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He dined in that capital city of Montenegro, where, where the strongest Montenegrin separatist movement is, calmed passions, begged, prayed, called for peace and reason, fraternal harmony.
– It is an orthodox municipality in which the Democratic Party of Socialists won as a successor to the communist worldview. However, the Metropolitan loved that city, respected its historical role. That is why he invested in Cetinje. He took every opportunity to purchase an expensive device for the hospital, organized a national kitchen. He brought many prominent people to that devastated little town, which destroyed and closed factories, left people without work, the same people who defended the politics and ideology that fought against the church. The Metropolitan was a humanist, he forgave people. I am a witness of his love for that city, which unfortunately did not know how to reciprocate. I think that the city did not know who was sitting in it and that only, perhaps, future generations of Cetinje citizens will be aware of the importance of the personality of Metropolitan Amfilohije, says Dr. Budimir Aleksić, professor of theology at Cetinje.
HIS friendship with the Archbishop of Cetinje has lasted 34 years, since 1986, when he enrolled in the Faculty of Theology of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Belgrade.
– In his first year, Amfilohije taught a subject called Introduction to Theology. I remember it well: it was seven in the afternoon, as the Bishop of Banat came to the lectures, the classroom was always full of our students and colleagues from other faculties of the University of Belgrade, who came to hear his living word. He was already very popular as an intellectual, participated in numerous forums in the Student City, the Youth Center, the Patriarchate building, participated in book promotions, in many debates, round tables. Wherever he visited, he drew like a magnet intellectuals eager for a living word. His most frequent interlocutors were Nikola Milosevic, Vladeta Jerotic, Dimitrije Kalezic, Vojislav Kostunica, Zarko Trebjesanin, recalls Dr. Aleksic.
ON THE ATTITUDE OF THE ATTITUDE TOWARDS the onslaught of the Montenegrin separatist movement, this professor says:
– Amfilohije was a Serb who followed the Serbian integralist thinking of Njegoš, an inviolable fighter for the unity of the Serbian Orthodox Church and his canonical-legal ancestor who wanted to break certain structures. He always knew how to recognize the true values both in the scientific and professional intellectual fields. It is many of our creators of the social sciences and humanities that he has preserved from oblivion, and even more are affirmed with his blessing.
Even in Vršac, while he was bishop of Banat, he had problems with the autonomous provincial leadership, because in Pancevo, Vršac, Zrenjanin organized public tribunes and lectures on various theological-philosophical and literary topics. He argued with the autonomists who did not choose the means to demonize and marginalize the Serbian Orthodox Church and impede any form of its mission.
PROFESSOR Aleksić also testified about an unusual event that happened in 2013 when they traveled together, with Bishop Kiril and Dr. Aleksandar Stamatović, to Kosovska Mitrovica for a large international gathering, on the occasion of the two centuries celebration of Njegoš’s birth.
– The newly built Serbian church in the northern part of Mitrovica is located on a hill above the city, and to reach it, you have to cross a large climb. The old church of Saint Sava remained in the southern part of the city. The car driven by Bishop Kirilo stopped suddenly on a hill. The bishop stated with regret that all the mechanisms had failed and that it was impossible to continue the journey. He tried to start the vehicle several times, but without success. Turning to the metropolitan, he said we had to go out and call someone, but the metropolitan disagreed with him, but said, “Don’t worry about a thing. Come on, good for me, try again. It will work.” And shortly after that, after he rumbled two or three times, the car “woke up” and we walked up the hill and into the church. Returning to Montenegro, Bishop Kirilo said that the car was being canceled and that we should find another way to get to Podgorica. But the metropolitan spoke again: “Don’t worry, just drive slowly, we’ll get there.” And it really was. When we arrived in Podgorica a little before our destination, the car stopped permanently and could not start anymore, Aleksić says.
Detecting the essence of the problem
The METROPOLITAN in Montenegro faced a, as he himself put it, a brozomor ideology and precisely detected the essence of all the problems he was talking about. He knew what communism and Titoism were. He recognized that the Montenegrin ideology and politics of the outgoing regime had a clear objective not only to dismember and disintegrate the Serbian ethnic space and the Serbian national being, but also to seize the Serbian Orthodox Church and use the 1967 Macedonian scenario to create the his own. “autocephalous church.” They have been working on it for the last three decades. The Metropolitan withstood this with incredible energy, strength of spirit, and strength of canonical and historical argument.
DR Budimir Aleksić also witnesses Amfilohije’s three-decade work on spiritual renewal in Montenegro, and especially on the renewal of churches and monasteries. First, it started on the Sacred Mountain of Zeta, the monasteries on Skadar Lake, which almost all became barns. In this process of renovation, the Zagrađe monastery in Piva occupies a special place.
– I remember that together the then Hieromonk of Ostrog Jovan Purić, later Bishop of Niš and Vicar Bishop of Diocletian, the priest Radomir Nikčević, Metropolitan, the poet Kosta Radović and I visited the destroyed medieval monastery Zgarađe, on Šćepan Polje, at the foot of Soko-grad, the city of Herceg Stefan. That was in 1984. The metropolitan had the highest condition, so although he was the oldest, he was cunning and easily climbed to that great height from which the entire area of the Tara and Piva valleys can be seen. There he made the decision to rebuild the remains of the old great church.
Later, with his blessing, the monks came, now there is Father Lazar and there is a huge monastery complex that is impressive and it is a truly magnificent building. A service was also held in the Šćepanica church in Šćepan Polje, which was still covered with earth during the time of the Turks. In the 1960s, academic Vojislav Korać discovered it and excavated it with a group of archaeologists and art historians. Also here the metropolitan served in the liturgy of the holy hierarch, almost 500 years later. First time.
TOMORROW: ODNJIHAN on popular poetry
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