“A candle in front of the Savior” p. 3: Facing the calamities

   Not all Albania’s calamities occurred before the end of the rigid Communism in 1991. In 1997, Albania was plunged into anarchy after the collapse of pyramid investment schemes into which many Albanian had risked and lost their life savings.
   “The country was on the verge of civil war”, Archbishop Anastasios recalled. “It was a full disaster revealing all the fear and violence that had accumulated in so many people’s hearts. People who had come from other countries in most cases fled abroad or were airlifted out. During this period the Church provided emergency aid to 25,000 families and tirelessly repeated our appeal, ‘No to arms, no to violence’. We said that no act of violence can be justified by the Church.”
   Ignoring the advice of many friends both in Albania and elsewhere, he refused to leave the country. “Many had to leave but I realized I must stay and invited those to stay with me who were willing. In my own case, I am the captain of the ship. For me leaving was not an option. But the danger was very real.”
   He showed me a bullet that had lodged itself in the double-pane glass of his office, smashing the outer pane but being stopped by the inner pane. “It was strange to see a bullet that had been halted like that! I’ve kept it there as a souvenir of those times in which we were tested, when each day could have been our last. In those days I was sleeping on the office floor in a corner below the windows.” 
   Carefully pulling the curtain further back, he drew my attention to a grey pigeon tending a single egg in a flower pot. “A bullet and an egg!” he commented. “Perfect symbols of Albania at the crossroad.”
   “We must in every situation choose life and refuse the temptation to hate and harm others,” he said. “Many times, not only in 1997, I have repeated the message, ‘The oil of religion should be used to sooth and heal the wounds of others, not to ignite the fires of hatred’.”
   Expanding of the theme of healing, he commented on the Gospel story in which Christ heals a paralytic who was lowered by friends through a whole in the roof when a crowd blocked the way.
   “Notice that Christ heals the man not because of his faith but their faith. It is a revealing phrase, ‘seeing their faith’. Faith is collaboration: thinking together, praying together, acting together. The Church is not the place of my prayer but of our prayer. We pray together and are responsible for each other. Paralysis is not only a physical condition. Some people are paralyzed in their inability to love, to believe in God, to forgive, to collaborate. To move from only doing this for my own benefit to acting in a way that benefits the community – this is healing from paralysis. Then we become responsible for each other. Christ’s healing goes to the depth of life, to our need for forgiveness. Healing is another word for peace – Christ is the one who heals our brokenness.”
   Another time of testing came in 1999, when NATO attacked Yugoslavia, bombing many targets in Serbia and Kosovo. “Half-a-million Kosovar refugees fled to Albania in that period. The Church could not turn its back on them. While the majority of refugees were quickly taken into Albanian homes, we took responsibility for 32,000 people and are still operating the last refugee camp in the country. It didn’t matter to us that few if any of the refugees were Christian. For some time we stopped classes at the seminary so all the students could participate in emergency work with the refugees.” I knew from photos that the archbishop was not only sending others to help but was doing so himself, unloading boxes of food and medicine. “In these period perhaps it become clearer to our critics that the Church is not here only for itself but for everyone.”
   He recalled how, at that time, some of the seminary students were initially afraid, worried some of the refugees might be hostile to Orthodox Christians even if they were there to help. “I said we must go in the middle of the crisis and see the face of Christ in those who suffer. There was one student who asked, ‘But will the cross I am wearing provoke some?’ I said to him that it was enough to wear the cross in his heart. More important than speeches about Orthodoxy are Orthodox actions. Obey the God of love, don’t be afraid. Don’t let fear become an idol. It is impossible to do theology without involvement.” 
   Even in that time of national crisis, the Church faced obstacles in assisting refugees. “The Albanian security service tried to prevent the delivery of aid from Greece being sent to help Kosovo refugees. I refused to do as they ordered. Sometimes you must disobey. The security services didn’t take further steps to stop us.”
   His difficulties were not simply of a political nature. One of the hardest challenges was to overcome divisions within the Church. “There used to be great division within the Church. Our people come from various ethnic backgrounds – not only Albanian but Greek, Slav, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Romanian and others. Our first goal was to create unity among Orthodox Christians. After so much persecution, we could no longer allow division. I recall in Korca saying, ‘Do you think the forest is more beautiful if there is only one kind of tree?’ The forest we are growing is made up of truth, beauty and freedom. The key to life is love and freedom.” 
   One element in the process of breaking down borders inside the Church had to do with how the Church refers to itself. “We do not call ourselves the Albanian Orthodox Church, though this was suggested, but rather the Orthodox Church in Albania – otherwise we lose an ecumenical perspective. God never becomes the property of any nation. We are not an orphan church – we are part of the world Church. The Orthodox Church is not a federation of churches; the one Orthodox Church fully exists in particular places. We are going toward the kingdom of God together, not one by one, tribe by tribe. No one can be an island, not even small Britain, not even huge China. You cannot be isolated. On the other hand we point out that we are autocephalous, a word that means self-standing. We govern ourselves. [Autocephalous status was recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarch in 1937.] But we had to resume Church life after a long interruption, a process in which the Ecumenical Patriarchate played a vital role.”
   He struggled personally to give an example through the use of Albanian. “It has been important for me not only to learn Albanian but to take care that whenever I say something I say it not just in a way that can be understood but say it well. I must carefully pronounce each word and phrase. The first words I learned were, ‘Krishti u ngjall! Zoti eshte me ne! Lavdi Zotit!‘ – ‘Christ is risen! God is with us! Glory to God!’ It has been very important to use Albanian even in situations where the majority speak Greek, as is the case in many towns and villages in the south. I recall in Saranda, very close to the Greek border and in sight of the Greek island of Corfu, we had our first Liturgy under a tree on the shore. It was suggested it could be done entirely in Greek – almost everyone would understand. But I said that even if only two persons need Albanian, we shall have Albanian.”