Fr Paul Lazor's retirement address delivered on April 14, 2007:

These probing words of the Apostle Paul, my heavenly patron, penetrated beyond my ears and into my heart for the first time when they were pronounced by Prof. Serge Verhosvkoy, with his peculiar diction and intonation, during one of his lengthy classes in dogmatic theology, held in those days in what is now the cook’s office in the Germack Building. I never forgot these questioning words. I pronounced them for the first time publicly when, unexpectedly, I was called upon to speak briefly at my own Seminary graduation exercises. They continue to address themselves to me with special clarity – and especially on this day. They say the following to me: life and all within it is a gift from God. They speak of thanksgiving, of the Eucharist; of the Church’s Sacrament of Sacraments and central mode of self-realization. They make it clear that our joyful response of the heart to the God and Father, with His Son and Spirit, and all His Saints, for the “all things” He has done for us is --- thanksgiving! And, as Fr. Alexander Schmemann proclaimed with boldness of faith in the first sentence of his last homily, given on Thanksgiving Day, 1983, the free gift of God given to those capable of thanksgiving, “on behalf of all and for all,” is: “salvation and eternal joy.”

Today, together with all of you with whom I have shared so much of my life, more than ever I want to “lift up my heart” and “give thanks unto the Lord” (exhortations from the Divine Liturgy).

I My Parents and Family of Origin

I begin this thanksgiving with mention of my parents and family of origin. Two immediate members of that family are here: my “big” brother, Bob, and my even “bigger” brother, His Beatitude and Metropolitan Emeritus, THEODOSIUS. Metropolitan THEODOSIUS has always been here. Our fathers are brothers. My earliest remembrances of being in Church are connected with him. He was always in Church! From my earliest age of serving as an altar boy (age 5), he was always there. His life of fidelity to the Church always stood out as a point of reference for me. When the time came, he physically accompanied me on the overnight bus trip from our hometown (Canonsburg) in W. PA to NYC. And for 25 years, he was the President and immediate ruling Hierarch of the Seminary where I have served!

My father, Joseph, was an 11-year-old immigrant from Galicia who began work in a steel-fabricating factory at age 14 and worked there for 51 years. His heart, however, was totally engaged in the life of the parish church of which he was one of the founders. He became the parish cantor and choir director at age 21 (being schooled by the parish priests), and also continued this holy ministry for 51 unbroken years. He liked to say that during that time he missed but two Sundays: when I was married here at SVS, and about a month later, when I was ordained here (he was present at both celebrations).

My mother, Anna, a daughter of another of the parish founders, was the choir’s leading alto and a chief laborer in the parish’s “Altar Society,” an organization of women engaged in church maintenance and charitable outreach to the needy – especially the sick and suffering within the parish. She, too, was a factory worker from ages 13 to 17, at which time she and my father married. At home, living with and caring for her aging parents, she eventually ran an 11-member household: cleaning, washing clothes by hand, shopping and cooking three meals a day for the numerous hungry stomachs! In the final weeks and days of her life, at age 91, at the conclusion of my last visits with her, she left me with these two personal sayings, both of which summarize her spiritual disposition and mode of conduct very well:

1. “If something is from God, no matter how much of it you give away, it will never run out!”
2. “Always have a clean and forgiving heart.”

About my wonderful “big” brother Bob, here with his wife, Norma, from Phoenix, AZ, I express gratitude for his being, at all times, a presence of decency, discipline, stability and generosity! He, too, has always been a point of reference for me: in so many ways as I grew up I was kept out of trouble simply by trying to be “like my brother, Bob.”

II My Home Parish and Pastors

I was born into and raised within the St. John the Baptist parish in Canonsburg, PA. I was baptized by Fr. Basil Horsky, a graduate of Tenafly Seminary, and grew under his gentle tutelage for the first nine years of my life. I began to serve in the altar at age five, and I sang the entire Divine Liturgy as a solo cantor at age eight (by heart – without text or musical notes). Fr. Horsky’s daughter, Helen, to this day about three times per year sends me hand-written letters in which she recalls my grandparents and parents and other aspects of my really early days, and always offers words of encouragement concerning the priestly ministry she knows so well!

Fr. Nicholas Fedetz (+Jan. 1, 2005) served as my pastor, teacher, guide and fatherly friend for the next 13 years – until my enrollment at St. Vladimir’s Seminary (of which he was an alumnus). He bequeathed to me the precious gift of radost’ tserkovnaia (meaning: churchly joy, or joy in the church). I borrow this term from Archbishop JOHN of San Francisco, who ordained me to the Holy Priesthood and used these words as the title of one of his many articles. Fr. Nicholas expressed this gift in countless ways, especially in his celebration of the Church’s liturgy, his preaching and his endless hours of seemingly tireless pastoral labor. As my grandfather once said of him: “Fr. Fedetz sleeps with one leg in bed, and one leg in his car – ready to be of service at any time!”

Playing sports was like eating or sleeping in my parental household. My uncles played for the local baseball teams in the 1930’s (one of them went on to co-captain the Villanova baseball and basketball teams). Engagement in sports seemed to be a way for immigrant families like mine to make it into the mainstream of American life. My brother Bob, then I, did very well at high school basketball. We both received full scholarships to play this sport at the University of Pittsburgh – where Bob in particular had an excellent career. Two athletes had a significant influence on me during my days at Pitt: John Fridley (he became a dentist but died in his mid-fifties of a heart ailment), and the well-known sports figure, Mike Ditka. When you played with either of them you almost needed no opposing team. In different ways each taught me the same lesson, one which, to this day, I try to apply to my life: you either come to play the game all out, or you get off the court!

After considerable inner turmoil and soul-searching, with the kind guidance of my parish priest, and the encouragement of Metropolitan THEODOSIUS and other family members, in 1961 I enrolled at St. Vladimir’s Seminary. It was said that I would “make a good priest,” and with that purpose in mind I entered “training” at St. Vladimir’s. By the middle of my first semester of studies, however, I sensed that “training” was a word rather inadequate to all that was transpiring with me in Seminary life. I came to realize that, based on all that I was hearing, seeing and doing, I would have to either: a) surrender everything that I understood as the reasons that motivated me to enroll at the Seminary and begin ANEW, i.e., embracing Jesus Christ as the Way, the Truth and the Life, and accepting that I would not be at all sure where this might lead me in an earthly or career sense; or, b) leave the Seminary! I thank God that I stayed!

This foundational “moment of truth” in my life emerged as the result of the incredible and lively coming together of the following several elements:

1. direct participation in the conduct, through twice-daily services, of all four of the Church’s liturgical cycles;
2. formal, systematic and academic presentations of the Orthodox Faith in a classroom setting by superbly prepared and excellent teachers;
3. the teaching, prayerful and regular presence of people such as I had never before met: Frs. Alexander Schmemann and John Meyendorff, and Professors Serge Verhovskoy and Veselin Kesich – to name but a few;
4. personal prayer and study;
5. community service (I was the Captain of the first-ever Dinner Crew, and later, the Ecclesiarch and daily choir director);
6. my brothers in Christ, precisely those who are not “flesh and blood,” but are “revealed” by the Father (cf. Mt 16:17), who lived, shared, suffered, supported and stood with me in ways I had never even imagined – ways that helped shatter a sometimes prideful ring of self-enclosure, fear and inner denial. I remain linked to this day to my beloved Seminary brothers, Fr. Tom Hopko, David Drillock and Fr. Paul Kucynda (with whom I traveled on three summer octets). My dear roommate of three Seminary years, Fr. Joseph Olas, died about a decade ago;
7. to this list I must add the briefly mentioned but very important development: the three consecutive summer octets of which I was a member. They were used by the Lord to keep me focused: “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead…, the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philip 3:14). Through them, as I will now recount, I also came to meet my wife.

V Marriage: Wife and Family

I am married to Natasha (nee) Manturoff for 42 years! A brief outline of her background discloses just what an amazing, unique person she is. Her father, Alexander, is from Perm; her mother, Maria Feodorovna, is from the Kuban region (both locales are in Russia, but extremely distant from each other). Alexander served in the White Army and arrived too late on the scene as part of the effort to save Nicholas II. He and Maria Feodorovna met and married in Khabarovsk (on the Amur River above Manchuria), eventually emigrated to China and lived there for 28 years. Natasha was born there, in Macao, and came to the U.S. (to San Francisco) with her family, at the age of 12, as a Russian, Chinese, British-English-speaking, young girl!

How did I ever meet such a woman? I first heard of her during the 2nd Seminary Summer Octet, in Denver, Colorado, where I met her former pastor, Fr. George Benigsen, who had transferred from the Holy Trinity Cathedral in San Francisco. At the conclusion of our stay of several days, Fr. George and his wife, Matushka Elena, took me aside and advised me to meet a wonderful young woman, Natasha Manturoff, they knew well from their former parish. By the time of our arrival in San Francisco several weeks later, however, I had all but forgotten the name of the person about whom Fr. Benigsen had advised me. Nevertheless, when by chance, not knowing at all who she was, I happened to glance up from my position as director of the octet before the service began and saw, just then, a beautiful women entering the Holy Trinity Cathedral, I knew this: she was the one I just had to meet! And after the Service that evening (July 28, 1963 – St. Vladimir’s Day on the Old Style), we did meet. And we continued to meet together daily for the week that the octet remained in the San Francisco area. Soon I recognized that Natasha was the woman foreseen for me by God. She was a gift! She was not a possible choice among many, but – the ONE: Eve to Adam, and marriage with her would prove itself to be a particular realization of the “great mystery” - the unique, total and eternal union between Christ and His Church (of which St. Paul speaks in Ephesians and we read about during the Marriage Rite).

Natasha has walked with me everywhere, in everything – indeed, “Walking a Mile in My Shoes.” With her I have been blessed to have a “small church,” as St. John Chrysostom says in reference to the family. We have three children – Sasha, Liza and Pavlik, and six grandchildren. For the more than 20 years that we all shared one household, my children also “walked a mile” with me and participated totally in my ministry as a priest and teacher. They attended our Church School, served in the altar and sang in the choir, with Liza in particular at age 12 starting to direct the choir, and thereafter singing in the numerous trios, quartets and choral groupings which are a feature of Chapel singing to this day. Liza also taught in the Church School and now works as a nurse.

VI Parish Ministry

After ordination to the Holy Priesthood in 1964, I was blessed by God to serve as a regular parish priest in the OCA for 13 years. The first two years were spent in the Diocese of the Midwest at the SS. Cyril and Methodius Church in Milwaukee, WI. The great-grandfather of Dn. Nicholas Garklavs, Archbishop JOHN of Chicago, was my first ruling bishop, and Nicholas’ grandfather, Fr. Sergei Garklavs, was my Dean. I then transferred to the Diocese of New England and the Holy Trinity Church in New Britain, CT, where I served as pastor for the next nearly eleven years. My experience there was that of a basic love, unity and support among a host of the brethren in the community. There people did not “neglect to meet together often,” and they “considered how to stir up one another to love and good works” (Heb 11:24-25). It was a community that loved liturgical worship, celebrating it always “decently, and in order” (I Cor 14:40). In fact, I enjoy reporting that, in eleven years, there, no matter how early I went to Church for a service, I never once arrived before at least some people were not already there, praying. My service in New Britain was one of joy in a community going ever more deeply into understanding and living out the Faith. It was a community I thought I might never leave. Now, even thirty years after transferring to full-time work at St. Vladimir’s, I still receive annually, from many of the faithful of the Holy Trinity Church, cards and gifts at Christmas and on my Name day. The sense of continued love and support from them in all things is enormous. And Fr. John Shimchick, my altar server there at age 12, remains with me to this day as an ordained, priestly concelebrant at the Lord’s Holy Altar.

VII Service at St. Vladimir’s Seminary

Since my enrollment here in 1961, there has been only a relatively brief period of about three years when I was not directly involved in St. Vladimir’s Seminary, either as a student, a faculty member (since 1969), a priest, a pastor, a spiritual father, and all these plus more as the Seminary’s Dean of Students (since 1977). It has been an enormous blessing and privilege to serve under and with my principal teachers, fathers and brothers in Christ: Frs. Alexander Schmemann, John Meyendorff, and Thomas Hopko; Prof. David Drillock, and now, with a former altar server, reader and singer from my beloved Holy Trinity parish, our Fr. and Dean, John Erickson.

I am also very grateful for the generations of students I have been allowed to lead pastorally, guide spiritually, teach formally in the classroom and console in Christ; whose marriages I have celebrated and whose children I have baptized. The Lord God has blessed us to pray together, study and work together, and share our lives with each other to a depth and totality far beyond what is typically possible in the context of most parishes. Thirty years of such experience at St. Vladimir’s has confirmed in my heart and soul the truth of something written by Bishop KALLISTOS in his wonderful book, The Inner Kingdom. He paraphrases St. Tikhon of Zadonsk concerning the Sacrament of Confession and says the following: “There is a two-way relationship between the priest and the one who is making the confession; the spiritual father is helped by his children, as well as they by him” (p. 53). To this I can only respond: “Amen, Amen and Amen!”

The totality of community life at St. Vladimir’s, involving as it does single men and women as well as an ever-growing number of resident married students and their families, along with families of resident faculty and staff, is especially evident in the joyful, weekly gatherings each Friday afternoon of the Church School. There, 20-30 of our children, along with (usually) at least one of their parents (or grandparents) and several volunteer teachers, are introduced in a more formal way to the faith and life of the Orthodox Church. Special occasions such as the visit from St. Nicholas each December and the glorious celebration of Lazarus Saturday at the end of each Great Lent, with children’s choir and procession, serve to magnify the presence in the Seminary community of children and their families. Equally enhancing in this communal sense is the regular involvement in the services in the Seminary Chapel of many devout Orthodox Christians, such as Georgia Toumbakis, a speaker earlier this afternoon, who consider the Seminary and its Chapel to be their spiritual home. Ministry within this broader community context is often, for me, a high point within a given week, or liturgical season. Through this ministry I have been blessed to enter ever more deeply into the lives of so many people, as we “bear one another’s burdens, and thus fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal 6:2).

I would be amiss if I did not express my profound gratitude to my many faculty and administrative colleagues and daily co-workers at the Seminary. Allow me to mention three such “7-24” co-workers in particular. “Thank you” Ann Sanchez: for your wonderfully positive attitude and joyful support in all things each day; for your daily attention to each detail and person in the administration and life of our beloved school. “Thank you” Ted Bazil: you were once my student; during retreats I led in Detroit I stayed at the home of you beloved parents; I conducted the funeral for your father as well as for Matushka Helen, the wonderful mother of your wife, Claudia. Earlier, I gave the main address at the “triple-50” celebration of Claudia’s dear parents, Fr. Nicholas and Matushka Helen Fedorchak (at about age 9, I had served as an altar boy for Fr.Nicholas). You, Ted, are the faithful co-worker in Christ about whom priests dream: you are always ready to do “whatever needs to be done!” “Thank you” Fr. Steven Belonick: you are my friend from your college years when you resided in New Britain, CT. Daily, you are with me and always ready to help me carry the burden of “me.”

VIII Conclusion

I conclude these words of gratitude by again thanking God for everything, “known and unknown, manifest and unseen,” and especially today for blessing my life with such an incredible framework within which I may, “working out my own salvation with fear and trembling” (Philip 2:13), glorify Him. This framework consists of elements adequate to the mind, the heart, the soul and the body. It involves absolutely magnificent liturgical worship. It involves being surrounded at all times by wife and family, and by wonderfully dedicated people whose main desire is themselves to love the Lord God with all their “mind, heart, soul and strength.”

A significant fact about service at St. Vladimir’s is that the vast majority of the “congregation” remains at the same youthful age. People enroll only to graduate and leave. They are in turn replaced by a new group of young people. Only the pastor grows older! For me these 30 years of full-time ministry at St. Vladimir’s have passed like a “mgnovenie oka” (“twinkling of an eye”- I Cor 15:52). In whatever mysterious way such conclusions are reached, this year seems to be the “kairos,” the “right time” to retire from the hugely demanding and “hands-on” service at St. Vladimir’s. While my health is still good, I ask God to bless me to dedicate myself anew to a formal assembling in written form of the many areas of pastoral ministry and liturgical life about which I have been privileged to teach, and which in reality I have been allowed to conduct at the Seminary over these many years.

I have tried my very best to pass on to you what, as a gift, I have thankfully received. Forgive me and pray for me in my many failures.

Certainly I pass on to you the responsibility of responding yourselves to the question posed by the Apostle Paul:

“What do you have that you did not receive?”