Saints of North America

In these weeks following Pentecost, there is a liturgical movement from recognizing the universal gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church on the day of Pentecost to the feast of All Saints in which we celebrate what the Holy Spirit has accomplished throughout the world in making Saints of the faithful, to what the Holy Spirit has accomplished in the local church. So today we celebrate the Saints of North America. This feast is important for perspective.

The Church recognizes millions of Saints, but as long as they are all from faraway lands and the long-distant past, we might be tempted to think that a life of sanctity and holiness is not possible to us here and now. I would like to speak briefly about just five of the Saints of North America, the ones particularly that we have icons of in the church today. 

The first of those is Saint Herman of Alaska. He is the furthest in the past. Saint Herman was a monk from Valaam on the border of Finland and Russia. He was among a group of monks from that monastery that were sent to Alaska as part of the Russian expansion into the Alaskan territory. Saint Herman was a monk, not a bishop or priest. He didn’t come to Alaska and build churches. He came and prayed. He worked and labored. He interceded for the natives with the Russian American Company, he taught them and baked cookies for the kids. Nearly 200 years after his repose, he is still Father Herman to the people. He is still present with the people in their hearts. 

So like Saint Herman, we need to sanctify the place that we live in with prayer from the heart, with love for the people around us, and service to God and neighbor. That sounds easy, but we need to recognize that the Christian life is not just praying a little, or loving a little, or serving a little. It is doing those things whole-heartedly -- giving ourselves over to an incredible life of simplicity. What seems like a contradiction is actually where God worked through Saint Herman. 

The next Saint is Saint Innocent of Alaska, the first Bishop of America. Saint Innocent was a married man with children who volunteered to come to Alaska to serve as a priest. He was a very gifted individual, and worked with his own hands to build a church in which to worship. He used his gifts to translate the gospels into the Aleutian language, and to write and catechize the natives. He traveled by kayak from island to island in the freezing cold, to teach, to baptize and minister to the natives. By the time that he was called back to Russia to become the Metropolitan of Moscow, his wife had died, he was no longer able to travel as he once had, and he was blind. Saint Innocent was like a pencil that had been worn down to the nub but had been used to create a masterpiece. He brought so many to faith in Christ in some of the most remote areas. He was able to serve and recite the gospel from memory.

To live fully for Christ and for our neighbor can be exhausting, it can take a toll on us. But it does not leave us empty, it fills us with the grace of God. Do not be afraid to empty yourself in service to God or neighbor, for in doing so you allow the grace of God to abound all the more within you. And remember that your neighbor is anyone that you choose to love and have compassion for. Go out and make neighbors of strangers. Love them that they might know the love of God. 

Next let’s consider Saint Raphael of Brooklyn. Saint Raphael was born in Beirut in Lebanon. He received his theological education in Greece, and then was ordained as part of the Russian mission to America. He was tasked with ministering to the Arab Christians in this country, a large group of people throughout the country who were underserved because the Russians didn’t speak Arabic. He crisscrossed this country numerous times serving the people, even acting as peacemaker in divided communities. On numerous occasions he was offered the opportunity to be consecrated a bishop in his native land, but he preferred to stay here to serve the people he had been given charge over. He became the first bishop consecrated in America.

Saint Raphael reminds us that we are strangers and sojourners in this life. We are not meant to be simply members of ethnic or national groups. But we are to be at home anywhere where we are called by God to be. We find our identity in Him and not in anything worldly. Saint Raphael was uniquely qualified to minister to his fellow Arabs, but he did so in the American land as a Russian bishop. He was a citizen of the heavenly kingdom wherever he found himself -- while riding the rails or ministering in any number of cities across the country. 

All of these Saints have lived and served in this country, but all of them in the 19th century. Next I want to mention Saint John of San Francisco. Saint John was among the emigres who fled from the Bolsheviks into Yugoslavia. He became a monk and was consecrated Bishop in the Russian Church Abroad. He was made Bishop of Shanghai, where he labored to build a cathedral, as well as churches, hospitals and orphanages. When the Communists came to China, he took his flock to the Philippines and then -- by lobbying Congress -- to the United States. He was then made Archbishop of Western Europe and later Archbishop of San Francisco. His care for the flock entrusted to him was absolute. He was always moving, visiting the sick and those in need, and taking in orphans he had no earthly way to feed. 

The stories of miraculous deeds abound and are too numerous to list. They are made all the more remarkable because this is not a character buried under centuries of legend. These are the deeds of a man who reposed in 1966. We have people in our parish and at Saint Seraphim’s who knew him. And He continues to care for his flock. He was the Archbishop of our diocese, and he still works wonders for those of us who seek his prayers. This is the lesson from his life that I want to emphasize. Love does not die when we depart this life. If the love that we show for others is truly God’s love, then it is not bound by time, by place, or even by death. 

Finally, I want to mention the most recently glorified Saint in the American land, Matushka Olga of Alaska. Though I never met Matushka Olga, she reposed when I was three years old. She lived in Kwethluk, a remote part of Alaska. There is no reason why any of us should even know who she is, except that God wants us to. She lived a simple life in her village and in church. Her husband who had been the postmaster was ordained a priest, and so this woman who had thirteen of her own children became a mother to the village. She cared for them as mothers do. She fed them, clothed them, watched out for them, helped them in times of need and distress. 

We see in Matushka Olga what we first saw in Saint Herman. He was a father to them who kept them in prayer and labored in simplicity. She is a mother in prayer and simplicity. The times have changed so much, and yet we see the same qualities in her that we saw in him. Holiness is timeless because it is from the Holy Spirit. 

The Church today reminds us that we can be Saints. We can be Saints in the second quarter of the 21st century in Nampa Idaho. Doing so means serving God and serving our neighbor. It means being a sojourner in the world so that we can be citizens of the Heavenly Kingdom. It means living a life of prayer, love for others, and service. It means simplifying our lives so that we can focus on these things. If we live in this way, we will be what God needs us to be in the place and time in which we live, and we will look like timeless reminders that the grace of the Holy Spirit has not and never will depart from the Church. This is our calling, and we should embrace it with great joy.