Rest in peace, Father Hieronymus!
16. Juni 2014
Fish and loaves
Dear brothers in monastic life,
Dear friends of Fr. Hieronymus and of our community,
The passing of a monk is always a powerful moment in every monastic community, but I think we would all agree that the passing of Fr. Hieronymus is something very special indeed. His long and eventful life spans much of the history of this community from his arrival here in this land in 1937, first as a candidate for the Franciscans, and then as a novice in the abbey.
Pater Hieronymus was truly a living link connecting us with our monastery’s origins – with the first abbot, Maurus Kaufmann, for whom he had always the greatest respect and admiration, and with many of the founding monks from the Congregation of Beuron, who came to live the Benedictine life on Mt. Zion. I was powerfully reminded of that on my first Easter Sunday evening as abbot here. We had made the traditional visit to the cemetery to bring the new light of Easter to the graves of our brothers. At supper Fr. Hieronymus began gently to weep. When I went to comfort him, he told me, “I knew them all personally – everyone in that cemetery.”
His was truly a remarkable monastic life. Having come to this country from his native Croatia as a child when Palestine was still under the British mandate, he entered the abbey in 1933. He experienced the Second World War, paradoxically both as a member of this then almost entirely German community and as a serving officer of the Croatian Regiment in the British Army in Egypt.
The community and the Deutsche Verein vom heiligen Land have always thanked him for the timely action that kept Tabgha connected to the Benedictines and the Verein. As an Israeli citizen he experienced both war and peace – the terrible wars that have afflicted this country since its birth but also the peace of life in Tabgha, in a much simpler era, when he and a few other brothers maintained a monastic presence there, one very much rooted in the local area. He it was who welcomed two Popes, Paul VI and John Paul II, along with other famous visitors such as Konrad Adenauer and Kardinal Hoeffner.
With the Verein he oversaw the transformation of that holy place from a temporary church sheltering the precious rock and its accompanying mosaics, to one of the most beautiful pilgrim churches in the Holy Land. But he was equally well at home with his own Mitbrueder and friends in Galilee and Jerusalem as with all his famous visitors - as his many enduring friendships with Jews, Christians and Muslims can testify.
Toward the end of his life, it was necessary for his health that he should return to the abbey but it is surely a great grace that he was able to live in the new monastery, the successor to the one he had built, and to die in Galilee at the holy city of Safed overlooking his beloved Tabgha and the Golan heights.
It is important to acknowledge the love and care with which Fr. Hieronymus was surrounded as he became increasingly infirm – by his Mitbrueder in both parts of our community under the guidance of my predecessor Abbot Benedikt, and by the many people who came in contact with him – Fr. Ludger, our dear sisters from the Philippines, the staff in Tabgha and the Pilgerhaus, our volunteers (right up to our current Tabgha group), oblates and many visitors. I must mention also Renato, who accompanied him for a year and more intensively in the last few weeks of his life. But I think we would all wish to acknowledge especially the gentle, loving and professional care he received from his Mitbruder Josef, right up to the end. Fr. Elias observed to me that Hieronymus waited until Josef came home before returning to God.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we bury today a remarkable monk of Dormition Abbey, who has left an indelible imprint on this community in both its parts, but who will forever be associated especially with Tabgha. We celebrate the holy sacrifice of the Mass for him, calling on God to receive him into eternal life and to reward him for all his work as a monk here in this Holy Land. What qualities of his life should we especially celebrate today as we lay him to rest here on Mt Zion and commend his soul to God’s mercy?
Among the many qualities that could be considered let me suggest two in particular. The first is his generosity. It has entered both the history and mythology of this community and that of the many Christian communities here that Fr. Hieronymus for so many years kept people supplied with fruit from Tabgha – fruit from trees he had himself planted and tended. Again and again one hears that, every time his name is mentioned among the Christian communities here.
I am sometimes asked if being a monk in these holy places for which we care has a particular influence on our spirituality. I can certainly answer today for Pater Hieronymus, with a resounding yes! He imbibed the spirit of Tabgha, the place where our Lord Jesus Christ made a little bread and some fish go a long way, where God’s overflowing generosity was revealed in his miraculous multiplication of food. Hieronymus, living most of his life in that wonderful place, had learnt its lesson well. May the generosity he practiced for his whole life, the generosity of Tabgha be granted him today as the soil of the Holy Land receives his mortal remains and the Lord accepts his soul.
The second quality is an essentially Benedictine one, which we celebrate especially as we bury him today. It is his stability in the community. Through thick and thin, through bad times and good, through the struggle with his own demons and angels, through old age and suffering, through sickness and death – Hieronymus stayed the course. We bury him today in the monastery of his profession!
And along with that powerful sign of stability we recall that for long years he watched over Tabgha and protected it with loving care. Dear brothers in monastic life – dear novices who seek to share our life - what more powerful reminder could one ever have of the essence of our Benedictine vocation than this man whom today we give back to God? Generosity and fidelity are the lessons he has taught us: let us learn them well and practice them in our own monastic life, as he did in his.
Today, as we lay him to rest and sing this Solemn Mass over his mortal remains, we will chant words from Psalm 119, Suscipe me domine – “Receive me, O Lord according to your word and I shall live; and let me not disappointed in my expectations” – words which all monks sing as we make monastic profession. We will sing it with and for Pater Hieronymus, confident in faith that Our Lord Jesus Christ and his Holy Mother, here in the place of her passing, with St. Jerome and St. Benedict, will receive him into the heavenly Jerusalem, just as they received him here into monastic life in this church, so many years ago.
Fr. Hieronymus rest in peace! Pray for your Mitbrueder in Dormition Abbey and in Tabgha and for all in this Holy Land, in which you lived and served so long - and loved so well.
Amen.