Mr. John Maddex: After long and fierce persecution in the Communist East, the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Albania today has experienced a complete revival—many call it a miracle of modern times—under the leadership and spiritual direction of Archbishop Anastasios, still active at the age of 93.

Included in this resurrection is the Metropolis of Korce. Today, 32 local priests serve in Korce under the beloved Metropolitan John. Metropolitan John, or Joan, was raised in communism, and miraculously found Christ in a very unexpected way. He then became part of the underground Christian Church in Albania, in a time when gathering as Christians to worship and pray was illegal.

We recently had the privilege of traveling to Albania and included a side trip to Korce at the southeast of this beautiful country. In his office, Metr. John gave us this unhurried and amazing interview, where he tells his very personal story of conversion. Stay tuned.

We have the blessing and privilege to be in Korce, Albania, and to speak with Metropolitan John. We want to thank you, Your Eminence, for letting us come to speak with you.

His Eminence Metropolitan John of Korce: You are welcome.

Mr. Maddex: You have been the metropolitan here for how long?

Metr. John: I have passed 24 years; now I am in the 25th year.

Mr. Maddex: Ah, that’s a big event. Congratulations. That’s wonderful!

Metr. John: 25 years is a full generation.

Mr. Maddex: It is, that’s right. I understand that you are in a building program as well.

Metr. John: Yes, we are restoring the old cathedral. One of the reasons is to keep the historical memory of the city, because the people need the historical memory. Around the cathedral, this church was founded in the city and was grown up. So giving back to the city again the cathedral would be something very good for all the people who live in Korce. Not only the Orthodox: the people of other faiths have given something to help restoring this historical church.

Mr. Maddex: So we are restoring an historical church, which means it has a history. When was it built to begin with?

Metr. John: Maybe the church was for centuries here, but there were two things that are recorded. It’s one in the 18th century when the church was built, a big church, a post-Byzantine church. And in the 19th century, when these others were demolished, and it was building a big one, a very big one. Now we are restoring like it was in the 19th century. The church is a huge cathedral, and we believe that it will be not only the church but a kind of cultural center, open to all, and for sure for the service of the Christians, but open to all.

Because in Albania, not only in Korce but in all Albania, during the communism were a lot of intermarried people, sharing the same language, the same culture, knowing that all Albanians before the Ottoman occupation were Christians. So they have something in common. For them to come into the church, it’s something normal.

Most of the children from these interfaith marriages now are coming to the church. We are not to judge them; we are to serve them. But personally I believe that every human being is looking for something. When I say “something,” they are looking for God. And when I say “God,” I mean the God revealed by Christ. So if we will be able to present this to the whole people, it will be much easier for them to accept. The same did St. Paul when he talked about [the] unknown God. So this unknown God is something that all the human beings are looking for. It is the duty of Christians to represent that God, not the God that sometimes they think that they are preaching. It’s really important, this, because all the human beings share the same thing, the same nature.

Like we discussed before, as I mentioned to you a saying of St. Gregory [the] Theologian, who is said to say human beings in plural is a heresy; it’s one human being, and million of persons. Like it’s one divine being and three persons.

Mr. Maddex: Yes.

Metr. John: So all human beings have a divine origin, and they are all according to the image of God. And if their beliefs are mistaken, still, the divine origin, it’s in them. It’s [possible] always for every human being to know the true God.

Mr. Maddex: Yes, the philosopher Blaise Pascal talked about the God-shaped hole that exists in every human being, and it’s our responsibility as Christians, as we try to fulfill the great commission, to introduce God to people in the Person of Jesus Christ.

Metr. John: And the Incarnation touched the whole human being, gave the possibility to all humans to change their nature, following the cross and the resurrection of our Lord. So this is a gift the whole human beings, not for some elected people or some special races. All these other things are a deviation of this. All the human beings are called for this, and Christ was crucified for the whole human beings.

Mr. Maddex: Thanks be to God. There’s so much we could talk about, Your Eminence, about Korce, about the church here. What I really think our listeners would love to hear is more about you personally and your first encounter with Christ as the fulfiller of your need for God. Could you take us back? Tell us where you were born and in what culture.

Metr. John: I was born in Tirana in 1956, 1 January. I was part of a big family. We were eight children. During the time the religion was forbidden, abolished any kind of religion. But still, you cannot shut the door of the Lord. “I open and nobody can shut,” the Lord says. When I was a child, I was very happy. A large family, a traditional family. And I loved so much fairy tales, legends, myths, reading, all these things. Later, I understood that it was a journey, was a quest, seeking for something.

When I went in the high school, slowly the joy disappeared, because it was the influence of reading some philosophies, where you start not to believe the things that were as a child. But the belief was not in some doctrinal way, because there was no church, no mosque, was nothing. It was more a kind of existence of something beyond.

I was in the fourth year of high school and I just had learned French. A friend of my brother’s said, “I have a book in French in my house. I will bring it to you.” He didn’t know what kind of book it was. He brought to me—it was the New Testament. In the time—it was 1974, in Albania it was much easier to find dynamite than a gospel, because if you were caught with a gospel, at least you will be eight years in jail.

When I read the Gospel, I felt something different. I felt this joy that I had as a child came back. The first words that I said to myself towards God was: “Thank you that you brought me again this joy.” And so we started to be interested more to read something more about these things. I read and I knew almost by heart in the time the whole Gospel in French. After that I found it in Albanian.

Through my friend I was in touch with a small group of underground Church. There were some very small groups, because the fear was terrible. I remember in the time that they were baptized, secretly, a Roman Catholic priest was executed because he performed the baptism.

Mr. Maddex: Wow.

Metr. John: I told that to understand how the situation was. He was a heroic priest, a holy priest, Fr. Cosma from Vlore. It’s a city in the south of Albania. He performed during all his life maybe 3,000 baptisms. He was part of this small group of underground Church.

I remember I went in his house for the baptism. His son was watching outside to see if somebody will come. We were in the basement. We were only three people. It was the priest, me, and my godfather. But the joy that they felt at the time, I never have experienced more. In that time, we had the thirst, but we didn’t have water. Today, there’s plenty of water, but the people have no more thirst. Sometimes they do not go together with each other.

I had the First Communion during that time. My goal, my idea is to become a monk, but in that time this thought was crazy in Albania, because people thought it would be impossible to have a change of regime.

In 1990, when started a kind of opening, and many Albanians had the possibility maybe to go outside, I was one of them. First I went in Italy, and after, the United States. In the United States I studied in Holy Cross, helped by the Albanian Orthodox Church in Boston. But I told them that if the Church will be open in Albania, I’ll go back. And they said to me, “Okay,” thinking that nobody would go back. When I finished the school, I thought that the United States, one priest more, one less, it would be the same. In Albania, it was a big need, because we’d destroyed everything. So I decided to come back.

Mr. Maddex: Let me go back to that conversion. You talked about reading the New Testament for the first time and being captured, captivated, by the words of Christ, and about the message of the Gospel. This underground Church that you found, was it an Orthodox Church?

Metr. John: Yes. I maybe answer in the short way. When I read the Gospel, it’s something I call a kind of psychological truth, the way how it was written, maybe the way I understood, I felt. You are convinced it is the truth. This is not done by the reason, but it is something inside that you feel. So when I read, I had no doubt that it was the truth.

This small group—they were all Orthodox—some of them were in Korce. There were some holy sisters here, very old at the time. There was this priest from Vlore, and some people in Tirana. I have visited the sisters. We call them sisters because they were sisters by blood. I have visited the priest in Vlore when I was baptized and I had the First Communion.

And I have a beautiful story with this priest. After I came back in Albania and after I was ordained a bishop, he was ordained a bishop. I was one of the three bishops that participated in his ordination. I don’t know another case that the priest that have baptized you, you would be one of the bishops to ordain him a bishop! Maybe there are, but I don’t know a case like this.

And during this time, although it was very difficult to find this kind of literature in Albania, I will tell the story that if there is a great desire to find something, God will give the possibility for you. So nobody is deprived from the possibility to find God. Always, if there is a desire to do this—and I was so eager to find the Old Testament.

At that time, I was very interested in some, like many young people, in the old languages: the etymology of the words and this. I was looking for a book by Champollion that he, with the hieroglyphs of Egypt. I went in the main library in Tirana, and I filed for this book. And the clerk, when the book came, was talking with somebody other, and gave me the book without seeing. I took the book, always thinking that this was the language of the ancient Egypt. When I opened the book, it was the whole Bible, still in French.

I have that book, and maybe now I am thinking to give the library again! But nobody asked for that book, because if you have that book from the library and you don’t return, they send to you a notice. Nobody asked. Maybe they were afraid, because if they asked, they’d say, “Why do you have that book?” I don’t know what happened, but you can see a great desire to find something in most difficult place in the world to find that, still can… Like I said in the beginning, if God has opened something, nobody can shut it.

Mr. Maddex: Nobody can shut it. Some of our listeners like myself who are a bit older remember the years of communism, and we would pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ who were under communist rule, that God would protect them, that he would give them a way to express their faith safely. And you actually, though, lived it. You found this New Testament, you read it, you believed it, you went to church. Tell us, what do you remember about going to this underground church as a young man and the danger that was associated with that? Were there any close calls when you were in fear?

Metr. John: When I was baptized, I didn’t tell to my family, not because they were against, but I didn’t want them to be afraid, because there was so much fear in the time. For a word, maybe you would be condemned. I cannot explain better, but maybe God protected us in that time, because I was very young, and I used to talk about this with my older friends.

I have a story. I have worked in psychiatry for a long time, and one day—it’s a story that I didn’t know during the time, but after, when I was in the United States, I met over there the secretary of the Communist Party that was in hospital. Maybe his father was an American citizen, so he was over there. And he told me something. One day came two people from the Sigurimi—Sigurimi is Albanian KGB, Securitate in Romania.

And they wanted to control your locker. The rule was like this. They would ask the director of the hospital, the secretary of the party: Open these. I had the Bible in this locker. And the director was a communist. He was the nephew of somebody that was a member of the politburo, and his first cousin was the director of police in Tirana. He didn’t allow it, said, “No, he is my best worker here.” And he called his cousin, and he said to them to come back. But I didn’t know that—I know after this. So maybe God protected us.

And another way that I think was because working in psychiatry, reading some Lives of the saints, inspired by them, I tried to imitate them, because I was very young. When you are a little bit older, maybe you are more afraid! [Laughter] And I washed them myself, because some of them, they couldn’t wash themselves. I took them many times in my house for lunch and to walk with them. Maybe they thought, “He is not well, mentally well.” Staying with these patients in psychiatry, maybe this protected me. Maybe, I am not sure. The Lord had different ways to protect somebody. Or I was not prepared to give a testimony, I don’t know; God knows all these things.

But I can say that for sure the joy that I had during this time, I never have experienced more in Albania. After 1990, we were free. In 1992 was the most… And we have now churches open, but still I have not experienced this same joy that I had during this time. And joy is like… I remember once Metropolitan, the late Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware), we were discussing about joy. He said these words, that the joy is not something related to the temporal people; it’s a gift from God. If it’s a gift, that means that it’s not something only for us. We have to understand that this gift comes from the Lord; it’s a present to us. When we say that God is present in our life, it means that all the values that come from the teaching of God should be part of our life. And through sacrifice, we can have joy. Without the cross, it’s not joy.

I tell to many people something that is important, I believe, because today we have a lack of sacrifices. Today we have egoism: everybody for only himself, me first, my country the first. All over the world there is this. “Sacrifice,” the word, the etymology of the word comes from two Latin words: sacra, holy, and the verb facere, make, so literally it means “making holy.” You cannot become holy without the sacrifice, but the sacrifice is not the final destination: it’s the resurrection. It’s the joy!

Mr. Maddex: That’s beautiful.

Metr. John: In this period of suffering, persecution, you had many times young people—I had people the same age with me, 20, 24 years old, were condemned for almost nothing. To understand the spirit in the time of fear and these things, were some anecdotes, some jokes.

There was a joke that was circulating in most of the communist countries. It goes like this. There are two prisoners, and one asked the other: “How many years you are condemned?” The answer: “20 years.” And he said, “For what?” He answered, “For nothing.” And the others said, “Liar. For nothing, you can get 10!” [Laughter] This joke shows very well the spirit of this. Ten years in the terrible jails, and many people were persecuted; they suffered.

Now when I see… You cannot find a reason. All these regimes, all these dictatorships, you cannot find a reason why. It is a madness, and you cannot find a reason in the madness. But all of these, they come from a godless society and godless doctrines. It was right, the famous writer Solzhenitsyn that had the article, and the title was like this: “A Godless Society, the Beginning of [Gulag].”

These people were motivated by hatred, and the hatred destroys everything, and for sure the hatred doesn’t come from God. You cannot build with hatred. You can build only through love. It was a Romanian priest who spent many years in jail, and after they expelled him from Romania, and when he went in the West, maybe in France it was, many journalists were asking different questions. One of them said, “Why [do] the communists hate the Christians?” He said, “No, they don’t hate only Christians. They hate everything. They hate each other.”

So if you have hatred, you will hate everything. And the opposite: If you have love, you will love all others. The problem is what we really have in ourselves. It’s not the problem with the others, because we try to justify ourselves, because they are bad. It is because we are bad; we see these bad people. If we are good, we’ll see something different than this. And the saints tell us this through their lives, through their holy lives. They were able to see the icon of God in every human being. We miss that because our heart is not pure. “Blessed be the pure in heart.” It means that you can see God, and, seeing God, you can see God in every human being!

If you don’t see God in the human beings, you have never seen God. St. John Chrysostom was right when he said that if you don’t find Christ in the beggar on the stairs of the church, you will not find him in the chalice. Through love we can discover these things, and all ideologies that are based in hatred are destructive. They will destroy themselves and the people around. Like a holy man that saves himself and the people that are around.

In today’s world, the people need this love. The Fathers of the Church in a different way have expressed the same thing, and Archbishop Anastasios has said the opposite of love, it’s not hatred; it’s egoism. We are living now in the period of egoism, everybody for only himself. Through this, everybody will become lonely, because egoism separates us from the others. When the Lord said to love the others like ourselves, this is for our own benefit, because a human being is a communitarian being, like the Holy Trinity. There is one being in three Persons, and the human beings are in the same model. A Christian cannot be only for himself. From the second century, Tertullian said those famous words: Unus Christianus, nullus Christianus. A Christian only for himself is not a Christian.

This is what we have to preach to the others, because in our experience—every human being has his own experience, his own way, and all the ways towards the Lord are beautiful, in different forms, but they are beautiful. All these will help us to understand better, because life is a process. The past influences our present and prepares us for the future. In this journey, we have to try to follow the Gospel, word by word, because sometimes we have this tendency to accept things that we like and not the others. We are not to judge the Gospel.

We have to be obedient to these words, because they are the words of the Doctor, like the doctor says to you to use this kind of medicine. Maybe you don’t understand, but he knows better, and for sure that the best Doctor is the Lord. When he says something, although it seems very hard, it’s for our benefit. Because many words are hard in the Gospel, but it’s the only way to be healed. We are sick.

Once St. John Chrysostom said to the people in the church—and this is very important for all of us—he said, “If some one of you thinks that he is righteous, let him be outside of the Church. I don’t have a Gospel for the righteous.” What is the meaning of this? It means the Gospel is a medicine, and the medicine is for the sick! The saints were the people who understood that they were sick, and they applied to themselves the medicine, and they were healed. And the word “healed” and the “holy” are the same in every language. Holy and healed is the same.

We don’t accept sometimes the medicine, because we don’t believe that we are sick or don’t accept. There are two categories of people that don’t accept the medicine: the children, because they don’t understand; and the people in psychiatry, many times, they think they are okay. Maybe you belong to the second. [Laughter] Accepting these is the first step towards God. We need because we are sick. God loves us, not because we are good, because he is good. He supports us and helps us, not because we deserve it, but because he is merciful. And, understanding this, we love him, because you cannot love an abstract God; you love someone that you feel and you understand for what he has saved you and healed you. And the lack of love for God becomes a lack of love for the people.

Mr. Maddex: So the traveling microphone of Ancient Faith Radio is in Korce, in the country of Albania, southeast Albania, and we’re talking with the Metropolitan of Korce, Metropolitan John. You had mentioned that you came to Holy Cross Seminary in Boston, and communism fell in ‘92, I think you said.

Metr. John: Yes, in Albania, ‘92 was elected another government; until ‘92 they were… But they have started to be shaken, so 1990 the events that happened in Romania, in 1989 the fall of the wall. It was this spirit, but still in Albania it was dangerous. In 1990 and beginning of 1991, many people were killed in the border because they wanted to escape. So it was still a dangerous place, but the people understood that something was changing. The evil is destroyed by itself, because the evil doesn’t have an existence, a real substance. More and more become evil; more and more it will destroy itself. And the communism was destroyed by itself, not by the others around. And in the time I left, maybe I thought to try to escape it before, but as I was afraid that the punishment will be on my family, because many times when somebody escaped, their family was exiled and would be punished. And you cannot have freedom and the others can pay. That would be not a moral thing. But when we saw that it was falling apart, I tried and I left Albania.

Mr. Maddex: What year was that?

Metr. John: 1990. I left. I went in Italy first, and after I went in United States, with the desire always to study theology. This was the reason that… because I never thought in my life that I would go in United States. Maybe I thought in Italy or Greece or France—in Europe, you know. But you never know your journey. [Laughter]

Mr. Maddex: Were you ordained to the holy priesthood after Holy Cross?

Metr. John: After. After Holy Cross, I came to Albania. I was ordained deacon and priest, parish bishop, Anastasios in 1994, and as a bishop in 1998. And from 1998 until now, I am Metropolitan of Korce.

Mr. Maddex: Just a fascinating story and a reminder to all of us that the faith that we experience, many of us in America, we have it so easy. We have not had to suffer for our faith. We have not had to live in danger that we would be arrested. There was no underground church that we had to worry about. We were able to worship freely and openly. And to hear the stories of people who lived through that and, by God’s grace, survived it and grew as the result of it—I loved your analogy or etymology of the word “sacrifice.” I had never heard that before. That was so revealing, to learn about how God uses sacrifice for our own salvation and for our good.

Metr. John: God, like the best of the doctors, he knows the real medicine, and he loves this for our benefit, although maybe we don’t understand many times, and we complain, but it’s important for us to understand that without this, it would be very difficult. We pray always for peace and for this, but Origen maybe wrote once and said that times of peace and prosperity are favorable for the satan. So sometimes when you are in peace and you don’t lack anything, you think that you can live by yourself; you don’t need other help. And this is a lie, because you cannot do that without the presence of the Lord.

So this doesn’t mean that we are against the peace, but our peace is not the peace from outside; it’s a peace inside. This is most important. It’s a verse in the book of Isaiah, and it said, “There is no peace where is the evil.” We say, “Peace, peace,” but there is no peace. The peace is only a word; love prevails. And when the Lord is present in our life, it is interesting that the word shalom in Septuaginta, in that case, was translated not “peace” but “joy.” “There is no joy where is the evil.” So life today has no joy. Maybe people have many things, but they have no joy.

One thing that shocked me the first time I was in the United States was the complaining of the people. They were complaining about the cars; they had the best cars. They were complaining about hospitals; they are the best hospitals, comparing with others. They were complaining for everything. Always I told them, “Why are you complaining? You have everything! What do you want?” The problem is because they don’t know what they want. If you have a bed, you have bread, and you have some clothes, you are not poor; you are not rich, maybe, but you are not poor. God does not provide for us silly things; he provides the basic needs for us. And the lack of gratitude is the greatest sin.

I agree with Fr. Schmemann that said that this is the whisper of the devil, complaining for everything. This will destroy your soul, the lack of gratitude toward God. And you see that in the Christians, complaining for everything. And if you don’t complain, the people will think there’s something wrong with you! It’s becoming part of the culture.

Mr. Maddex: It is, yeah.

Metr. John: But it’s a culture that destroys. As Christians, we have to build the culture of gratitude and thankfulness, and be thankul. Always find a reason.

It’s a beautiful story. There was a Christian king, and he had a very wise counselor. He advised him everything, even serious things, and gave the good counsels. One day, the king was cutting an apple, and by mistake he cut his finger. His advisor had always this custom, for everything he said, “Glory to God!” And when he cut the finger, he said, “Glory to God!” The king was furious. “I cut the finger and you said that?” And he ordered him to be put in jail, and they sent him to jail. And the king went for hunting. He lost the way and was caught by a pagan king as a prisoner. This one thought, “What will I do with him? I will sacrifice him to my gods.” And he sent his priest to check him. When they checked him, they thought that he had the finger less, so he couldn’t, because he was…

Mr. Maddex: He was imperfect.

Metr. John: Yes, he was imperfect. You cannot do a sacrifice like this. And after he said, “I will give him freedom and I will make him a friend.” And so he released him. When he came in the palace, the first question he said: “What is doing my advisor?” They said, “He is thanking God that he is in jail. “Bring him to me.” And they brought him. “Okay, I understand. I cut the finger, and it saved my life, so you said very well ‘Glory to God.’ But why you are thanking God that you were in jail?” And he said, “Your Majesty, if I were not in jail, I would be with you, and because I am whole they would have sacrificed me!” [Laughter]

So always you can find something to thank. And this gives a joy in a human being and clarify the mind. A complaining mind is not clear. We destroy our life and the life of the people around us. A thankful mind is clear, because knowing God and not to be thankful, it’s impossible. One of the signs that we have known something from God or experienced something is we are thankful. In today’s society is this sickness of complaining. Everybody’s complaining—the young people, the old people, the poor, the rich—all, they just only complain. And the Church and the Christians should fight against this culture, because it destroys. They are never satisfied, these people, regardless what they have. And the people who are not satisfied with few things, they will not be satisfied with many things.

Mr. Maddex: That’s such an important word to end on. So inspired today by your words, Your Eminence, reminding ourselves of the words of Scripture, that all things work together for good to those who love God and those who are called according to his purpose. You have reminded us of that and demonstrated that to us. You’ve been so generous with your time! I want to thank you, and I know our listeners thank you for these words of wisdom and for the encouragement of your own life, how God brought you through those times to your own life, so thank you.

Metr. John: Thank you, and I want to thank all the people in the United States, because I feel grateful I was over there. I had the chance to study, so I was always grateful. I am not their judge; I am grateful. They have a great potential over there, but try to use this for the benefit, for their own benefit and for the benefit of the whole country.