between a man and a woman continue forever?” For most Orthodox Christians, the answer to this would be a definitive “no,” since our Lord said Himself that “they who shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage” (Luke 20:35); and this teaching was upheld by the Holy Fathers. Nevertheless, there are some Orthodox Christians who advocate for eternal marriage, quoting as evidence the words of the Orthodox service of Holy Matrimony, after the Crowning, in which the priest asks God to receive the crowns of the newly married couple into His Kingdom.

Thus it was that I asked Bishop Atanasije about eternal marriage, and specifically the idea that the receiving of wedding crowns in the Kingdom is a mark of this. After my question had been translated for him into Serbian, the bishop said in his booming voice, “No! The crowns represent the couple’s faithfulness to each other.”

I had never heard this before. I understood the crowns to represent crowns of martyrdom, since marriage, like monasticism, is a kind of martyrdom. But I had never heard Bishop Atanasije’s explanation, which does not negate but complements the symbolism of martyrdom. Later, when I checked the text of the Marriage service, I saw clearly why Bishop Atanasije had said that the crowns represent, first of all, the faithfulness that the husband and wife show toward each other. In the text of service, the words in question read as follows: “O God … receive their crowns into Thy Kingdom, preserving them spotless, blameless, and without reproach, unto ages of ages.”

Of course! All one has to do is read the words with attention, without inserting one’s own opinions, and the meaning becomes clear. The prayer that God preserve the couple “spotless, blameless, and without reproach” refers to sexual purity, which is found within an honorable marriage.

When meeting a visitor from the United States, Bishop Atanasije would often introduce himself by saying, “I’m an Apache!” He also did this with children. Seeing dark skin and long hair, it’s likely that more than a few of these children believed him. Behind the humor, however, lay a deep love, respect, and admiration for American Indians, which he shared with a great many of his fellow Serbs. Both Serbs and American Indians suffered hundreds of years of injustice at the hands of Western European occupiers (in the case of the Indians, the earliest occupiers were immigrants from Western Europe), and they both fought valiantly and bravely, even when it looked like all was lost, in order to preserve their freedom, culture, and identity as a people. For both peoples, this fight necessarily meant a struggle for their ancestral lands, which they regarded as sacred.

One of Bishop Atanasije’s most beautiful and profound essays is entitled “The Land of the Living.” A biblical allusion to the Holy Land of the Jews (Psalm 26:13), this phrase was cited by Bishop Atanasije in reference to Serbia’s sacred land of Kosovo, which was taken from the rest of Serbia after the NATO bombing campaign in 1998-99. Providing comfort to his people in the face of this loss, Bishop Atanasije indicated that “the Land of the Living” is also a symbol of the Heavenly Kingdom toward which we all strive. A people’s sovereign land — the place where they can live in freedom — is a gift from God, and by it and with it they are called to reach the eternal Land of the Living, that God may be all in all (cf. 1 Cor. 15:28).

Viewing the destiny of peoples from this spiritual point of view, Bishop Atanasije recognized the affinity between his people and Native Americans. When a group of students from the seminary at the Patriarchate of Peć, Kosovo, visited our monastery, I spoke to them about an outreach to Native Americans that our monastery and Diocese are sponsoring. When Bishop Atanasije’s name came up in our discussion, the seminarians told me that he regarded the American Indians as martyrs.

Bishop Atanasije was not one for formalities; posing and fakery were foreign to him. I remember him telling a humorous story about traveling with a psychologist and his wife. This psychologist always spoke

with a calm, even, measured tone, which one might expect from an expert in human behavior. During the car ride with his wife and Bishop Atanasije, however, he got into a heated argument with his wife. “Congratulations!” the bishop said to the psychologist, “You are now a man!”

When he taught at the Sts. Sebastian and Mardarije Institute that our Diocese regularly sponsors, Bishop Atanasije told the assembled priests that he did not like people calling him “Your Grace.” To him, it sounded too formal; Orthodoxy is life, and we are all one family in Christ. Therefore, he told us to call him “Father Bishop” instead. After this, the priests started calling him “Father Bishop,” which made him smile with a bit of amusement.

He was indeed a “Father Bishop” who looked after the Church and the things of God with all the care and concern of a loving father. At the same time, for us here in the Western American Diocese, he was our “Grandfather Bishop,” since our “Father Bishop” Maxim was the spiritual son of our “Grandfather,” Bishop Atanasije. The bright flame of his love for Christ and His Church shines brightly within our hearts, lighting our path toward the glorious Kingdom where we hope to dwell with God forever.

Abbot Damascene
St. Herman of Alaska Monastery
Platina, California
March 23, 2021