Article on Vattasseril Thirumeni by C.K. Kochukoshy I.A.S
Heroic Virtues and Vattasseril Thirumeni
Whenever the memory of the late Mar Dionysius flashes
through my mind, the first idea that strikes me is the concept of heroic
virtues associated with some of the Christian saints of the hoary past. We
normally imagine that a saint of any religion is one secluded from the
hurry-skurry of mundane life, sequestered in a hermitage, praying and
meditating and blessing people who flock to get his darshan. A different type
of a saint may be a theological Pundit with knowledge as his forte, all the
time studying and interpreting the scriptures, making profound statement on the
faith, morals and discipline of his religion and consciously leading a puritanical
life. We may also visualize a still different holy man, a live-wire organizer
who always runs to the succor of the oppressed, who extends a helping hand to
all those who need it. He exudes the image of a good Samaritan doing some
social good every day as a philosophy of his life. Holy in their own way, what
distinguished some of them from the early saints of Christendom however, was
the predominance of heroism in the virtues the latter which gave a new
glittering dimension to their sacrifices, personality and image. These heroic
virtues arise from an extraordinarily deep commitment to the causes they
espouse and an unflinching faith in God which make them bold to suffer any
privation for His sake. To present day tacticians, it might appear that such
heroism had not been quite warranted and their causes could have been served
more economically with much less sacrifice. Take for example the case of St.
Peter. He told his captors to crucify him with his head down, a much less
convenient posture for execution than the normal one if only he had just kept
quiet, he would have been crucified in the normal way as his Lord. But Peter
heroically asked for a more cruel form of death inviting more trouble for
himself. Heroic virtue therefore, is not merely facing challenges with courage
and conviction, but doing so with a bang and without any regard for
consequences. There is no scope for any doubt about the depth of commitment
involved. The ideas of maximum returns with minimum necessary expenses which
guide modern business administration do not exist in the realm of heroic
virtues.
Perhaps with a tinge of filial affection, I believe that if
Mar Dionysius had been born in some earlier centuries in a different
geographical context, his name would have already adorned the list of saints
who are believed to be constantly interceding before God on behalf of sinful
mortals like us. Even so, the really great souls of the past have left behind
them vivid shadows of their lives which have an invincible tendency to appear
longer and longer as decades and centuries pass by, very much like the steadily
elongating shadows created by the afternoon sun. It is under the influence of
this elongating shadow that we are forced to think of Mar Dionysius every year
and to assign to him the sobriquet “SUN OF THE MALANKARA CHURCH”. It is he who
persuaded the Patriarch of Antioch to transplant the old Catholicate from
Tigris to Kerala. This was no doubt an overdue recognition of the autocephaly
of the Indian Church as in the case of any other Orthodox Church. All these
churches have national bases and are autocephalous. In any case, this would
have been inevitable when India became free in 1947, despite the desire of a
small section of our brethren to preserve the anachronistic umbilical cord with
Antioch.
One of the most distinguished historians of the current
century, Z. M. Paret, has graphically describe the trials and tribulations of Mar
Dionysius, in his efforts to uphold the dignity of the Malankara Church. The
image of Mar Dionysius which emerges
from the pages of Paret’s history is that of an extraordinary Knight of the
Garter in the realm of church and endowed with an intellect far superior to any
of the Knights: A native Bishop, resisting all pressures to wrest agreements
surrendering their temporal rights to foreign authority, naturally exasperated
the Patriarch who had believed that such agreements were necessary after the
Royal Court decision ruling out any such powers for him in Malankara. The
intense desire of the Patriarch to secure temporal powers and the equally
intense opposition to it spearheaded by Mar Dionysius collided, resulting in the
excommunication of the latter. For half a century, the atmosphere in Malankara
was surcharged with emotion. All patriotic elements lined up behind Mar
Dionysius giving him solid support. The late O.M. Cheriyan offered the first
prototype of present day gherao against the Patriarch and thwarted for the time
being, all designs against the Malankara Metropolitan. But events were moving
fast and Mar Dionysius was finally excommunicated, alienating from Antioch, the
sympathies of a large section of the church. This eventually led to the
traumatic split in the church.
A permanent solution to the problem of foreign domination
was to obviate the very necessity of depending upon Antioch for all
ecclesiastical purposes, once and for all. It may be recalled that this dependence
had started only in the seventeenth century for the consecration of our bishops
fully in conformity with canonical law for which benediction of an episcopal
authority was deemed essential. H.H. Abdul Messiah the senior Patriarch of
Antioch was kind enough to acceded to the request of Mar Dionysius and bestowed
on us the heritage of the old Catholicate of the East at Tigris which had become
defunct a few decades ago. This background will help us in understanding the
intensity of the agony suffered by Mar Dionysius before and after his
excommunication. When he was told that his excommunication was in the offing,
he is reported to have quipped that he would as it were a gold necklace. He was
right in this metaphor because the subsequent invalidation of the
excommunication by the judiciary and also by the establishment of the
Catholicate in Malankara shows that it was nothing but a blessing in disguise.
Even some of our own people who had reservation about the Catholicate at the
time are today rallying round the very same institution with a reduced weight
and luster compromising with canonical law. It was the sheer boldness
intellectual honesty and other heroic virtues of Mar Dionysius which have
secured for our Church the stature of an independent entity and ensured its phenomenal
growth in the twentieth century. If Mar Dionysius had succumbed to the
temptations and signed the agreement aforesaid, even today we would have been
under the tutelage of a foreign hierarchy, creating more problems and suffocating
our initiative and self-respect.
Mar Dionysius was an intellectual giant with a penetrating theological
mind. He was a Jnana Yogi. His brief and juicy dissertations on the
fundamentals of Orthodox faith are very famous. He challenged the validity of
his excommunication on grounds of natural justice and canonical law. His detractors
grilled him in court, trotting out uncanny aspects of biblical legends to
confound him. As a Bishop he could not afford to question the sanctity of any
of the allusions nor their relevance. On the question of natural justice, they
asked him whether God Almighty had obtained the explanation of Adam and Eve
before they were expelled from the Garden of Eden. A lesser genius would have
floundered miserably. His opponents were trying to prove that the Patriarch was
right in excommunicating him arbitrarily. When many eyes and ears were glued on
to him inquisitively, he astonished the Court and the advocates by saying that
while Adam had confessed his guilt, he was totally denying it. He also added
that according to canon law, only the Holy Synod had the right to punish him
and not the Patriarch all by himself. They asked him whether there was any
session of a Synod before expelling Adam from Eden. He cut short the glee of
the questioner by pointing out that the authority involved in the case of Adam
was God Himself and in any case the
decision to expel Adam was taken by God in His Trinity consisting of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, a virtual synod of the three members in
unanimity. Those who questioned him must have given him up unable to get
anything out of him. His examination, cross examination, etc. took a very long
time, running two weeks. But Mar Dionysius was never rattled. If any question
was repeated to him, he reminded the advocate the exact earlier date on which
he had answered the same and the accuracy of his memory was always found to be
phenomenal.
The spiritual and saintly aspect of his personality has been
almost entirely obscured by his heroic and intellectual image. The superhuman
halo of his Karma Yoga is noted by all his admirers though a few of them also
know the strength of his Bhakti Yoga. He had an unflinching faith in God which he
did not like to exhibit. But he was a saint par excellence. The Malankara
Church has yet to consider more seriously the question of his canonization. I
have experienced his blessings on a few occasions which were definitely
miraculous by any standards. My recently published book INTO AN HOUR GLASS
contains references to these mystic experiences. The book itself is dedicated
to his sanctified memory. During the tumultuous days of the summary case
regarding the possession of the Old Seminary in 1911, an enemy agent set upon
to do away with his life, one night climbed up a ladder stealthily placed
behind his room in the upper story of the Seminary building. The mercenary fell
down twice from the ladder on seeing the Metropolitan deeply engrossed in his
midnight prayers and kneeling before God, unaware of the diabolic designs
against him in operation. The murder mission having thus failed, Mar Dionysius
continued to be in possession of the Old Seminary. Fear was not his weakness.
Once, when he saw one of his priests being rough-handled by a muscle man
trespassing into the seminary compound, he was so annoyed that he reacted like
Christ in the temple of Jerusalem. He promptly administered, with the help of
his walking stick, an argumentum ad baculum, to one of the priests of the
opposite party who was stage managing the whole ugly operation. Attention of
everybody was distracted from the business of trespass and the situation was
saved for him. The coldblooded murder of one of his body guards in the very
vicinity of the Old Seminary could not unnerve him, neither could a loaded
pistol help point blank to his chest. He was made of sterner stuff. The
question naturally arises as to what was the motivation that sustained him from
succumbing to such severe onslaughts. On the spiritual side he was
excommunicated, on the physical side he was under constant threat of
liquidation and on the social side at least a section of his own church was
ranged against him. Why did he brave all this and fight to the bitter end? No
personal gain could have compensated an ascetic like him. These were his
infinite faith in the destiny of his Church, in divine justice and the
convictions imbibed from his predecessors like the Saint of Parumala and Mar
Joseph Dionysius of Pulikkotil. He was determined to see that the poor, simple
and ancient church established by St. Thomas was not allowed to wither away. He
was inspired by the purity and righteousness of his faith and believed that it
ought to be nurtured and allowed to flower in its own oriental environment in
this country itself. He believed that this was his mission and he should
protect his Church both from its internal and external detractors alike. Once
convinced of this mission, he was willing to pay any price for its consummation
and undergo any suffering for its sake. His heroic virtues arise from this
situation. He suffered for this Church and the poignancy of his suffering, like
that of Christ was that at least some people for whom he borne the cross not
only disowned him but even belighted (sp?) in mortifying him.
His scholarship of the Syriac language and theology, his
ability to understand and interpret the law of the land, his impregnable logic
and incisive intellect and above all his devotion to God and his saintly life
have made him a unique soul, still hovering over Malankara and his people,
always ready to help them. More and more people are seeking his intercession
and witnessing to its efficacy. I have experienced that often his intercessions
are decisive and immediate and hence highly dependable, provided it is invoked
with faith. He is already a saint for a large number of people like me and our
number is bound to swell as time lengthens the shadow of his memory. If and
when he is declared as a Saint, the like of him even in the saintly fraternity
will be rare. The Hindu Scripture Bhagavad Gita, mentions three Yogas for
self-perfection which is the goal of life according to its philosophy. These
are Karma, Bhakti and Jnana i.e., action, devotion and cognition. Realization
of God, they say is possible through any of the three paths indicated by these
yogas. The soul is endowed with two wings, viz, Bhakti and Jnana with Karma
Yoga to serve as the tail to maintain balance. This analogy of a bird projects
the relationship between the three Yogas and the Soul. Despite his great
devotion to God, it would not be proper to describe Mar Dionysius exclusively
Bhakti Yogi. He himself had taken care not to exhibit his devotion to God, in
any conspicuous way. Though a great scholar in Theology, he did not claim
superiority over other on the basis of his erudition. Though a man of action
willing to strike or help people as the occasion demanded it, he never
pretended to be a Karma Yogi. But if we study the annals of religious history,
there will be few men who have combined themselves so admirably the virtues of
devotion, cognition and action as the late Mar Dionysius. Such a combination of
heroic virtues is symbolized by the lofty bird to which the Bhagavad Gita
commentators have alluded. Malankara Church should move now to honor the soul
that had made the church what it is today.
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