Watching my interest in Paulos Mar Gregorios, I am often asked how I am related to him. I enthusiastically respond that he became a hero to me in my childhood and he continues to be a hero. I have had several heroes since my childhood, but none has stayed a hero to me for such a long time as Mar Gregorios.
When I was in my early teenage, I had a notebook in which I had a collection of the pictures of the great people I admired. On the front page of the book was this favorite verse of mine from Proverbs: Exalt wisdom; she will exalt you (4:8). All my heroes in my teenage were those people who exalted wisdom. Paulos Mar Gregorios was someone in my community who exalted wisdom , and I watched with wonder and excitement as he climbed the steps of success and was exalted to become one of the most influential people in the world.
It was from my older brother that I first heard about Father Paul Varghese (previous name). It was in the late sixties, and I was in high school then. My brother happened to see him in an Orthodox Student Movement conference, and later at home he spoke highly of him. We used to subscribe to the Orthodox Youth magazine at our home, and I began eagerly looking for anything written by Fr. Paul Varghese. He usually appeared in a column answering the questions people sent to the magazine. I had to wait until late seventies to read a book by him-- the Malayalam translation of Joy of Freedom. I read it with great enthusiasm and wrote a summary of it in the Orthodox Youth magazine under the title, Our Worship.
I am fortunate to have meet Mar Gregorios three times. The first was at Kundara in 1974 if my memory serves me right. It was about ten Kilometers away from my home, and I was about 18. Hearing from a friend about his arrival, I went there just to see him and hear his speech. It was Passion Week, and I still remember him talking about Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. He presented it as an example of humility that all people and nations need to follow. I noticed that he had the magic of keeping the attention of the entire audience from the beginning till the end. Not a single sound could be heard from the audience of around 400 people.
The second one was in 1979 or 80. I happened to attend a student conference in Hyderabad. I didn’t know Mar Gregorios was the main speaker there, and so it was a pleasant surprise to see him there. He gave a series of lectures on the Kingdom of God. The clarity of his thought made a deep impact on me. It was very different from any other speech or class I had attended. He made sure that the audience understood every theological term he used. He clarified every unfamiliar word he used in his lectures. He presented his thought from simple to complex and from familiar to unfamiliar systematically so that it was a joyful experience to listen to him. While we were going to visit a museum in Hyderabad, I had the opportunity to have a brief conversation with him. I remember asking him what he thought about Universalism, the argument that all people will be saved, and he responded right away that he did not believe in it.
The third time I was fortunate to see him was in 1982, in Kottayam, when Manorama Newspaper organized a symposium and a public meeting to commemorate his 60th birthday. As soon as I read the news of the event in the morning news paper, I hurried to catch a train to Kottayam. It was a grand occasion, where I could meet several faces I greatly admired. The symposium was on World Peace. Prof. K. M. Tharakan was the facilitator. The speakers included Dr. M. M. Thomas, Paulos Mar Paulos, Nityachaitanya Yati, Fr. Dr. K. M. George, Dr. Ninan Koshy, and several other eminent scholars. The public meeting, in the evening, was inaugurated by C. M. Stephen, a Cabinet Minister of the Government of India, and was chaired by C. Achutha Menon, the former chief minister of Kerala. I obtained a copy of Cosmic Man, the doctoral dissertation of Mar Gregorios, from there.
After a couple of years I left India to go to Ethiopia as a teacher, and among the few things I took with me was Cosmic Man. As I had a lot of free time in Ethiopia, I read this book over and over again. I was excited to know that Mar Gregorios was a school teacher like me in Ethiopia about forty years before. I have had a chance to stay for a few days in a place called Nazareth, where Mar Gregorios was posted as a teacher first. I heard several legendary stories about Mar Gregorios from various people in Ethiopia. I happened to meet in Addis Ababa Ms. Kunjannamma, whom Mar Gregorios mentions in his autobiography. One day, while talking to me casually, an assistant principal in my school (Ethiopian) said to me, “John, do you know, there is a great scholar in India called Mar Gregorios!” He didn’t know I belonged to the Orthodox Church in India, and that Mar Gregorios was a hero to me. One day in 1989, I think, I was surprised to see Mar Gregorios on the Ethiopian TV. He was in Moscow addressing an international conference, and on the stage with him was none other than the President of the Soviet Union, Michael Gorbechew, and other prominent figures.
Later in 1992 I came to the United States as a student. I often think that my path in life has been similar to that of Mar Gregorios in that respect. From Kerala he went to Ethiopia as a teacher, and from there he went to USA as a student. But there were important differences too. Mar Gregorios could master Amharic, the language of Ethiopia, in a year, but I could barely understand and utter simple sentences and identify the letters of its alphabet even after eight years of stay.
On Nov 24th, 1996, I was attending a prayer meeting of my parish church in Houston, in Texas. Mathews Mar Barnabas was leading us in the concluding prayer. The phone rang, and a message was delivered to His Grace. Mar Barnabas stopped the prayer to announce: “His Grace Paulos Mar Gregorios, the Metropolitan of Delhi Diocese, has passed away”. I couldn’t control myself. I forgot where I was, and began to weep. He meant so much to me. He is the one person who has influenced me more than anyone else.
That night I sat down and expressed my feelings in a few lines in Malayalam, and I recited it in our church after a week. It said:
I am submitting this poem to the memory of Paulos Mar Gregorios, who remained a heroic son to the Orthodox Church of India for several decades, and of whom the church has been very proud of.
After fighting for you all day long, here lies your dear son, sleeping, with his head on your lap, O mother, the Church.
Rising from the land of Malayalam, your son enlightened the entire world.
He proclaimed the good news of Jesus flawlessly to give salvation to the whole world.
He traveled all over the world to give you fame.
Oh God, Thy dear servant, Mar Gregorios, has shown us the depth, height, width, and length of Thy love to us fully and clearly.
Oh God, we thank Thee for giving us this great soul as our shepherd to show us the right path.
In a few years, I happened to meet a handful of people in Houston who admired Mar Gregorios. Together we decided to celebrate a memorial in November 2000. For this purpose we set up an organization called Gregorian Study Circle, and had the celebration. Soon we started an online group, and people began joining it from all over the world. In 2001 November, there was a memorial celebration in Chicago and another one in Madison in addition to Houston. In 2002, a grand inter-religious seminar was held in Chicago for the memorial.
At present the online group of Gregorian Study Circle has members from around the world. The members include H.G. Job Mar Philoxenos, the successor of Mar Gregorios in Delhi Diocese, Fr. Dr. K. M. George, the successor of Mar Gregorios at the Orthodox Theological Seminary as its principal, Mr. Abraham Varghese, Mar Gregorios’ brother in Canada, close friends like Dr. Eapen Cherian and Dr. Joseph Thomas, and Joice Thottackad, the biographer of Mar Gregorios. I feel happy such a worldwide network of the disciples of Mar Gregorios could be formed.
I helped Joice Thottackad put up a website on Mar Gregorios (paulosmargregorios.in) by editing and proofreading the content of the site. I also had the opportunity to collect some of his pictures and make a slideshow of his life, thought, and work. I showed it in and around Houston whenever I had an opportunity. Ruben Jacob, my friend, presented it in some student conferences in India.
When I was growing up, existence appeared a very complicated puzzle to me. Reconciling the information I received from my school classes with the information I received from my Sunday school classes was almost impossible. Science and religion appeared like parallel lines to me, never meeting anywhere. It was the thought of Mar Gregorios that helped me to solve this puzzle to some extent. I learned from him that science and religion are not contradictory but complementary. This is just one example of how the thought of Mar Gregorios has provided me with the right guidance and orientation in my life. His thought has helped me to solve many other puzzles I have had about human existence.
Born and brought up in the Orthodox Church in India, I grew up listening to the claim of our religious leaders and teachers that our church is superior to the other churches or may be the only true church. However, I couldn’t be convinced easily, for that is what the leaders of any religious community would tell its followers. The irrational adherence to inherited practices I observed in my own community often tempted me to leave it for some other community in which I could observe a lot of vitality. However, I still remain in my own community because of Paulos Mar Gregorios. His explanation of how my church evolved and how its views are different made sense to me.
Paulos Mar Gregorios was someone who transcended his allegiance to his own community and culture and became a world citizen. Staying loyal to his own community, he stretched his arms to embrace the entire humanity. Therefore, while those in the Christian tradition will find it easier to follow the thought of Mar Gregorios, it would not be alien to any member of human race. This book and any work by Paulos Mar Gregorios can be read by anyone with an open mind.
November 2011
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