The Last Years and Žiča

Sebastian’s final years were spent in Serbia in evangelical poverty, moving between Belgrade, Herceg Novi, and the monastery of Žiča, cared for in his old age by a devoted priest. He reposed at Žiča on November 30, 1940, with the words “Only the Kingdom of Heaven” on his lips, and was buried there by St. Nikolai (Velimirović), who called him “the greatest Serbian missionary of modern times” and “a viceless man.” His epitaph named him “the first American Serbian apostle.”

Tradition: Serbian Orthodox / American (glorified 2015)

Retirement to the Homeland

After decades of ceaseless motion, the aging Sebastian withdrew, in the later 1930s, to the Serbian homeland of his parents. The biographical tradition traces his last residences: an apartment in the Belgrade Patriarchate (around 1938), then the monastery of St. Sava at Žiča, then the coastal town of Herceg Novi — near his ancestral Sasovići on the Bay of Kotor — and finally back to Žiča, where he would die (Hieromonk Damascene [Christensen], Archimandrite Sebastian Dabovich: Serbian Orthodox Apostle to America, St. Herman Press, on his last residences; OCA, “Venerable Sebastian Dabovich,” oca.org, giving his retirement to Žiča). In his last years he was cared for by a devoted priest, Rev. Jovan Rapaić, who attended him in his infirmity (Damascene, Archimandrite Sebastian Dabovich, on the care of Fr. Jovan Rapaić). The wandering apostle had come, at the last, to rest in the country his family had left nearly a century before.

Evangelical Poverty

The keynote of these final years, in every account, is poverty — not the poverty of misfortune but the chosen, evangelical poverty of a man who had given everything away. The most quoted illustration comes from St. Nikolai himself, recalling the New York reunion of 1921: seeing Sebastian in evident want and offering him help, Nikolai received the reply — spoken, Nikolai says, with a blush — “Thank you; I just bought a roll of bread with my last five cents” (St. Nikolai, quoted in Damascene, Archimandrite Sebastian Dabovich). Here was a man who had been decorated by a Tsar and a Prince, who had auctioned even those decorations for the war-wounded (see Chaplain of the Balkan Wars), reduced to his last five cents and grateful for a roll of bread. The detail is treasured in the tradition because it captures the whole trajectory of his life: outward honors spent away, inward riches kept. Whatever allowance one makes for the shaping of memory, the picture of a self-emptied old missionary is consistent across the sources and is the human ground of his veneration.

The Repose, November 30, 1940

Sebastian reposed at the monastery of Žiča on November 30, 1940 — the date given as November 17/30, reflecting the Old-Style / New-Style reckoning, so that November 30 is the New-Style date of a repose on the Old-Style November 17 (Damascene, Archimandrite Sebastian Dabovich, on the repose at Žiča on November 17/30, 1940; OCA, “Venerable Sebastian Dabovich,” oca.org, giving November 30, 1940). Serbia was by then a kingdom on the eve of its own catastrophe — the German invasion would come the following spring — but Sebastian was spared the seeing of it. The biographical tradition preserves his last words as “Only the Kingdom of Heaven” (Samo Carstvo Nebesko), a fitting summation from a man who had spent his life proclaiming it (Damascene, Archimandrite Sebastian Dabovich, on his last words). He was buried in the monastery cemetery at Žiča, alongside another archimandrite, and his grave was marked with the epitaph naming him “the First American Serbian Apostle” (Damascene, Archimandrite Sebastian Dabovich, on the burial and epitaph). Even the American state took notice: the U.S. Ambassador to Yugoslavia, Arthur Bliss Lane, sent the American Consul General to represent him at the funeral of a man the ambassador is said to have called “my spiritual father” (Damascene, Archimandrite Sebastian Dabovich, on the American diplomatic presence at the funeral).

St. Nikolai’s Tribute

The man who buried Sebastian was St. Nikolai (Velimirović) of Žiča and Ohrid — himself now a glorified saint (see St. Nikolai (Velimirović)) — who as bishop of the Žiča diocese presided at the funeral of his old friend. Nikolai’s assessment of Sebastian, set down in his memoir of the man, is the single most important witness to Sebastian’s stature, and it supplied the language later carried into the glorification. Nikolai called him “a Christian missionary of world-scope” who “traveled restlessly and preached and lectured indefatigably”; he named him “the greatest Serbian missionary of modern times” and “a viceless man” (čovek bez poroka); and he wrote that in Sebastian “the Serbian race” was in his debt (St. Nikolai, quoted in Damascene, Archimandrite Sebastian Dabovich; the same phrases are repeated in the OCA and Serbian Lives and in the 2015 glorification materials, e.g. pravmir.com, “Holy Missionary Sebastian (Dabovich) of Jackson”). Because these tributes come from a named, credible, contemporary witness who knew Sebastian personally and buried him, they carry more evidentiary weight than the anonymous accretions of later hagiography, and the collection treats them as reliable testimony to how Sebastian was regarded at his death (see Documents and Hagiography).

A Grave in Serbia, a Home in America

There is a poignancy in the geography of Sebastian’s death that the tradition itself feels. The first American-born Orthodox priest, the founder of Serbian church life in the New World, died and was buried not in the America he had evangelized but in the Serbian homeland of his fathers, in a monastery cemetery far from Jackson and San Francisco. For sixty-seven years his body lay at Žiča. That his relics would at last be brought home to Jackson, California — to the mother church he had built — is the resolution of this exile, and the subject of the collection’s treatment of the relics (see Relics and Feast). The apostle who had crossed the oceans two dozen times in life would cross the Atlantic once more in death, to lie among the people he had gathered.

See Also

References

  • Damascene (Christensen), Hieromonk. Archimandrite Sebastian Dabovich: Serbian Orthodox Apostle to America. Platina, CA: St. Herman Press. (The last residences; the care of Fr. Jovan Rapaić; the “last five cents” anecdote; the repose at Žiča November 17/30, 1940; the last words “Only the Kingdom of Heaven”; the burial and epitaph; the American diplomatic presence; St. Nikolai’s tributes.)
  • Orthodox Church in America. “Venerable Sebastian Dabovich.” oca.org — used as locator for the retirement to Žiča and the November 30, 1940 repose, and for St. Nikolai’s presiding at the funeral.
  • “Holy Missionary Sebastian (Dabovich) of Jackson, Proclaimed New Saint of the Orthodox Church.” pravmir.com — used as locator for St. Nikolai’s tributes (“greatest Serbian missionary of modern times”).
  • St. Nikolai (Velimirović) (this repository). README — the bishop of Žiča who buried Sebastian.