Byzantine Blog

The Only Just and Righteous Judge

Holy Gospel teaches us the sacred and salvific truth that, at the only just and righteous Judgement, that of the Lord, every man will give account for all of his deeds and transgressions.

Therefore, there is no such thing as a collective responsibility and especially no collective guilt exists in any sense.

The one who charges the entire Serbian nation as guilty of being evil is rejecting both the Christian understanding of a man, and the main premise of the human society's democratic structure.

After all, it is well known how the Jewish people in recent history paid for the notion of its alleged collective guilt: with over six million innocent lives. If victims from Russian and Polish nation and other Slavic nations -- among them, us, Serbs -- as well as victims from many other peoples in Europe and the world at the time were added to this terrifying number, that is when one truly feels the mystic horror of ideological misconceptions and political madness.

Forgetful Mr. Ahtisaari

Serbian Orthodox Church would have been deeply saddened and concerned if any nation were to be charged with the collective guilt, but especially when we learned this has been said for Serbian people which constitutes the greatest majority of our Church's faithful.

Even greater alarm and bitterness was brought upon Serbian Church by the fact that such qualification of the Serbian people came from no other then Mr. Martti Ahtisaari, the high representative of the international community. This is the person that is supposed to, impartially and constructively, facilitate the Serbian-Albanian negotiations in the name of United Nations, with a goal of reaching a reasonable compromise about the future status of Kosovo and Metohija - the arrangement that should morally, legally and in terms of sustainable life be acceptable to both sides.

Obviously discarding the neutrality and objectivity, seemingly forgetting there are no colonies and colonial governors in the modern-day Europe, Mr. Ahtisaari offered such statement as a justification for his position that Serbia's spiritual and historical heart, Kosovo and Metohija, should simply be confiscated. Indeed, he is not the first to nurture such presumption about Serbian nation -- he only joined the lengthy list of its advocates. Is it necessary to recall the numbers of all the innocent victims with which the Serbian people has paid for such notion through countless death-fields, during its recent and more distant history?

Never Again

We believed such words will never again be heard in Europe -- not even during the war, let alone in peace -- and especially not from a United Nations representative sent to the mission of peace and reconciliation. Those who reach for these kinds of presumptions in 21st century are confirming once again that might and right are irreconcilable opposites. This is where the verses of the greatest Serbian poet, Bishop and Cetinje Hermit are eternally relevant:

A wolf claims his right to a sheep -
as the tyrant to the weak;
But to step down on tyranny's neck -
that is the holiest duty of the Man.

In the same way, the Russian proverb teaches us that God is not in might, but in truth and right.

Let us never forget: Christ defeated lies and death by the Holy Cross. The triumph of the Good, of the Light and Love He has sealed with Resurrection -- His Own and ours.

The Archbishop of Pec, the Metropolitan of Belgrade-Karlovci and Serbian Patriarch, Pavle