Speech of His Holiness the Serbian Patriarch Mr. Porfiria held on July 28, 2024 in the church of the Holy Martyrs Kirik and Julita in Velica on the occasion of the eightieth anniversary of the suffering of the Serbs from that and the surrounding Upper Polim villages

Dear Bishop Methodius, host and spiritual father of the flock entrusted to you in this God-saved Diocese of Budimlja-Nikšić, dear brothers, archbishops gathered here at this holy Liturgy, venerable fathers and national leaders from all over gathered in this holy place, and above all, dear brothers and sisters, children of Saint Sava,

After the deep, meaningful, but above all true, words of love from our Bishop Methodius, I could only say: Amen! Although we all know what the word amen means, I will also say it in our Serbian language, in which we understand each other best. The word amen means so be it or so it is. So, I would have nothing to add and it would be best to just say amen together with all of you, but for the love of the Lord and the love of Bishop Methodius, the clergy, the monks and all of you who have come here, I am obliged to at least thank One in the Trinity, the Great God and our Savior, who gathered us here to confirm and show that we are the people of God, that we are the Church of Christ, that we are one in good, in virtue, in faith, by Christ and in Christ, that we are one independently of that whether we are divided by demographic, social, psychological, even political and any other borders. All those borders have their beginning here in history, but they also have their end, and the Church as the Body of Christ, as a heavenly organism, has no and knows no borders. Precisely because of the Church and through the Church, because of Christ and because of the Saint Sava and Orthodox faith, we are one wherever we are. We are one people of Svetosava, Orthodox, people of Christ, Serbian people. However, precisely because we are one people of Christ, the people of the Church for which there are no boundaries even between heaven and earth, history and metahistory, we are also one with all our brothers and sisters, fathers and forefathers, who suffered and left this world, wherever their remains rest. We are one with the past, we are one now, we are one in the future, we are one in eternity!

Precisely because we are one and because we are one people, and above all because we are the people of Saint Sava, which means the Gospel people of Christ, our law is the Gospel of Christ. That is why we are a people of freedom, a people of freedom, we are also a people of peace, we are also an open people, who without complexes and fear, who knows who he is and what he is, and whenever he is aware of himself enters into normal human communication with everyone who is other and different precisely because the Gospel is our foundation and root. Precisely because Saint Sava blessed us with the cross, we as the people of Christ everything we want for ourselves - we want for others and everything we don't want for anyone - we don't want for anyone else!

Here, we gathered here are fully aware of that. Although there are political-geographical borders, we are at the foot of the Peć Patriarchate, at the foot of our heart. In fact, we are in the Peć Patriarchate itself, with which we think and speak, and in our veins runs the blood that is set in motion by the Peć Patriarchate. So, brothers and sisters, when we are who we are, when we know who we are, then we are Saints, then we are Christ's, then we are our own, but we can also be in a community of love, mutual understanding and respect with everyone and everything. If we are not that, then we are nothing.

The holy apostle Paul says: "By faith the saint experienced mockery and whipping, and even chains and prisons." Stoned, scraped, tortured by the sword, they died, those whom the world was not worthy of" (Hebrews 11:36-39). We came here in joy, but also with these words of the Apostle Paul in mind, because this New Testament picture exactly eighty years ago in the place where we are standing was literally put into action. Here we are, highly consecrated and consecrated brothers, archbishops and all, brothers and sisters, faithful people of God, at the terrible Golgotha ​​of the people of Saint Sava! Here we are here in this picturesque space of this beauty of the Most High!

Here we are on a pebble mosaic of Golgotha ​​and the Golgotha ​​of our people, because wherever we have been, almost every hill is a kind of cross and in a way the Golgotha ​​of our people, but at the same time the beauty of the Most High and of those whom the world was not worthy of, and these are first of all the Saints the martyrs Kirik and Julita, to whom this local temple is dedicated, and then also the Holy New Martyrs of Velika and Upper Polima, who soaked and sanctified this land with their blood. They gathered us here today for the service of God.

We all know that on this day in 1944, here, in Velika and the surrounding villages and hamlets, an unprecedented crime was committed against our bare-handed, innocent people, the elderly, women and children. In just two hours, the executioner and his comrade-in-arms, as it was later determined, slaughtered, killed in various monstrous ways and burned 564 people, while this number is not final, and of these 174 were children aged fifteen and under. In that frenzy, eleven children were taken out of their mothers' wombs. Until then, this wonderful landscape filled with song, children's cries and life, became eerily silent, turned into grave silence.

It is because of them that we have gathered today, brothers and sisters, people of God. For the sake of our souls, we have come here, for the sake of future generations, we have gathered here to repeat in our hearts, minds and bloodstreams and refresh the memory of the Holy Great Martyrs who, by God's providence, were the first image of the suffering here of innocent children, mothers and helpless old people, guilty only because they were Orthodox and which were Serbs. We gathered to pray to God, not to judge someone or, God forbid, condemn someone. Innocent victims are impervious to evil and they are the irreplaceable stars of the spiritual sky, while criminals and executioners have condemned themselves to end up in the dustbin of history and in the darkness of inhumanity. We have gathered, therefore, to give the Gospel values, which today's martyrs of Christ from our race have testified with their lives, to give additional impetus and direction to our own lives, to see in this suffering the abyss of the human fall, the abyss of Cain's brotherly hatred, as well as in that painful experience with full hearts we sing the song of life and immortality: Christ is risen!

There is no answer to the vicious circle of questions about why such and such evil had to happen, there is no way out based on ordinary human logic, there is no way out without Him, without the God-man Christ, the only absolutely innocent sufferer under the heavenly cap, a martyr comparable to no one else. Only He, faith in Him, hope and love for Him and the unity and harmony that springs from it can bring us back to ourselves, to reveal to us the secret of a correct human life on earth, to love God, to love one another, to love our neighbor and to love everyone no matter who they are and no matter what their name is and, in the end, no matter what we do to them. When we fulfill that, then we can, like Him, like Christ, confess from the depths of our being what is baptismal and eternal: "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do" (Lk 24:34). They judged themselves, judged and condemned themselves.

The brutal face of the Second World War, whose crucial and shameful role in our centuries-old spaces was played by fascist servants in this and similar places, is being exposed to a good extent. With a prayerful remembrance in the light of day, the imprisoned and painful truth about the unprecedented suffering of our Orthodox Serbian people is presented. In communist Yugoslavia, memories also suffer, which were actually planned to be moved into the space of undesirable topics and a sphere that ensures oblivion in the long term. At the beginning of the war, the Italian occupier formed a so-called Muslim militia from our neighbors and countrymen, Muslim volunteers, in the area of ​​the Andrijevic Cut, as a military organization that, with the capitulation of Italy, more or less submitted to Nazi Germany, according to whose scenario this fascist formation committed the most massive and monstrous crimes against which we are talking about today.

Every field, forest, stream, meadow, house and housing of Velika and Gornje Ržanica with the villages of Trepča, Gračanica, Luge, Seoce, Đuričkova Rijeka, Trešnjevo, Đurići, along with the entire Gornje Polimlje, Plav and Gusinje, silently but irrefutably testify to the crimes before which scale leaves us speechless and breathless. And then, when the pain realistically threatens to drag us to the bottom of the bottomless abyss, for us Christians there is no more reliable way to find an acceptable answer and a saving solution than the miraculous exclamation of the one who serves the Holy Liturgy before the gathered community of the faithful and says: "Let us lift up our hearts" (Mt. . 6:21) and our answer: "Let us have them in the Lord", in Christ the Lord, an absolutely innocent sufferer and victor, such as history has known only in His person. Thus, great heroes are like Him, the Son of God, crucified and resurrected for our sake. And then, on Good Friday, our sufferers were not alone. He was with them. He strengthened them to endure honorably and pass from the transitory to the eternal, from death to life. This forms the central part of the Liturgy, in which we thank God for the life he gave us, for the gift of our existence and that of everyone we love, as well as the whole world.

And just today, as every time we celebrate the Holy Liturgy, we prayed for the known and the unknown, the living and the deceased, and especially for the innocent victims whose voice cries out for blood both to heaven and to us, assuring us that before God there are no dead. In front of the slaughterhouses like the one we are standing on, we realize anew that the innocent victims and their martyrdom for us are not the cry of the defeated and an expression of weakness, but the exclamation of the victor and proof of the power of God in people. Therefore, in addition to the commemorative memories of the martyrs, it is necessary to include them in the present, in our lives, through prayer, because they are immortal and because they are active. Then our pain turns into strength, and sadness into joy. Only then do we live and have full responsibility to ourselves, to the innocent victims and to future generations. This is the only way we can understand the sacrifice of those whom the world was not worthy of, as well as ourselves and others. Only in this way can we understand why love for God and neighbor has no alternative and why it is the source of life that will never end.

Brothers and sisters, praying to the Holy Martyrs of Great and Upper Pole for faith, strength, mutual love and understanding, to open our eyes to be one, one in faith, one in Christ, I rejoice above all that we have gathered here and that every time whenever I come to Montenegro with your love, your strength and your faith, let us leave renewed and strengthened with the desire to return here again and again, constantly, and to together, hugging and kissing in the Lord, rejoice in each other and Him, the One in the Trinity of God, let us celebrate together with the Holy Great Martyrs and all of our kind here and now and forever and ever! Amen!

Source: SPC