Met Andrij Szeptickyj on Pope St. Pius X
Sept 3, 2017 16:48:37 GMT -5
Pacelli and Marya Dabrowski like this
Post by wenceslav on Sept 3, 2017 16:48:37 GMT -5
Since today is the beautiful Feast of Pope St. Pius X, I would like to share this wonderful recollection of Met. Szeptickyj in a letter to his mother regarding the saintliness of St. Pius X . The letter is from the turn of the last century when the metropolitan was still a priest and St. Pius was still the patriarch of Venice. Enjoy!
(Scanned originals at bottom of post)
(Scanned originals at bottom of post)
A Visit With “Brother Beppo Sarto”
My Beloved Mother!
Somehow things have always turned out so that I never really had the opportunity to tell You about my meeting, or more aptly de-scribed, my “evangelic sojourn and friendship,” with that historical personage and genuinely Holy Man on this earth, our own Pope Pius X. In fact, even when the two of us, Mother, were joyfully wel-coming the news that Jesus had chosen Joseph Cardinal Sarto, the Patriarch of Venice, to be His Deputy on earth, I wanted to tell You all about my stay in Venice and my few-days visit to his palace, during the time when I was scheduled to go to Rome.
It was at that time, namely, after being informed that no one had displayed any prior interest in the archives of the St. George’s Mechitarist Monastery, in Venice, where, allegedly, there were sup-posed to be some Slavonic manuscripts or original printings from the XVth century, I, being on my way to Rome, decided to stop over for a few days in Venice. I immediately wrote a letter to Joseph Car¬dinal Sarto requesting him to permit me to visit him, and also ask¬ing his permission to make a cursory examination of the archives at St. George’s Monastery. A week hadn’t gone by when I received a very gracious reply from the cardinal, an open invitation to make myself at home at his residence for as long as 1 might require, and, in addition, a letter of introduction to the Archivist of St. George’s Monastery, Riasophor Benjamin, instructing him to place himself at my disposal. And at the end of the letter there was a short postscript, asking me if I could send him an Italian translation of our Divine Liturgy, no matter whether St. Basil the Great’s or St. John Chrysostom’s. In his time he had been very interested in the Liturgies of the East, he still had copies of some of the Coptic and Melchitic Liturgies, but Italian translations of Ukrainian Liturgies, or rather, of Slavonic Liturgies, he didn’t have.
Fortunately I still had some copies of the Liturgies of St. Basil the Great both in French and in Italian, and even some of the individual
annotations of St. Basil (we had communally translated these back during the days of my studies at the monastery in Dobromyl, during periods free from other duties) and I immediately, appending the scheduled particulars of my arrival in Venice, mailed them off to Cardinal Joseph.
Upon disembarking on the appointed day from the Vienna-Rome Express at the Central Station in Venice (it was already early in the evening), I noticed that some of the passers-by who were waiting for the train kept craning their heads toward a certain priest and calling out their greetings to him, while he, with a rather hurried pace, kept moving from train car to train car. All of a sudden this priest turned and, spotting me, cried out with a loud voice,
“Welcome! Welcome!”
“Your Eminence...-” I began my introduction, but the cardinal rapidly waved his hands,
“No titles! No titles! You are Brother Andriy, and I am Brother Beppo! Come along, come along! My sisters Rose and Hannah have already prepared some refreshments and are waiting for us!'' Brother Benjamin also awaits you, and he has some Slavic text for you.”
I have to confess to You, Mother, that in that holy domicile, though externally it looked just like a patriarch’s palace, 1 felt myself as in Your own home, in Prylbychi. That uncontrived and open-hearted atmosphere, that cordiality, which comes from the heart and not merely from some artificially-acquired etiquette, that simple desire to cater to the guest which Sarto’s sisters were imbued with, and together with all this a complete candor of expression in conversation - all this was directly and movingly human and so completely different from that which 1 had hitherto been regaled with on visits with other prelates and dignitaries.
When our discussion eventually touched, — in view of the illness of the Holy Father, — the unforgettable Leo XIII, with whom, You will remember, Mother, we both had an audience, — on the possibility of the elavation of Cardinal Joseph to the papacy, his sister Rose screamed out with her full voice: “Oh no, Beppo, no. You have enough troubles being cardinal! Do you need more? — which obviously, brought on a wave of general and hearty laughter.
Our conversation dragged on until after midnight, and when the time came to break up, the cardinal asked me,
“And when would you like to celebrate the Divine Liturgy?”
“I generally hold it at six in the morning,” I replied.
“Very good! And would you permit me to serve you at Mass? For I must tell you that I have learned your Slavonic Liturgy by heart. I
was assisted in this by none other than our own good archivist, with whom, thanks to you, I have been furthering my acquaintance. But don’t hesitate to correct me,” — the cardinal continued with his singularly benign and tender smile — “if I, instead of ‘Lord have mercy,’ say ‘To Thee, my Lord.’ ”
“Both of these are equally prayers.”
“Oh no, no!” the cardinal contradicted me, “Jesus Christ prefers propriety!”
The following morning I said Mass in the private chapel of the patriarch’s palace, and Father Patriarch Joseph served me during the Mass with that singular evangelic humility which is the privelege of all Saints. After the Liturgy, and the Benediction, Cardinal Joseph took me by the arm, saying,
“And now let’s go to the refectory and I’ll brew you some coffee, and I really know how to make coffee! Even my harshest enemies, under the leadership of the Doge of Venice, all acknowledge that my coffee is the best! The same thing is claimed by the guard here at my residence, whom I very frequently treat with coffee after his stints of duty!”
Later on, Mother, when I was riding away on the train from Venice to Rome, I spent some time reflecting on the question, what is saintliness? You and I, Mother, during our promenades through the park in Prylbychi, occasionally discussed the many various views of several different philosophers on this subject, but I, in fact, after only a few days’ stay with Father Sarto, finally came to under¬stand that highest Truth, which we sing about in our Holy Day Liturgies: to dress oneself in Christ. Was not the Patriarch-Cardinal of Venice indeed dressed in Christ, brewing coffee with his own hands and then serving it to his inveterate enemy the Doge, or to the guard of his residence, who serves him, or to me, his newly- met guest from the East?
You are Christ’s, Mother, grant me assistance with Your prayers so that I too may come to fully dress myself in Christ!
Your son,
Fr. Andrey
On the Day of Saint Thomas the Apostle
My Beloved Mother!
Somehow things have always turned out so that I never really had the opportunity to tell You about my meeting, or more aptly de-scribed, my “evangelic sojourn and friendship,” with that historical personage and genuinely Holy Man on this earth, our own Pope Pius X. In fact, even when the two of us, Mother, were joyfully wel-coming the news that Jesus had chosen Joseph Cardinal Sarto, the Patriarch of Venice, to be His Deputy on earth, I wanted to tell You all about my stay in Venice and my few-days visit to his palace, during the time when I was scheduled to go to Rome.
It was at that time, namely, after being informed that no one had displayed any prior interest in the archives of the St. George’s Mechitarist Monastery, in Venice, where, allegedly, there were sup-posed to be some Slavonic manuscripts or original printings from the XVth century, I, being on my way to Rome, decided to stop over for a few days in Venice. I immediately wrote a letter to Joseph Car¬dinal Sarto requesting him to permit me to visit him, and also ask¬ing his permission to make a cursory examination of the archives at St. George’s Monastery. A week hadn’t gone by when I received a very gracious reply from the cardinal, an open invitation to make myself at home at his residence for as long as 1 might require, and, in addition, a letter of introduction to the Archivist of St. George’s Monastery, Riasophor Benjamin, instructing him to place himself at my disposal. And at the end of the letter there was a short postscript, asking me if I could send him an Italian translation of our Divine Liturgy, no matter whether St. Basil the Great’s or St. John Chrysostom’s. In his time he had been very interested in the Liturgies of the East, he still had copies of some of the Coptic and Melchitic Liturgies, but Italian translations of Ukrainian Liturgies, or rather, of Slavonic Liturgies, he didn’t have.
Fortunately I still had some copies of the Liturgies of St. Basil the Great both in French and in Italian, and even some of the individual
annotations of St. Basil (we had communally translated these back during the days of my studies at the monastery in Dobromyl, during periods free from other duties) and I immediately, appending the scheduled particulars of my arrival in Venice, mailed them off to Cardinal Joseph.
Upon disembarking on the appointed day from the Vienna-Rome Express at the Central Station in Venice (it was already early in the evening), I noticed that some of the passers-by who were waiting for the train kept craning their heads toward a certain priest and calling out their greetings to him, while he, with a rather hurried pace, kept moving from train car to train car. All of a sudden this priest turned and, spotting me, cried out with a loud voice,
“Welcome! Welcome!”
“Your Eminence...-” I began my introduction, but the cardinal rapidly waved his hands,
“No titles! No titles! You are Brother Andriy, and I am Brother Beppo! Come along, come along! My sisters Rose and Hannah have already prepared some refreshments and are waiting for us!'' Brother Benjamin also awaits you, and he has some Slavic text for you.”
I have to confess to You, Mother, that in that holy domicile, though externally it looked just like a patriarch’s palace, 1 felt myself as in Your own home, in Prylbychi. That uncontrived and open-hearted atmosphere, that cordiality, which comes from the heart and not merely from some artificially-acquired etiquette, that simple desire to cater to the guest which Sarto’s sisters were imbued with, and together with all this a complete candor of expression in conversation - all this was directly and movingly human and so completely different from that which 1 had hitherto been regaled with on visits with other prelates and dignitaries.
When our discussion eventually touched, — in view of the illness of the Holy Father, — the unforgettable Leo XIII, with whom, You will remember, Mother, we both had an audience, — on the possibility of the elavation of Cardinal Joseph to the papacy, his sister Rose screamed out with her full voice: “Oh no, Beppo, no. You have enough troubles being cardinal! Do you need more? — which obviously, brought on a wave of general and hearty laughter.
Our conversation dragged on until after midnight, and when the time came to break up, the cardinal asked me,
“And when would you like to celebrate the Divine Liturgy?”
“I generally hold it at six in the morning,” I replied.
“Very good! And would you permit me to serve you at Mass? For I must tell you that I have learned your Slavonic Liturgy by heart. I
was assisted in this by none other than our own good archivist, with whom, thanks to you, I have been furthering my acquaintance. But don’t hesitate to correct me,” — the cardinal continued with his singularly benign and tender smile — “if I, instead of ‘Lord have mercy,’ say ‘To Thee, my Lord.’ ”
“Both of these are equally prayers.”
“Oh no, no!” the cardinal contradicted me, “Jesus Christ prefers propriety!”
The following morning I said Mass in the private chapel of the patriarch’s palace, and Father Patriarch Joseph served me during the Mass with that singular evangelic humility which is the privelege of all Saints. After the Liturgy, and the Benediction, Cardinal Joseph took me by the arm, saying,
“And now let’s go to the refectory and I’ll brew you some coffee, and I really know how to make coffee! Even my harshest enemies, under the leadership of the Doge of Venice, all acknowledge that my coffee is the best! The same thing is claimed by the guard here at my residence, whom I very frequently treat with coffee after his stints of duty!”
Later on, Mother, when I was riding away on the train from Venice to Rome, I spent some time reflecting on the question, what is saintliness? You and I, Mother, during our promenades through the park in Prylbychi, occasionally discussed the many various views of several different philosophers on this subject, but I, in fact, after only a few days’ stay with Father Sarto, finally came to under¬stand that highest Truth, which we sing about in our Holy Day Liturgies: to dress oneself in Christ. Was not the Patriarch-Cardinal of Venice indeed dressed in Christ, brewing coffee with his own hands and then serving it to his inveterate enemy the Doge, or to the guard of his residence, who serves him, or to me, his newly- met guest from the East?
You are Christ’s, Mother, grant me assistance with Your prayers so that I too may come to fully dress myself in Christ!
Your son,
Fr. Andrey
On the Day of Saint Thomas the Apostle