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Alms for a Priest’s Family

Fr. Matthew Baker, killed in car crash, leaves behind a wife and six children
matthew-baker

Horrible news:

A 37-year-old Greek Orthodox priest died in a crash on Route 2 in Norwich on Sunday afternoon, according to state police.

Police said Matthew Baker, of Danielson, was driving a 2002 Dodge Caravan west on Route 2 just prior to 4 p.m. Sunday when he lost control. He was thrown from the van when it crossed into the snow-covered median and rolled several times before stopping on the east side of the highway.

The family was on their way home from pan-Orthodox vespers. Miraculously, the children and their mother survived (the priest’s wife was at home, I have since learned). But they had to see their husband and father killed.

Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick mourns the loss of his friend:

Like Florovsky, Fr. Matthew engaged the world in terms that it would understand, whether it was in philosophy, theology, history, politics, science or even popular culture. He never was content to remain in the ghetto of the safe list of books everyone is “supposed” to read in the Orthodox Church—though of course he had read them all, including the ones everyone says that they should read but don’t. Like Florovsky, he was actually engaging with philosophy and theology and issues that are the major concerns of the modern world but in many ways have still only just begun to be noticed by Orthodox cultures as they awake from their centuries-long slumber.

Hearing of his death is shocking, and it made me angry at the loss not just to his family and to his friends, but to Orthodoxy. We needed someone like him, someone who helped us all to see that Orthodoxy is alive and faithful in its tradition, not just as a crystallized set of “answers” to questions that were asked long ago, but still creative, still able to say new things even while being wholly faithful to the old things. Even in the midst of the darkness that seems to become more present in our culture every day, I always knew when I talked with Fr. Matthew that we did not have to abandon the world.

 Hierodeacon Herman Majkrzak writes of the death of his best friend:

The life of Fr. Matthew Baker is a triumph of Orthodoxy.

It is easy to doubt God’s Providence in taking away a young priest, newly installed in his first parish, a husband, and a father of seven (his youngest, Alexis, so recently taken from his mother and father in stillbirth).

It is tempting to question God’s Providence in taking from the Church one of the most brilliant theological minds of the twenty-first century at a time when the Church is very much in need of sound and sober, yet penetrating, teaching, in both the academic and the pastoral spheres.

It is, for me personally, difficult to see the hand of God’s Providence in taking from me my best and most intimate friend, the man who taught me what true friendship means by pouring himself out year after year after year in boundless dedication to every aspect of my spiritual well-being and human flourishing.

Yes, in all of this we are reminded – harshly – that God’s Providence is a mystery that cannot be grasped by the minds of men.

And yet: Fr. Matthew was taken from this life on the Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy. And because of this seemingly small detail, there can be no doubt, no question, no difficulty in perceiving that God is at work here, that His Church will triumph still, that His Truth will prevail over all falsehood, darkness, distortion and exaggeration – all those evils against which Fr. Matthew fought, exhaustively, ruthlessly, and bluntly. And when Truth is triumphant, love is victorious. For Fr. Matthew love and truth were inseparable, distinguishable only in thought. “Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” When truth triumphs over falsehood, there love triumphs over coldness, mercy over suffering, and light over shadow. There life triumphs over death. Orthodoxy has triumphed! And this means, as Father Matthew would teach us, that Christ – the whole Christ, the totus Christus, Head and Body, the Savior and his Bride, holy Church – Christ has triumphed. He is triumphant over death, since He is the firstborn of the dead and the author of life. And in Him, the presbyter Matthew also is triumphant.

If you are inclined to give alms this Lent, a young widow and her six fatherless children who would benefit from your charity. 

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