June 19, 2019 – Washington, DC
” My territory as a bishop is vast. My territory is you.”
Bishop John Michael
Here in Washington, at the 23rd annual Orientale Lumen conference, I have been listening to papers presented by various scholars representing different churches. Yesterday, we listened to Dr. Anastacia Wooden (Roman Catholic), Dr. Adam DeVille (Ukrainian Greek-Catholic), and Fr. John Erickson (Orthodox Church of America). Today’s speakers are Deacon Daniel Galadza (Ukrainian Greek-Catholic), Fr. Andriy Dudchenko (Orthodox Church of Ukraine), and Fr. Hyacinthe Destivelle, OP (Roman Catholic, Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity). Tomorrow we will view a lecture by Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia, recorded by Jack Figel at the Metropolitan’s residence in Oxford, England. (Metropolitan Kallistos [Timothy Ware] is the Orthodox co-patron of the US section of the Society of St. John Chrysostom, one of the sponsors of the Orientale Lumen Conference. I am his counterpart as the Catholic co-patron.)
I learned something from each speaker, and, as I mentioned yesterday, these talks have provoked considerable reflection on my part. Perhaps nothing caught my attention more than the title of Metropolitan Borys Gudziak’s short reflection, “The Geography of a Bishop.”
Really? A bishop has geography? I understand the geography of a country or a city, and I understand the geography of a diocese, which always has precise boundaries. But I did not, at first, understand the idea of the bishop having geography. But he explained: although we bishops are typically preoccupied with matters of territory, jurisdiction, authority, etc., the true “territory,” or “geography,” of a bishop is the network of spiritual relationships he supports, promotes, sustains, and serves. A bishop’s real territory is the life of his people, and the path of his life is from heart to heart among the faithful.
Earlier that day, Dr. DeVille posed a poignant question. Underlining that the health of the family of which a bishop is the father is of paramount concern, he asked, “What happens to the family if the father is overwhelmed?”
The canonical tradition of the Church, both east and west, considers the diocese (another word for that is “eparchy”) to be the “local church.” In what sense is a diocese that stretches from Montreal to Anaheim “local?” To put it in the language of Pope Francis, how is the bishop to “smell like his sheep” if he can see them only rarely and scarcely gets the opportunity to know them?
I am not just talking about me, of course, or our own eparchy. How does the Archbishop of Chicago, for example, or Los Angeles actually get to be the spiritual father of a local church whose members number in the millions? I guess you could say that’s why the Church has priests, the men who collaborate with the bishop, extending the ministry that this group of experts here in Washington would agree is the bishop’s main function: serving the celebration of the Holy Eucharist by God’s Holy People. I heard time and again the idea that it is the people gathered around the bishop, with Christ present in the Eucharist, that is the Church.
It is true, of course. And to be frank, I feel quite overcome by this truth and the reality of my experience as a bishop. Of all the things that I should be doing, but am not doing enough of, the most important is being with you, meeting you in your parishes, serving the Divine Liturgy with you. Connected with that is preaching, teaching, “giving an explanation to anyone who asks [me] for a reason for [my] hope” (1 Peter 2:15). It’s not as if I don’t know this, and if I did not, it’s not as if my gifted collaborators in my work don’t remind me again and again of this vital truth.
My territory as a bishop is vast. My territory is you, the Church, what Scripture refers to as a “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of [God’s] own,” (1 Peter 2:9). The amount of activity (is the word “work?”) I am obliged to carry out—am privileged, rather, to carry out—in order to serve you has overwhelmed me for 26 years. As Dr. DeVille asked, “How healthy can the family be if the father is overwhelmed?” How healthy, indeed.