A great man is one who collects knowledge the way a bee collects honey and uses it to help people overcome the difficulties they endure - hunger, ignorance and disease!
- Nikola Tesla

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.
- Franklin Roosevelt

While their territory has been devastated and their homes despoiled, the spirit of the Serbian people has not been broken.
- Woodrow Wilson

Bishop Maxim (Vasiljević)

(2006–)

For the last eleven years the ruling bishop of the Western American Diocese is Maxim (Vasiljević,) well known in academic circles since he holds several academic titles and is professor of the Faculty of Orthodox Theology at the University of Belgrade. Maxim (secular name Milan Vasilje¬vić) was born on June 27, 1968 in Foča, Yugoslavia, into a family of a priest. His father Lazar is a priest and mother Radmila, nee Todorović.

After finishing elementary school in Sarajevo (1983), he studied Seminary school in Belgrade (finished in 1988), served the army, and enrolled into the Faculty of Orthodox Theology in the same city.

He was tonsured a monk in Tvrdos Monastery, Bosnia and Herzegovina, on August 18, 1996, by Bishop Atanasije of Herzegovia, who also ordained him a deacon (1996) and priest in 2001.

Bishop Maxim graduated from the Faculty of Orthodox Theology at the University of Belgrade in 1993. He completed his Masters of Theology at the University of Athens in 1996, and then three years later, in 1999, at the same University, he defended his doctorate in the field of Dogmatics and Patristics with the title, “Participation in God” in the Theological Anthropology of St. Gregory Nazianzen and St. Maximus the Confessor.

He worked for one year on his post-doctorate in Paris and the Sorbonne in 2003–2004, in the field of Byzantine History and Hagiography. During this time, he also delved in the theory and practical application of painting at the French Academy of Fine Arts in Paris. Bishop Maxim speaks Greek, French, Russian, and English. He was the editor of “Theology”—Journal of the Faculty of Orthodox Theology, University of Belgrade.

On July 30, 2006 Bishop Maxim was instated on the throne of bishops of the Western America Diocese by Bishop Longin of New Gračanica Metropolitanate. Previously, he was Bishop of Hum and Vicar in the Metropolitanate of Dabro-Bosna, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. As vicar-bishop of Hum he was elected Bishop of the Western American Diocese at the regular Assembly of the Hierarchs of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Belgrade, Serbia in 2006.

Bishop Maxim is professor of the Divinity School at the Theological Faculty of the University of Belgrade, and was teaching Christian Anthropology and Sociology at the University of East Sarajevo. He also taught at St. Sava School of Theology in Libertyville, Illinois.

Bishop Maxim also leads the Diocesan iconographical school inspired by Byzantine and Serbian medieval fresco painting and by Fr. Stamatis, a famous Iconographer from Greece.

Bishop Maxim’s scholarly studies and articles include books and essays on Holy Fathers and Saints; he has also written on the hagiographical and iconographical themes. His books include, among other, History, Truth, Holiness Studies in Theological Ontology and Epistemology (2011); Diary of the Council Reflections from the Holy and Great Council at the Orthodox Academy in Crete (2016), Theology as a surprise: Patristic and pastoral insights (SVSP 2018).

Among his many appointments, Bishop Maxim represents the Serbian Orthodox Church to the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches (WCC).

In 2006 he established St. Sebastian Orthodox Press and named in honor of a first American born Orthodox priest, Fr. Sebastian Dabovich. Sebastian Press is one of the prevalent and most dynamic publishers of Christian Orthodox publications on the West Coast and in the USA. It has enriched Christian literature in the English language during the last few years with almost 100 titles in print from many of the best living Orthodox writers, with its valuable translations of the interesting and resourceful works of Serbian, Greek, and other theologians to English.

He has participated in many theological forums and symposia in the USA, Europe, Asia, and Australia. He was a member of St. Vladimir’s Seminary Board of Trustees in New York.


SA

 

People Directory

Dimitrije Mita Postich

Dimitrije Mita Postich, a resident of Portola Valley since 1972 and widowed since 2011, died peacefully on the 27th of April, 2013.  Dimitrije was born on the 15thof July, 1932 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia where he grew up, later attending the University of Belgrade where he earned his master’s degree in Electrical Engineering in Telecommunications and Electronics in 1957.  Dimitrije immigrated to the United States in 1959 at the age of 27 to join his mother, Mirjana, and father, Milivoj Postich.  

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Publishing

Jesus Christ Is The Same Yesterday Today And Unto the Ages

In this latest and, in every respect, meaningful study, Bishop Athanasius, in the manner of the Holy Fathers, and firmly relying upon the Apostles John and Paul, argues that the Old Testament name of God, “YHWH,” a revealed to Moses at Sinai, was translated by both Apostles (both being Hebrews) into the language of the New Testament in a completely original and articulate manner.  In this sense, they do not follow the Septuagint, in which the name, “YHWH,” appears together with the phrase “the one who is”, a word which is, in a certain sense, a philosophical-ontological translation (that term would undoubtedly become significant for the conversion of the Greeks in the Gospels).  The two Apostles, rather, translate this in a providential, historical-eschatological, i.e. in a specifically Christological sense.  Thus, John carries the word “YHWH” over with “the One Who Is, Who was and Who is to Come” (Rev. 1:8 & 22…), while for Paul “Jesus Christ is the Same Yesterday, Today and Unto the Ages” (Heb. 13:8).