Justin Popović

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Archimandrite Justin Popović
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Archimandrite Justin Popović

Justin Popović (Serbian Cyrillic Јустин Поповић) (1894-1979) was a theologian, a champion, a writer, a critic of the pragmatic church (celestial) life, a philosopher of the Orthodox religion and archimandrite of the Ćelije Monastery, near Valjevo.

Archimandrite Justin was born to pious and God-fearing parents, Prota (Priest) Spyridon and Protinica (Presbytera) Anastasia Popović, in Vranje, South Serbia, on the Feast of Annunciation, March 25, 1894. At baptism, he was given the name Blagoje, after the Feast of the Annunciation (Blagovest means Annunciation or Good News). He was born into a priestly family, as seven previous generations of the Popovices (Popović in Serbian actually means "family or a son of a priest") were headed by priests.

Blagoje Popović completed the nine-years' studies at the Theological Faculty of St. Sava in Belgrade in 1914. In the early twentieth century the School of St. Sava in Belgrade was renowned throughout the Orthodox world as a holy place of extreme asceticism as well as of a high quality of scholarship. Some of the well-known professors were the rector, Fr. Domentian; Professor Fr. Dositheus, later a bishop; Athanas Popović; and the great ecclesiastical composer, Stevan Mokranjac. Yet one professor stood head and shoulders above the rest: the then Hieromonk Nikolai Velimirović, Ph.D., the single most influential person in his life.

During the early part of World War I, in autumn of 1914, Blagoje served as a student nurse primarily in South Serbia-Skadar, Niš, Kosovo, etc. Unfortunately, while in this capacity, he contracted typhus during the winter of 1914 and had to spend over a month in a hospital in Niš. On January 8, 1915, he resumed his duties sharing the destiny of the Serbian army, passing a path of Golgotha from Peć to Skadar (along which one hundred thousand Serbian soldiers died) where on January 1st, 1916 he entered the monastic order in the Orthodox cathedral of Skadar and took the name of St. Justia, after the great Christian philosopher and martyr for Christ, St. Justin the Philosopher.

Shortly after becoming a monk, Justin, along with several other students traveled to Petrograd, Russia, to begin a year's study in the Orthodox Seminary there. It was here the young Monk Justin first dedicated himself more fully to Orthodoxy and the monastic way. He learned of the great ascetics of Russia: St. Anthony and Theodosius of the Caves in Kiev, St. Seraphim of Sarov, St. Sergius of Radonezh, St. John of Kronstadt and others.

After his year's study and sojourn in Russia, Justin Popović entered, at the prompting of his spiritual father Nikolaj, the Theological School in Oxford, England. Justin studied theology in London in the period 1916-1926, but his doctoral thesis under the title "Filozofija i religija F.M.Dostojevskog" (The Philosophy and Religion of F.M. Dostoevsky) was not accepted due to its radical criticism of Western humanism, rationalism, Roman Catholicism and anthropocentrism.

In 1923, Fr. Justin became the editor of the Orthodox journal The Christian Life; and in this journal appeared his first doctoral dissertation, "The Philosophy and Religion of Dostoevsky," for which he was persecuted at Oxford. Together with his fellow colleagues from the Oxford University he edited the periodical The Christian Life for twenty years.

In 1926 he was promoted to the title of the Doctor of Theology at the Faculty of Theology, University in Athens (his dissertation being "Problem ličnosti i saznanja po Sv. Makariju Egipatskom" -The Problem of Personality and Cognition According to St. Macarius of Egypt). For his course on the Lives of the Saints, Justin began to translate into Serbian the Lives of the Saints from the Greek, Syriac and Slavonic sources, as well as numerous minor works of the Fathers-homilies of Jovan John Chrysostom, Macarius, and Isaac the Syrian. He also wrote an exquisite book, The Theory of Knowledge According to St. Isaac.

From 1930 until 1932 after a stint as Professor in the Theological Academy of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Prizren, he was an associate of Bishop Joseph (Cvijovich) of Bitola and the man tasked with reorganizing the Church of the Carpatho-Russians in Czechoslovakia. This area had been besieged by those espousing Uniatism, where previously converted Christians of these regions started their conversion back into the Orthodox religion.

Dr. Justin was chosen, in 1934, as Professor of Dogmatics at the Theological Faculty of St. Sava in Belgrade. As the professor at the University of Belgrade he was one of the founders (1938) of the Serbian Philosophical Society along with a number of noted Belgrade intellectuals.

He was also the professor of Dogmatics at the Faculty of Orthodox Theology of the University of Belgrade from 1934 until 1941, until World War II. In 1945, within the perspective of the newly established communist and atheistic regime, the likes of a zealous Christian such as Father Justin, who was now beginning to convert the intellectuals to faith in Jesus Christ, had no place. Considered ineligible by the Communist party, together with a few fellow professors, he was ousted from the Faculty in 1945. As an ecclesiastical person and clergyman Father Justin spent 31 years in the Ćelije Monastery under the continuous surveillance of the Communist Party police.

A devoted monk and philosopher of the Orthodox religion, Justin Popović was a great critic of ecumenism, providing it was inclined towards relativization of the God's Truth. (Jovan Mayendorf, professor of the Academy of St. Vladimir now in Scarsdale, New York (associated with Columbia University) - and every bit as much a critic of the "Catholic novelties" and the Pope's anti-Christianity. Until the end of his life Father Justin was a dedicated creator, and it is no wonder that his work is considered as a great contribution to the Orthodox theology and he himself as the secret conscience of the Serbian Church and the entire martyr's Orthodox religion (according to John N. Karmiris, the Greek academician).

St. Justin fell asleep in the Lord on March 25, 1979, on his birthday, the Feast of the Annunciation. Father Justin (Popovic) was recently canonized as a saint by the Serbian Orthodox Church.

[edit] Selected bibliography

  • "The Philosophy and Religion of F.M. Dostoevsky" (1923),
  • "Dogmatics of the Orthodox Church", I-III (1932, 1935, 1980),
  • "The Progress in the Death Mill" (1933),
  • "The Foundations of Theology" (1939)
  • "Dostoevsky on Europe and Slavism" (1940),
  • "Philosophical Abysses" (1957),
  • "The Man and the God-Man" (1969 in the Greek language),
  • "Hagiographies of the Saints", I-XII (1972-1977),
  • "The Orthodox Church and Ecumenical" (1974, in the Greek and Serbian languages).

[edit] External links

[edit] Troparion, Tone 4

As Orthodox sweetness and divine nectar, Venerable Father
thou dost flow into the hearts of believers as a wealth:
by thy life and teachings thou didst reveal thyself to be a living book of the Spirit, most wise Justin;
therefore pray to Christ the Word
that the Word may dwell in those who honor thee.
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