“Every believer today feels a profound sense of orphanhood. We felt Patriarch Ilia II’s fatherly love, his care, his strength, the strength of God manifest in his ministry, so deeply that we are truly bereft,” said Metropolitan Shio (Mujiri) of Senaki and Chkhorotsku, Locum Tenens of the Georgian Patriarchal Throne, speaking at the Holy Trinity Cathedral.
According to Metropolitan Shio, among the Patriarch’s immense contributions, perhaps the most significant was his reception of the Georgian Church during a period of persecution and exile from public life. He left us with a strengthened, well-ordered Church that now plays a vital role in the life of the nation and society.
“Your Excellency the President, Your Excellency the Prime Minister, Speaker of Parliament, Bidzina Ivanishvili, Your Holinesses, Your Graces, reverend fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters, great is our grief today. The grief of all Georgia. The grief occasioned by the repose of His Holiness and Beatitude, Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia, Ilia II.
I shall not overstate matters when I say that every believer today feels a sense of orphanhood. We felt his fatherly love, his care, his strength, the strength of God manifest in his ministry, so deeply that we are truly bereft. I share with you my own feelings and experience. I know that the majority of our brothers and sisters feel this loss in the same way. Yet we are consoled by God’s mercy and by the great legacy of service that His Holiness and Beatitude wrought and left to us.
Letters of condolence have reached us from many countries, and in them people speak of his fatherly quality, that extraordinary gift which extended not only over Georgia but over the whole of Orthodox Christianity worldwide. This loss, therefore, belongs not to Georgia alone, but to Christians throughout the world. I wish to offer my deepest condolences to each one of you on the passing of His Holiness. He possessed a remarkable quality: his fatherly love, his breadth of vision, his thought and his prayer encompassed all of Georgia, and at the same time each person who ever came into contact with him. He had an extraordinary grace of bringing about great transformation in people, and the lives of all who encountered him changed for the better. It is no coincidence that he was granted repose by God precisely during Great Lent, in the Week of the Veneration of the Holy Cross, when the Church venerates that supreme sign and symbol of self-sacrificial love, the honourable and life-giving Cross.
In the address of our Holy Synod, it was noted that this is itself a sign that His Holiness’s ministry was truly of a martyr’s character. I should like to add that his burial will take place on Sunday, a day on which the Church commemorates St John Climacus and his teachings on the spiritual ladder, guiding us through virtue towards deification and salvation.
One might well say that it is no coincidence that in His Holiness and Beatitude, the martyr’s path and the attainment of the highest rung on that spiritual ladder are united, as we have seen and continue to see. These are the virtues he acquired: profound love, remarkable humility, patience, wisdom, and many others besides.
It is impossible to speak of everything today; in this moment, our hearts are full of emotion, of thought, of love. Yet among his immeasurable contributions, perhaps the greatest is this: that he received the Georgian Church in a diminished, humiliated, persecuted state, cast out from public life, and left to us, his children, a strengthened, restored, well-ordered Church that today plays a most vital role in the life of our country and society. With great love, we bow our heads before his fatherly legacy and give thanks to him for it,” Locum Tenens of the Georgian Patriarchal Throne has said.
Metropolitan Shio added that whilst it is difficult today to imagine Georgia without Catholicos-Patriarch Ilia II, he is with us always and will remain so.
“Alongside our grief, our hearts are filled with hope and trust that the Lord will grant him rest among the righteous in the Heavenly Kingdom, and that through him we have gained yet another great heavenly intercessor and protector of Georgia, one who will help us to continue our ecclesial life and the life of our nation as he desired, as he charged and bequeathed to us: to achieve concord, mutual love, reconciliation with one another, and to return firmly and finally to those values whose revival and propagation his ministry and his life served so greatly.
Once again, I offer you my deepest condolences, my dear and beloved friends. May God forgive him and grant him the Kingdom of Heaven; may He establish the soul of His Holiness and Beautitude in the Heavenly Kingdom. And may He grant us the strength to mark these days of burial with due reverence, to continue our lives worthily, and to learn to live without him. It is difficult today to conceive of Georgia, of the Church, without Catholicos-Patriarch Ilia II. But he is with us, and he will be with us always. This we believe, this we know. God is with us,” Metropolitan Shio concluded.
His Holiness Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia Ilia II reposed on March 17 at the age of 93. A period of national mourning was declared in Georgia. The Patriarch was borne in solemn procession from the Patriarchal Residence to the Holy Trinity Cathedral. He is to be buried at Sioni Cathedral on March 22.
