EUCLID, Ohio — Father Robert Jager remembers a time before 1989.
"The whole world just surrendered to the red hordes and sacrificed the Christians behind the Iron Curtain to be forgotten,” he said of the years of communist oppression in Central Europe, where he grew up in the Greek Catholic Church. “However, it was the Byzantine Catholic Church in North America that spoke up for us,” he said.
Father Jager recalled serving as an altar boy during communism in present-day Slovakia, then Czechoslovakia.
“One day, our parish priest brought us small cards with the image of three bishops. He had just returned from his holidays in Yugoslavia. I was wondering who they might be. He just whispered, ‘Our martyr bishops, killed here. Do not tell anyone you have them, and pray to them,’” he recounted.
Yugoslavia served as a channel for communication with the Holy See and with the West, Father Jager said. The prayer card he received that day had the images of Bishops Paul Gojdich, Basil Hopko and Theodore Romzha and a prayer for their beatification; their cause for beatification had been taken up by the Ruthenian Byzantine Catholic Church in the United States.
“This is just one of the many examples of how the Byzantine Catholics (in the United States) were helping their brothers and sisters in the red prison,” said Father Jager.
So, when Bishop Milan Lach, SJ, of Parma returned to Slovakia in 2017, asking for priests to volunteer to serve in the Eparchy of Parma due to a shortage of priests, Father Jager said he “felt this is the time to pay back” the kindness.
“As the Byzantine Catholic Church in the United States and Canada helped us during communism, when we could not move and we could not speak — basically, this church was a spokesman for us — now it is our turn to help,” he said.
Father Jager said he and his family prayed over this decision for more than a year. “And the result is our presence here, among you,” he said.
Father Jager, his wife, Rozalia, and their two children, Zofia, 16, and Mike, 11, arrived in the United States last fall.
The biblical scholar adapted to the Eparchy of Parma like a fish in water, taking on the day-to-day pastoral care at two parishes and recording a catechesis for the eparchy’s “I BELIEVE” faith formation series within a few short weeks. At press time, he was leading the annual eparchial women’s retreat at the Lial Renewal Center, Sept. 27-29.
Father Jager said he wanted to be around the altar at a very early age.
“The first impulse came from our parish priest,” Father Jager told Horizons. “I remember his visit in our family.”
During the home visit, the priest invited him to be an altar server.
“I was a five-year-old boy, and I said, ‘Yes, I’ll come!’”
As the youngest among the 15 altar servers, the young Robert rarely got to wear vestments, but he wasn’t discouraged and continued to serve. As time passed, his interest in the church “grew into a real decision, maturing over the years, to become a priest,” he said.
He eventually entered seminary for the Eparchy of Kosice, Slovakia. He studied at the Greek Catholic Faculty of Theology of the University of Presov, Slovakia, and pursued further study at a number of educational institutions, including the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, the International Theological Institute in Trumau, Austria, the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Jerusalem, and the Catholic University of Ruzomberok, Slovakia.
After his ordination in 2002, he served as an assistant priest and pastor in Kosice, as well as secretary to Bishop Milan Chautur, CSsR, of the same eparchy, before coming to the Eparchy of Parma last fall.
Father Jager began immediately as the assistant priest at St. Stephen Parish in Euclid and at Holy Transfiguration Parish in Mentor-on-the-Lake, Ohio; Father Bruce Riebe, pastor of St. Joseph Parish in Brecksville, Ohio, was the administrator.
The 46-year-old Slovak priest said his hopes in serving the Ruthenian Byzantine Catholic Church in the United States are to “be a witness of the risen Christ, transforming the concrete details of the everyday life, to be with people, to listen to them, to pray with them and for them, to bring their joys and challenges and sorrows to the Lord, … but also to show the beauty, the strength of our faith to the larger community we live in.”
As of July 1, Father Jager was assigned to serve St. John Chrysostom Parish in Columbus, Ohio, and St. Barbara Prayer Community in nearby Dayton, succeeding Father Robert Stash, who now serves at St. Michael Parish in Oregon, Ohio. Father Jager told Horizons he has also been charged with evaluating the viability of starting an outreach in Cincinnati.
Father Jager was succeeded at St. Stephen and Holy Transfiguration parishes by Father Lukas Mitro, who arrived with his wife and children from Slovakia at the end of September. Father Mitro is a young priest, ordained for the Eparchy of Kosice in 2015.
Father Riebe remains the administrator of these two parishes, which are currently taking steps toward a merger.
Caption:
Father Robert Jager poses with his family at the rectory of St. Stephen Parish in Euclid, Ohio, in this Horizons file photo, taken at the end of February. The Jager Family has since moved to St. John Chrysostom Parish in Columbus, Ohio, where Father Jager serves as administrator. (Photo: Laura Ieraci)
As published in Horizons, Oct. 6, 2019. Sign up for Horizons digital newsletter.