In memory of Julien Harvey

With tears in our eyes, we give you a precious gift. The most generous appreciation ever made to our Mission made by a great Canadian friend, Father Julien Harvey:

"The disciples decided to send, each one according to his meant help to the brethren from Judaea, what they did by sending this help to the ancients through the intervention of Barnabas and Saul. "

Acts 11. 29-30

Jesus dedicated all his public life to giving credibility to the good news which he heralded. He did it mostly by becoming the consolation and the healer of everybody around him. So that his life could be resumed by saying that he was a man of good deeds.

When Paul began, some years after Jesus, to announce the same good news outside of Israel, he immediately understood that the Gospel would not be received if the young Churches did not realize that they were welcomed by the mother Church of Jerusalem. And simultaneously Paul had to demand the Jerusalem Church that the young Churches coming from the nations were their brothers and sisters. This explains Paul’s concern about his collections of money in Rome, in Corinth and elsewhere (see Rom. 15, 26; 1st Cor. 16~ 1). He cared to bring them himself to the elders in Jerusalem, so that nothing could be lost of the generosity of the brethren.

In this first century world where so few communications existed, where a stranger was a foe, where war was the normal situation between states or between cities, this intervention was certainly considered as strange and all of Paul’s prestige was needed to realize this sharing of help. And we know through the history of the first centuries of Christianity that this significant gesture was continued after Paul.

This apostolic tradition is what the Aid to the Martyr Churches is continuing. The Churches in material difficulty can continue to believe and to hope if we make visible the brotherly love of the more prosperous Churches. Much has been done in the past by the Churches which created our own Canadian Church, much is being done in our day because the message of Jesus, his message of brotherly love and of equality has been poorly accepted in our word. To the point that we always have to be critical to avoid our replacing justice by charity.

When however the asking for help comes from the Eastern Churches, we can be more secure about this last question. The Soviet block was so careful to isolate itself during the last 75 years that we do not have to ask ourselves whether its difficulties come from our commercial relationship or not. Its violent actions to suppress the faith have failed, but the consequences must now be repaired: ruined social institutions, Churches destroyed or needing basic repairs after years of neglect or of non-religious use, support personnel needing recycling or basic training. Generations of clandestinity have kept the faith alive and even have strengthened it. But a return to open Church life now requires our help in personnel and financing. Some initiatives are presently in action. I think for example of the Ukrainian Church, which is so strongly helped by its American and Canadian diaspora. Other Churches are poorer as the Churches of Romania, of Bulgaria or of Hungary. Those are precisely the ones which the Aid to the Martyr Churches helps. And as in the Pauline collections, the organization is very modest and needs practically no administration costs to bring help to the communities in financial difficulty. I can verify for example that the head responsible, Reverend Father Radu Roscanu, does not have to pay for his trips to Romania, that his office is in his residence, that the present contact bulletin is multigraphed .

I personally know many people who think that the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Iron Curtain have put and end to the persecution and to the financial misery of the Eastern Churches. Unhappily, it is not the reality. Compensations for the damages have been claimed, but up to now they have been without result. And getting out of the socialist regime is visibly painful after so many years of isolation and of neglect. The consequence is that collaboration is needed more than ever before. I like to insist on the fact that the renewal is well planned and does not try to build monuments nor to reanimate a pre-conciliar Church.

Another important aspect which must be considered when we listen to the call of the Churches in need is the fact that they are Oriental catholic Churches, most of them of the Byzantine rite: Bulgarian, Romenian, Hungarian, Ruthenian, Slovaks, Italo-Albanian. It means that they preserve in the Church very precious traditions, which the Latin rite does not keep so visibly: synodal government, resistance to closed national Churches, treasures of prayer, of liturgy and of mystical experience, admirable religious arts, celibate and married priesthood, ancient deacons ministry, contemplative communities. All of us have seen that where the violent regime of the USSR has fallen, the fall was preceded by nights of prayer, by candles on the sidewalk! It is a grace to us Christians to have many witnesses of the memory of Jesus, for example the four Gospels.

The Eastern Churches play the same role, to help us avoid reducing the ways to follow Jesus, while remaining one Church.

And we must not forget the challenge of the other Oriental Churches, the Orthodox ones, which have been separated from Rome almost a thousand years ago (1054). Pope John Paul has expressed many times his desire to see them reunited before the year 2000. We are very close to it now, and we may doubt that the Pope’s wish will be realized. But the witnessing of our brotherhood will certainly make it more possible.

Julien Harvey, S.J.