Sail On: an Encomium……………………………………………………………….Pages

The Blessed SurgeonSail On: An Encomium of Protopresbyter Lawrence Barriger By: Father Jonathan Tobias

Late Saturday afternoon, on October 2nd, Protopresbyter Lawrence Barriger fell asleep in the Lord. On Friday evening, October 8th at the St Michael’s Church in Freeland PA, Protopresbyter Kenneth Bachofsky was the chief celebrant of the Burial Service for a Priest. On the following morning, Saturday October 9th, the funereal Divine Liturgy was celebrated by Protopresbyter and Chancellor Frank Miloro, assisted by Protopresbyters Kenneth Bachofsky and Robert Rebeck. Numerous priests from throughout the Diocese assisted the offering of these services. The newly-reposed priest was interred at the St Michael Cemetery in Binghamton, New York. Protopresbyter James Dutko presided over the interment service for this distinguished son of the parish. I will miss Fr Larry deeply. And I will never get to a point, this side of eternity, when I will notmiss him. And, I’m sure, that is true for us all in this God-Saved Diocese. My heart goes out to Pani Linda, Laura and Lisa, his sister Pani Mary Bachofsky and his brother-in-law Fr Kenneth Bachofsky and grandchildren and the entire family: they know more than anyone what it means to miss Fr Larry now. But though our sense of loss is surely less than theirs, it is still painfully great. And as time goes on, we’ll find that it is greater than we know. Fr Larry was without question the finest theologian and historian (along with +Protopresbyter John Yurcisin) that our Diocese ever had. In times like these, we need an Orthodox theologian more than ever -- there’s so much confusion and decline in the world. Fr Larry was a clear-minded treasury of Orthodox

memory and theological thought, and he was clear-sighted. He knew the difference between glittering appearances and real substance -- a trait, I’m sorry to say, that is something of a rarity these days. His irreplaceability soon became apparent for all to see. Married on 8 August 1976 to Pani Linda, he was ordained a few weeks later by +Bishop John R Martin on 26 August 1976. He was assigned as Administrator of the Holy Ghost Church in Manville, New Jersey. He would go on to pastor the St John the Baptist Church in Wilpen PA and the St Stephen Church in Latrobe PA. Finally, he was sent to the St Michael Church in Freeland for his longest tenure, from 1986 to 2020. Having graduated with a degree in Classical Languages from St Peter’s College (1978) and then from Princeton Theological Seminary (no less) with a Master’s Degree in 1980, his aptitude for learning and wise counsel quickly gained notice. In 1981, he was appointed Instructor of Liturgical Theology at Christ the Saviour Seminary, where he would serve on faculty for the rest of his life. The Seminary mourns his passing grievously. He could quote the Fathers expansively with deep understanding, especially in the critically important subject of Liturgical Theology. For my part, the transition from my upbringing as an Evangelical -- with all its patent disregard of and opposition to sacrament, liturgy, ritual, dignity and beauty -- to Orthodoxy would have been much, much more difficult, if not impossible. It was mainly through my friendship with this theologian that I not only converted sacramentally and liturgically, but I converted to Orthodoxy philosophically and psychologically as well. This was crucial, as too many of my fellow converts from Evangelicalism are still fundamentalists in their heads. And he began to write ... and boy, did he ever write well. In 1990 he authored the Diocesan publication “Women and the Church.” The hugely helpful Yours of Your Own came next in 1993 -- a booklet that really needs re-publishing (this time in a better typeface than its current dot matrix xerography). Next came the authoritative history of our Diocese: Good Victory (1985) which is the English translation of +Metropolitan Orestes’ titular See -- “Agathonikea.” He completed his Diocesan narrative with the publication of Glory to Jesus Christ(2000).

His last book was published in 2006: Insights into the Orthodox Faith. It was a compilation of some of his best columns in our Diocesan paper, The Church Messenger. I loved my time as Assistant Editor of The Church Messenger, working side by side with the then Editor, the equallymissed +Protopresbter Michael Rosco, and Associate Editors +Fr Larry, Protopresbyter and Chancellor Frank Miloro (thank God he’s still with us), and present Editor Protopresbyter Mark Leasure. I remember looking forward to Fr Larry’s column, “Liturgical Insights,” every month, because I was sure to learn new and important stuff. One column stands out, never to be forgotten (it’s not in his last book). It was a three page, long, long and arduous, extremely technical, explanation of the Orthodox “Paschalia.” Fr Larry attempted the herculean task of finally putting to rest the arcane mysteries of the dating of Pascha. He had dredged up a barely-legible chart from one of his old and dusty Russian texts. It took me days to photoshop the chart before I could take it to print. I remember Fr Michael, Metropolitan Nicholas, and I, scrunching our eyes and furrowing our brows, trying to take it all in. To this day, that article is still over my head. I’ll keep trying. Fr Larry achieved much and his ministry was recognized in a long succession of honors and appointments. In 1991 he was elevated to “Very Reverend,” and to “Protopresbyter” in 1997. As a distinct rarity in our Diocese, he was awarded the honor of the Office of “Protopresbyter of the Ecumenical Throne” by Patriarch Bartholomew in 2001. He was appointed Dean of the Scranton/Pocono Deanery in 1991. In 1996, he was appointed as a Consultant to the Diocesan Consistory and Diocesan Board of Trustees. And in 1999, he was made Vice-Chancellor of the Diocese. I was awed by all this: he was not. He told me often that it might be interesting if the order of awards were reversed -that a new ordinand should start out with a mitre and jeweled pectoral cross, and as time went on, the ranks and awards would be taken away, one by one.

“He’d feel lighter the closer he got to heaven,” he averred, with a sardonic chuckle.

But to me and to others of those who knew him, the greatest honorific came early on in 1986, when +Metropolitan Nicholas, of thrice-blessed memory, appointed Fr Larry as Theologian to the Bishop, a title he carried to his dying day. It was his greatest honor and greatest burden. Theology is necessary, a burden laid on every Orthodox faithful, but especially on Orthodox clergy. It is hard: nothing comes easy. It can illuminate. It can make you fall in love with its majesty and beauty. But it can hurt you with its demand to throw away childish thoughts and lazy assumptions. Metropolitan Nicholas knew, deeply, that the pastoral leadership of the Orthodox community must be founded upon, and must revolve around, Orthodox theology. It is the wisdom of received Holy Tradition. It is the knowledge of the tragedies and triumphs of church history. It is the reticence and humility, the discipline and clearsightedness, that is crucial for “rightly dividing the Word of Truth” (2 Timothy 2.15), for making wise -- not impulsive -- decisions, for knowing the difference between “all that glitters” and real gold. Fr Larry told me, on more than one occasion, that one of the best ways to get to know the mind of an Orthodox clergy is to ask “Who is your favorite Orthodox theologian? What are you reading?” He loved to tell us in Seminary how Metropolitan Nicholas would visit his priests’ office bookshelves and look for the books he’d send them every year, to make sure that theological books were doggy-eared, highlighted, and annotated. And heaven forbid that he’d find the tome still in shrinkwrap. Fr Larry became a counselor to Bishop and Priest, to clergy and laity. His advice and theological acumen were golden. His consultancy was sought by the wise and responsible, by those willing to take advice. If his advice was ignored, refused, or never even sought in the first place, then things inexorably fell apart. Whenever we talked about these moments of “deliberate disregard,” he quoted W B Yeats to me:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity. (From “The Second Coming”)

While he never did suffer fools gladly, Fr Larry was the picture of calm maturity. His generosity was often given at great personal cost. He patiently weathered onslaughts from positions of outright naivete, patent disregard, lazy scholarship, and just bad manners. On those occasions, when I was with him, he’d shrug his shoulders and mumble something, sotto voce, in Latin (some of you know which line was his favorite). Still, he weathered it all, steering a course clear from the rocks and shoals, even in the gale of a lee shore.

I came to know Fr Larry 27 years ago. We hit it off when we discovered that we shared a great love of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series (and other great seafaring novels). The ship and the tide, the many exigencies of nautical life, became a metaphorical frame for our many discussions about parochial and diocesan issues ... and, most poignantly, about existential horizons. How I wish for a time machine, when I could go back to those Spring and Lenten afternoons in the old Anthracite Deanery. I’d give much to hear again the Paraklis in Slavonic at St Michael’s in Freeland, hearing the heart-stirring melodies back and forth between Fr Larry and Professor John Kost. On another Sunday, we priests would hear hundreds of confessions at St Michael’s in Binghamton with Fr Jim and the Monsignor Stephen Dutko, the lines of confessands running down the aisles and out the front doors of St Michael’s.

How I wish, with tears, to go back to that sweet moment in the Scranton rectory when Fr Mark and I acted as les serveurs upon the greats -- Metropolitan Nicholas, Monsignors Stephen Dutko and John Dolhy, and Fr Larry. They sang around the table. They evoked the high old country. They spoke in tongues, the old tongues. Fr Mark understood. I did not. But it was mellifluous. It was golden. My heart soared. My learned, sometimes jovial, sometimes melancholy, friend Fr Larry truly cherished -- always and deeply -- our beloved Diocese, and cherished our people, beset and bewildered by modern culture. He desperately wanted and looked for wise and compassionate pastors and leaders who knew how to set a good course and look after ship and crew, big and small, old and young alike. Toward the end (these last few months), Fr Larry kept telling me that he wanted us diocesan clergy to come to an unfailing impression that had grown in his thinking in the last year: His own life, his own meaning, his own justification lay not in his self, but only in the Cross of Christ. He tried to tell others who were struggling in their own difficulties and their bad choices that their own suffering was taken up by the enormity of Christ's all-containing suffering -- a suffering that would be transformed by the Resurrection into life. Which was an amazing thing for Fr Larry to say. But it was heartbreaking. I have never known anyone suffer so much and so long as him. I’m glad that he’s sailed into a “serene and luxuriant and peaceful” harbor, where “all pain and sorrow and lamentation are absent.”

Larry, those of us who still sail on these troubled seas will sail on. You need to know that. We will miss you, our theological commodore, but this squadron will sail on. Larry, my great friend and older brother, you have suffered too much. I have wept much over your long pain. You have met Jesus at the Cross. Now rise with Him.