Thaddeus of Vitovnica

Archimandrite Thaddeus of Vitovnica (Tomislav Štrbulović) was one of the most revered elders of the Serbian Orthodox Church of the late twentieth and early twenty-⁠first century, hegumen of Vitovnica monastery, spiritual father and author, best known for his saying "as your thoughts are, so is your life". Born on 19 October 1914 at Vitovnica in Serbia, he passed to the Lord in the night of 13 to 14 April 2003 at Bačka Palanka and was buried at Vitovnica. The people venerate him as a saint, but, according to the sources available, the Church has not yet officially canonized him.

Childhood and calling

He was born prematurely, at the time of the fair of Saint Thomas, at Petrovac on the Mlava, to peasant parents; they thought he would not survive and called the priest to baptize him, and the child opened his eyes after baptism, receiving the name Tomislav. His mother died when he was small, and his father remarried three times; relations with the stepmothers were hard, he had reproaches and beatings, sometimes he ran away from home with a piece of bread, and among those his age he found no fellowship and withdrew ever more into himself. He finished school with distinction, but, though he dreamed of monasticism, at his father's request he went to the school of crafts and trade to learn tailoring. Later he said that from childhood he had understood that there is a service: parents serve children, children parents, and then the thought came to serve the Lord, who is above all. Since, weak in constitution, he could not work the land, after tailoring school he worked six years in Belgrade.

In 1932, at eighteen, his wish for monasticism grew firm and he asked to enter Gornjak monastery. About that time doctors found tuberculosis (according to other sources, pneumothorax) and gave him at most five years of life, with a hard treatment. Then he resolved: "I will no longer live for this world but dedicate my few days to the Lord", and left the hospital on his own responsibility. A Russian monk, who overheard his talk with the abbot of Gornjak, told him that the monasticism he dreamed of was not in the monasteries of the vicinity, but only at Miljkovo, where Russian monks fleeing Valaam had gathered. On 24 July 1932 he entered Miljkovo as a novice, under Archimandrite Ambrose Kurganov, himself a spiritual son of Venerable Ambrose of Optina. The monastery was Russo-⁠Serbian, with thirty monks, and Tomislav learned Russian, which gave him access to Russian books all his life. He said later that he did not have an outstanding contemporary spiritual father and learned from the books of the holy fathers. At Miljkovo he came to know closely Hieromonk John Maximovitch, the future Saint John of Shanghai. After the abbot's death, in May 1933, and the change of life in the monastery, he went with some other monks to Gornjak. There he was tonsured a monk, in March 1935, with the name Thaddeus, and ordained hierodeacon on 1 June, then sent to the iconography school of Rakovica monastery. In spite of the doctors' prognosis, he reached 1938, when on 3 February he was ordained hieromonk at Rakovica, by Bishop Mitrofan of Kharkov. In October 1938 he was moved to the Patriarchate of Peć.

War and the years after

In 1941, at the outbreak of war, he fled from Peć to Rakovica; in 1941 and 1943 he was arrested by the Germans, as a servant of the Church, and in prison, by his own account, an angel of the Lord appeared to him and showed him the way. He passed through the prisons of Petrovac and Požarevac and on 5 March was moved to Vojlovica monastery, where on 13 March he served the Liturgy with Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović. In April 1947 he returned to Gornjak, at Patriarch Gavrilo's wish went again to Peć in 1949, as deputy, was raised to hegumen in 1949 at the cathedral in Belgrade, and in 1955, for reasons of health, left again for the Braničevo diocese. In 1957 he received leave to go to Hilandar, but after less than four months the Greek authorities sent him back to Serbia. He was then parish priest at Bistrica and superior of Tuman monastery. On 14 April 1962 he was moved to be superior at Vitovnica, where he stayed until March 1972. He was then parish priest, then superior of the Pokajnica monastery near Velika Plana and confessor at Tuman monastery, where he was spiritual father of the sisters, until 1981, then hegumen again at Vitovnica. In 1989, at Gornjak, before the relics of Prince Lazar, he was raised to archimandrite. He was the confessor of Patriarch Pavle of Serbia.

At Tuman pilgrims and repentant sinners began to come to him, busloads of people; he received day and night, often did not go to bed, and one pilgrim told that in 1986, at seventy-⁠two, he kept vigil till morning. Fame was heavy for him: he said "when we pray for others, we take upon ourselves part of their sufferings". His health weakened: in 1992 he had a heart attack, in 1996 a second. Asked about the gift of foresight, he joked: "I climb onto the windowsill and see far..." He gave himself to people until the early 2000s. The people of the Vitovnica region and the country honoured him as a great spiritual father, praying monk and ascetic. At the end, gravely ill, he lived at Bačka Palanka, in the house of Slobodan Grubor, and there he fell asleep, in the night of 13 to 14 April 2003, and was buried in the cemetery of Vitovnica monastery, without worldly noise.

Veneration and writings

Although he has not yet been officially canonized, many Orthodox regard him as a saint; there are icons of him, with a halo, among them a fresco in Vitovnica monastery. His books, in Serbian: "As Your Thoughts Are, So Is Your Life" (2004; in English "Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives", 2009), "Spiritual Instructions for the Serbian People" and "What Will Soon Be". Among his sayings: "Without the devil we cannot be saved."