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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, JUNE 28, 1985
PAGE 9
the founder of Western monasticism, many Westerners saw this
merely as the Slav pope's "gesture of homage" to his own people.
But, as we are only now beginning to realize, the pope's action
sprang from the recognition that European unity derives from its
common roots••••
When the two brothers set about their mission, they did not do so
solely in obedience to the orders of the Byzantine emperor who
sent them as "messengers and missionaries." Cyril and Methodius
left a peaceful academic life behind them to follow up on a mar
velous intuitive concept: that of� Europe based on� unified
culture•••• They invented their own alphabet (hence Cyrillic) and
taught their liturgy in "barbarian" tongues to "barbarian"
peoples, so that their followers would gain an awareness of their
own identity and their own history.
They thus converted to
Christianity that part of Europe to which the Romans had sent
legions and proconsuls, and where the German empire had sent
Saxon troops and empire builders••••
In the Western imagination, Eastern Europe exists as a jumble of
confused images. These nations do not stand out for their proud
histories and their cultural heritages. Who identifies Prague as
the "heart of Europe"?... About 10 years ago in a town in
Czechoslovakia in an area once evangelized by Methodius, I met a
little man on a bitterly cold winter's night. It was 30 degrees
Celsius below zero, and the man was sitting on a pile of snow with
a bottle of vodka. "I am a little man from Czechoslovakia,• he
was saying, "a little man from a little country right in the
heart of Europe. For over a thousand years we have been invaded
left, right and center. But the heart goes on beating."
What the little man said was true: For if that heart did not go on
beating, what would happen to Europe? There would be no Europe
on the lines that Cyril and Methodius or even Benedict dreamed
of. These European men dreamed great dreams and then acted to
change the face of their world and their era•••• Even amid the
persecution behind the Iron Curtain, the Pan-European vision of
Cyril and Methodius still inspires the oppressed Slavic peoples.
The following moving reflection is offered by a great Czechoslo
vak theologian who passed through both Nazi and Stalinist camps,
and today lives in Prague under tight police surveillance:
"We Christians here below want to be present armed with our pa
tience, fulfilling a useful role with the small amount of God's
infinite abundance that is in our possession•••• Our church is
like a huge tree with its leaves exposed to the sun and wind: but
its roots� firmly embedded� thousandfold in the earth•••• Our
dialogue continues even when we are compelled to silence, but it
is in and also during the silence that the way to the Lord is
prepared."
In designating the two missionaries to the Slavic peoples, Po l e
John Paul II has again turned the sights of those interested�
European unity eastward.
Certainly there would be no Europe
without them, and neither would our civilization exist. That is