Chaplain of the Balkan Wars

When war came to the Balkans in 1912–1913, Sebastian Dabović threw himself into the Serbian cause: he auctioned his own possessions — including his archimandrite’s mitre, pectoral cross, and imperial decorations — to fund care for the Serbian wounded, and served as a chaplain in the Serbian army. He continued as a chaplain through the First World War, and in 1917 was released by the Russian Church to serve the Serbian Church directly — the step that would draw him permanently back to the homeland of his parents.

Tradition: Serbian Orthodox / American (glorified 2015)

The Call of the Balkan Wars

The Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 — in which Serbia and its allies fought first the Ottoman Empire and then, in the Second Balkan War, one another — stirred the whole Serbian diaspora, and Sebastian was among the most conspicuously moved. Having stepped back from the administration of the American Serbian Mission around 1909–1910 (see The Serbian Mission Under the Russian Archdiocese), he was free to give himself to the Serbian war effort, and he did so with a self-abandonment that became part of his legend (Hieromonk Damascene [Christensen], Archimandrite Sebastian Dabovich: Serbian Orthodox Apostle to America, St. Herman Press, on his Balkan Wars service; OCA, “Venerable Sebastian Dabovich,” oca.org, on his chaplaincy in the Serbian army during the Balkan Wars and the First World War).

The Auction of His Possessions

The single most revealing act of these years — and one of the most telling details of his whole biography — is that Sebastian auctioned off his own belongings to raise money for the Serbian war-wounded and for hospital work. The biographical tradition specifies what he gave up: his archimandrite’s mitre, his pectoral cross, hand-painted icons, his imperial and royal decorations (the Order of St. Anne from the Tsar and the Order of Danilo from the Prince of Montenegro among them), and personal effects such as a Macedonian rug (Damascene, Archimandrite Sebastian Dabovich, on the auction of his mitre, cross, icons, decorations, and effects for the Serbian medical effort). A man does not part with the insignia of his own rank and the honors of two Orthodox sovereigns lightly; that Sebastian stripped himself of exactly these things to buy medicine and care for wounded soldiers is a window into the poverty of spirit that St. Nikolai would later name as the mark of his sanctity (see The Last Years and Žiča). The decorations that measured the world’s esteem for him he treated as so much salvage to be spent on the suffering.

Chaplain in the Great War

Sebastian’s wartime service did not end with the Balkan Wars. He continued as a chaplain into the First World War (1914–1918), ministering to Serbian soldiers through the years of Serbia’s terrible ordeal — invasion, the retreat across the Albanian mountains, and the long exile of the Serbian army (Damascene, Archimandrite Sebastian Dabovich, on his WWI chaplaincy; OCA, “Venerable Sebastian Dabovich,” oca.org). During these years he shuttled between the Old World and the New, making brief visits to the United States (recorded in 1915 and 1917) even as his center of gravity shifted decisively toward Serbia (Damascene, Archimandrite Sebastian Dabovich, on the 1915 and 1917 American visits). It was in this period, in 1915, that he first met St. Nikolai (Velimirović), then a rising churchman and wartime envoy, beginning the spiritual friendship that would culminate in Nikolai’s presiding at his funeral a quarter-century later (Damascene, Archimandrite Sebastian Dabovich, on the 1915 meeting with St. Nikolai; see St. Nikolai (Velimirović)).

Released to the Serbian Church

The war years also brought a canonical change of the greatest consequence for Sebastian’s later identity. Until this point he had been throughout his career a priest of the Russian Mission, ordained, promoted, and salaried by the Russian Church even as he served his fellow Serbs (see Tonsure and Ordination). During the First World War — the sources place the step in 1917 — the Russian Church released him to serve the Serbian Church directly as a wartime chaplain, and from this point his ministry belonged canonically to Serbia rather than to Russia (Damascene, Archimandrite Sebastian Dabovich, on his release to the Serbian Church in 1917; OCA, “Venerable Sebastian Dabovich,” oca.org). The timing was providential in more than one sense: the Russian Revolution of that same year would soon throw the Russian Church into catastrophe and sever the American mission from its mother church (see Twentieth-Century Fragmentation). Sebastian, the American-born son of the Russian Mission, ended his canonical life as a priest of the Serbian Church — a fitting close for the “Father of Serbian Orthodoxy in America,” and the reason it would be the Serbian Church that eventually glorified him (see The Act of 2015).

A Missionary Still

Even amid the wars, the missionary in Sebastian did not sleep. The biographical tradition records that in 1921 he was engaged by the American Bible Society to distribute Bibles in the Balkans — a characteristic bit of cross-confessional practical evangelism, of a piece with his lifelong reaching for the printed word and the widest possible spread of the Scriptures (Damascene, Archimandrite Sebastian Dabovich, on the 1921 Bible Society work). And it was in February 1921, in New York, that he and St. Nikolai were reunited and shared what the sources describe as a common vision of the Orthodox work still to be done — the meeting at which Nikolai witnessed the poverty that would so mark his memory of Sebastian (Damascene, Archimandrite Sebastian Dabovich, on the 1921 New York reunion; see The Last Years and Žiča). The chaplain of the wars remained, to the end, what he had always been: a missionary who could not stop.

See Also

References

  • Damascene (Christensen), Hieromonk. Archimandrite Sebastian Dabovich: Serbian Orthodox Apostle to America. Platina, CA: St. Herman Press. (The Balkan Wars chaplaincy; the auction of his mitre, cross, icons, decorations, and effects; the WWI chaplaincy; the 1915 meeting with St. Nikolai; the release to the Serbian Church in 1917; the 1915 and 1917 American visits; the 1921 Bible Society work and New York reunion.)
  • Orthodox Church in America. “Venerable Sebastian Dabovich.” oca.org — used as locator for his chaplaincy in the Balkan Wars and WWI and his transfer to the Serbian Church.
  • Orthodoxy in America (this repository). Twentieth-Century Fragmentation — the Russian Revolution and the severing of the American mission.