Radivoj Arcibiskup Simeon Jakovljevič

“As a child, how did you perceive the occupation and the arrival of the German army?” “I was growing up in that time. When they took over our border regions, it was very difficult for me to bear. I remember the processions of people, shouting the following rhyme, ´Close your shops and come with us. We, Jan Žižka´s sons, will smash the German mugs.´ We all expected we would defend ourselves. Then it came to the handover of the border regions. I was in the second grade of the grammar school and our music teacher, professor Hojný, was rehearsing folk songs from the Chodenland region with us. Then there was a performance. There was always some speech, too. And the villages of Trhanov and Klenčí had been taken over (Chodenland villages - auth.´s note). Then we had these performances and we were singing these songs. I still remember when the Germans came, as if it happened today. Before that day, the weather was not cold at all and in the night, from the fourteenth to fifteenth of March, when spring was about to come, it started freezing terribly.”

“My father-in-law was a kulak. He was the greatest peasant in Vysoké, near Žďár nad Sázavou. He had studied some at the school of agriculture and he had an excellent farm which was perfectly run. And when the communists came to power, he slaughtered a pig. They were already waiting for it. They found out about it and arrested him for two years and they made my mom move out of the farm. She was only allowed to take what she could load onto one lorry. They could keep only what they managed to carry on the truck. My mom’s bookcase and her piano thus, had to be left behind. The machinery was taken behind the village. It got damaged there because of the rain. Nobody cared. They managed to hide many things in other houses in the village. Many of the villagers were related and they were all great friends. So they asked these neighbours to keep the things for them and the neighbours then, denied having received anything.”

“After that, I began to be more interested in the matters of faith. My classmates began to disappear. A boy named Vojtěchovský had been sitting in front of me in the classroom. Then suddenly, he stopped going to school. Later I learnt that his entire family had been executed. I realized that this might happen any time, that the Germans might decide to murder all people from this or that street. And I thought that for people who believed this was somehow easier to bear. So I started reading the Bible and some books on religion. I remember I was attracted by Blaise Pascal’s thoughts on religion. And I remember, I decided that if I became a believer and then if they were torturing and killing me, I would be able to bear it better. And I arrived to the conclusion, that God certainly exists. But I cannot say I would fear less. Only after the war, I arrived to that understanding, to the immediate experience of God’s existence. That happened later.”

“The time in Leningrad was a wonderful experience. We were living in some sort of a special paradise there. For instance, on an election day, all the people could tell the students of theology, by their faces. We would have long prayer sessions, worship services, everyday prayers, and so on. The first year, was a year of service. My feet hurt when I had to stand in the church for three hours. So I would always kneel, then stand up, and then kneel again. And when I turned around, the church was full of people, especially full of women, and there were many young war widows among them. Who had nobody else to take care of their children. They held the babies in their arms and tears were streaming down their faces and they were praying. There were not enough churches and therefore, all of them were overcrowded but I got used to it. It began to turn into an awesome experience. The churches were locked overnight but the choir loft would remain open. I could thus go there and pray all night, up there in the gallery. The first year was a year of trial. Then we experienced the sweetness of prayer and the sweetness of that immediate contact with God. We simply talked to him and he heard us and talked to us. We were experiencing such a state of bliss.”

“We had a wonderful childhood. We had to work, since we were little children. My brothers passionately took to the agricultural life. I was not so keen on that, I was not attracted to it as much as my brothers. I rode a tractor during the war. That was one way to avoid being sent to Germany for forced labour but for me it was enormously difficult to handle the tractor. It was this way until, the end of the war. I was a student during the war, while, still in Prague. I completed a grammar school in Prague 10 – Karlín and in 1945, I took an additional graduation exam, in Latin and philosophy. I was studying Latin, while, I had to work as a tractor driver, instead of being an eight-grade student. When the day’s work finished at six, I would eat dinner before seven, wash myself, and then sit down and study Latin until nine in the evening.”

“So I asked him, whether the orthodox faith would last in our country. And he said, ´Yes, it will. But you will have to lend a helping hand.´ And then he tells me, ´You will become an archbishop, you know.´ I have never thought of anything like that. I was convinced that if I became a priest, I would marry and serve as a priest somewhere. But this took me aback. I told the boy who was with me, ´There are no archbishops in our country. We have the metropolitan and then only the bishops.´ – ´Well, it will happen by that time, if the Father said so, it will surely come true.´ I felt bad about it. About a week later my classmates arrived, ´Radivoj, you’ve visited the elder Serafim. What has he told you?´ I replied, ´Well, he told me that I would become an archbishop. But it seemed strange to me. I don’t think it is possible.´ One of my classmates said, ´See, you cannot take it so seriously. This elder Serafim is such a good old grandpa type, he likes students and he wants to make them happy. So he promises to all that they will become bishops. He even foretold Aljoš Ridiger that he would become a patriarch.´” (Alexej Michajlovič Ridiger served as the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church under the name Alexej II. in 1990- 2008 – auth.´s note)