Saint Elder Ephraim of the Holy Mountain and Arizona (+2019)
On Saturday 7 December 2019 Elder Ephraim fell asleep in the Lord at the Holy Monastery of St Anthony in Arizona in the USA. His funeral service was held on 11 December 2019 at the same Monastery in the midst of many of his spiritual children, whom he brought to new birth spiritually: clergy, monks and laypeople of all ages and categories.
He was honoured by the Ecumenical Patriarch with a message that was read out during the funeral service by the Abbot of the Holy Monastery of Philotheou on the Holy Mountain, Archimandrite Nikodimos, who afterwards spoke on his own behalf, as well as by the presence of Archbishop Elpidophoros of America, who described his personality and the work that he had accomplished.
I have been linked with the ever-blessed Hieromonk Ephraim in many and different ways over many years, and in this article I shall set out some of my thoughts about the Elder of blessed memory.
1. Hesychast and Teacher of Hesychia
In the decade of the 1960s this radiant star began to rise on the Holy Mountain. From his youth he was numbered among the spiritual company of the great Elder Joseph the Hesychast and Cave-Dweller. He was distinguished from that time by childlikeness and unquestioning obedience, which exalted him.
When I was a student, between 1964 and 1968, I heard about Elder Ephraim. His great Elder, Fr Joseph the Cave-Dweller, had died in 1959, and Elder Ephraim, together with a small community, was continuing the way of life of his Elder in the Kalyvi of the Annunciation of the Theotokos in New Skete.
Archimandrite Spyridon Xenos, who had been the Director of the Hostel in Agrinion where I lived during my years at school, became a monk in New Skete on the Holy Mountain. For that reason, I used to go often at that time to New Skete, and I met Elder Ephraim and those with him, but also some of those who had been with Elder Joseph the Hesychast, including Elder Joseph’s brother Fr Athanasios, the monk Joseph, later of Vatopedi, the monk Theophylaktos, and others. Elder Ephraim was faithfully following the hesychastic life of Elder Ephraim the Hesychast.
Once, as a layman and student in the 1960s, I went to his Kalyvi to meet him and to hear him speak about noetic prayer, about which I was longing to learn. Because I was unfamiliar with his timetable, I went in the morning, when he and his monks were resting after the vigil that they kept each night with the prayer-rope and the Divine Liturgy.
As they did not open the door when I knocked, I remained for a long time outside the door of his Kalyvi praying. After about two hours, they opened the door, and I met Elder Ephraim for the first time.
His face was peaceful, childlike, radiant, and his speech was gracious. I asked him about the Jesus Prayer. I do not remember what he told me, but he continually repeated the words adoleschō and adoleschia, ‘converse’, ‘pondering’ or ‘meditation’, in the sense that we should continuously converse with God. By this he meant noetic prayer.
This word made an impression on me. It is found in the Psalms of David: “I meditated on Your ordinances” (Ps. 118[119]:48). God’s ordinances are His commandments, which we must put into practice. One of these commandments is vigilance and prayer.
I shall simply add here that I also found the book Adoleschia Philotheos [Devout Converse] by Eugenios Voulgaris, which is a commentary on the Pentateuch. Elder Ephraim, however, used the word in the sense of unceasing prayer, the continuous invocation of the prayer “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy upon me.”
When, at the beginning of the 1970s I was ordained to the clergy and used to go often to the Holy Mountain, he and those with him moved to the Holy Monastery of Philotheou, and he became Abbot. It was natural that I should visit that Holy Monastery. There one saw young monks who, as well as the sacred services, were occupied in noetic prayer. It was a spiritual beehive, because everywhere one heard the Jesus Prayer being said in a whisper while the monks were working and moving about. But one was also intensely aware of it in the atmosphere of the church, with the services and the Divine Liturgy. Because the Divine Liturgy acquires a different spiritual feeling when it is celebrated by hesychast clergy and hesychast monks are present.
From the spiritual atmosphere of the Holy Monastery of Philotheou three other Monasteries were filled again with monks: the Monastery of Karakallou, the Monastery of Xeropotamou and the Monastery of Konstamonitou.
When I went to the Holy Monastery of Philotheou I used to talk to the Abbot, Fr Ephraim, about subjects that were of interest to me. At that time I really had a great desire to learn about how sacred hesychia could be closely linked with the Divine Liturgy and the pastoral ministry. From everything he said to me from time to time, I retain two points to this day.
Firstly, he talked to me about sacred hesychia, noetic prayer and its method. He actually analysed for me sacred hesychasm in practice, as his Elder, Joseph the Hesychast, lived it, and as he had received it and put it into practice, and afterwards passed it on to his spiritual children. It is a spiritual inheritance.
Secondly, he often spoke to me about the death of his Elder, Joseph the Hesychast. I remember the phrase that “I never saw a more valiant death than the Elder’s.” The way in which he related it was an initiation into a mystery. He has put these things in writing, but the way in which he narrated them, in his thin voice, his slow way of speaking and the contrite atmosphere of the Monastery, particularly after Compline, was unrepeatable.
2. Moving to America
Elder Ephraim’s move to America was an extremely bold action. Although he had due respect on the Holy Mountain from his spiritual children, from Abbots, Hieromonks and monks, he preferred to take a ‘reckless leap’ into the abyss of the New World of Canada and America. He had evidently received a revelation and inner conviction from God.
America had been dominated by a Christianity with scholastic content, as expressed by Roman Catholicism, and with moral-emotional content, as preached by Protestantism. America is mostly a hotchpotch of Protestantism, Enlightenment and Romanticism. These currents have also influenced the Orthodox Church. The Orthodox Church under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate did not have a developed form of Orthodox monasticism.
The ever-memorable Elder Ephraim discerned this lack, and he took the decision to found Orthodox monasteries, and actually to transfer to America Orthodox Athonite monasticism, which is based on sacred hesychasm, as lived and taught by St Gregory Palamas.
It is right to emphasise that the ever-memorable Fr John Romanides was the first to perceive this lack and to express it in his writings. As he was born and grew up in America – in Manhattan, New York – and he studied at three theological schools (Holy Cross, Boston, Yale University, and St Vladimir’s, New York), he was very familiar with the spirit of the Christianity that dominated in America, and the influences of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism on the Orthodox Church and Orthodox theology. But he was also very well aware of the way out of this secularisation of the Church and theology.
For this reason, he devoted himself to Orthodox theology as it is expressed by the Prophets, Apostles and Fathers, culminating in his thesis The Ancestral Sin, which was submitted to, and approved by, the Theological School of the University of Athens in 1957.
It is significant to note that, before writing his doctoral thesis The Ancestral Sin, he wrote four separate papers as preparation for his doctoral thesis, and submitted then to the Theological Institute of St Sergius in Paris. Two of these contain some points that I wish to underline here.
In his first essay, which he wrote in English in 1954 under the title Original Sin according to St Paul, Fr John reached the following conclusion:
“The mission of Orthodox theology today is to bring an awakening in Western Christianity, but in order to do this, the Orthodox themselves must rediscover their own traditions and cease, once and for all, accepting the corroding infiltration of Western theological confusion into Orthodox theology. It is only by returning to the Biblical understanding of Satan and human destiny that the sacraments of the Church can once again become the source and strength of Orthodox theology. The enemy of life and love can be destroyed only when Christians can confidently say, ‘we are not ignorant of his thoughts’ (2 Cor. 2:11). Any theology which cannot define with exactitude the methods and deceptions of the devil is clearly heretical, because such a theology is already deceived by the devil. It is for this reason the Fathers could assert that heresy is the work of the devil.”
In another study, which he published in English in 1956 with the title The Ecclesiology of St Ignatius of Antioch, he refers among other things to the two aspects of the Church, namely, warfare against the devil, and union and communion with Christ. He writes:
“In other words, the Church has two aspects, one positive – love, unity, and communion of immortality with each other and with the saints in Christ, and one negative – the war against the Satan and his powers already defeated in the flesh of Christ by those living in Christ beyond death awaiting the general (or second) resurrection – the final and complete victory of God over Satan. Christology is the positive aspect of the Church, but is conditioned by biblical demonology, which is the key negative factor which determines both Christology and Ecclesiology, both of which are incomprehensible without an adequate understanding of the work and methods of Satan.”
It is clear from these two extracts that one of Fr John Romanides’ basic views is that Orthodox theology ought to free itself from the scholasticism of the Roman Catholics and the moralism of the Protestants and acquire its own criterion, which is the victory of Christ and of Christians with the power of Christ against the devil, sin and death.
As a consequence of this, he conceived the idea that an Orthodox monastery should be founded in America, where people would learn how to break free from their servitude to the devil, sin and death.
For this reason, in a letter that he sent to Fr Theoklitos of Dionysiou in 1958, after he had finished his doctoral thesis, he wrote that it was necessary for the Church in America that an Orthodox monastery should be founded, and that a community of monks from the Holy Mountain should be moved there. Among other things, he wrote to Fr Theoklitos of Dionysiou:
“It is precisely because the Church in the world has been cut off from the monastic tradition that the familiar decline in the spiritual life has been observed in our days. Satan has so distorted the theology of the heretics and the so-called Orthodox who are influenced by the West, that some think that salvation is not from the power and hands of the enemy, but from God. God became man in order to save us from Himself! This is why the ascetic life has disappeared in the West. They neither fast nor pray much. They simply pursue happiness…When there is mistaken theology, Christianity is reduced to activity. The monastic life of the non-Orthodox here consists of extremely active orders, who engage in anything except spiritual asceticism as the Orthodox tradition understands it…Unfortunately we do not have a single ascetic or monastery here and there is no living example of the Orthodox life…
I should like to know your opinion concerning the possibilities of transplanting a monastic community of 5 to 10 monks into American territory. Unless something like this is done, Orthodoxy will disappear here, or it will be transformed into something else, as has already happened to a great extent.
I have tried in my book to say the same as you say in yours, but nobody here understands. The Greeks here, you see, have adapted to the eudemonism of the West and in their eyes the pursuit of happiness is God’s will. So why would anyone want to go up on the rocks and do all-night vigils and the like?
I should be very pleased if we could correspond. I think that the devil will be sorry that we do not like the Christianity that he promotes, but what can we do? No one can please him when he wants to please God. St Symeon the New Theologian gives an excellent description of how Satan helps certain people in their prayer and good works…”
One wonders how Fr John Romanides, as early as the 1950s, understood so clearly this problem that exists in the Western world.
This seems to have been one of the fixed ideas of Fr John Romanides: that a monastic community should be transplanted to America from the Holy Mountain. We find it in the letters that he sent to the couple Panagos and Katingo Pateras, who later became monastics with the names Xenophon and Maria Myrtidiotissa. Fr George Metallinos published these letters in his book Protopresbyteros Ioannis Romanides ‘o profitis tis Romiosynis’ prosopografoumenos mesa apo agnosta I ligo gnosta keimena [Protopresbyter John Romanides ‘the Prophet of Romanity’ portrayed through unknown or little-known texts] (pub. Armos).
In these letters many details are preserved that show Fr John Romanides’ concern that Orthodox monasteries should be founded in America and that they should follow the Orthodox ascetic tradition, which is the basis of Orthodox theology. I shall refer to some extracts.
In one of his letters (14-7-1958), he writes, among other things, that Orthodoxy in the West has become a sort of Protestant Uniatism. A very daring statement!
“Therefore, just as the Romans have Uniatism, now the Protestants too have a form of Uniatism. We follow the Protestants in everything, and Orthodoxy only in the liturgical rituals.”
In another of his letters (27-12-1958), he refers to Elder Joseph the Hesychast, who “is perhaps the best ascetic in noetic prayer.” He adds, “The monks in obedience to him are excellent, and if there is to be a monastery, one of them could lay the foundations.” And he notes: “A good and strict monastic life is the only thing that can show the way for us to escape from this wretched state of Orthodoxy in America. If it [the monastery] is started by monks from the Holy Mountain, we shall have the typikon of the Holy Mountain with vigils etc. and they will be a strong missionary centre, which will invade the centre of Satan’s kingdom and cleanse the atmosphere of demons with Orthodox incense and vigilance. You know that the ascetics left for the desert, not because they were seeking a quiet life, but because the desert was regarded as the pre-eminent kingdom of Satan. For this reason, Christ went first into the desert and conquered the devil in his most powerful fortress. Thus, here too, where for so many years Satan has ruled unhindered, he ought to be confronted.”
These are terrible words of his, that missionary monks from the Holy Mountain were needed in America, to enter “Satan’s kingdom” and to cleanse the atmosphere of demons “with Orthodox incense and vigilance”, with prayer and watchfulness!
In another letter (19-11-1959) he mentions the community of the ever-memorable Elder Joseph the Hesychast and refers to Elder Ephraim of blessed memory, who eventually went to America: “You had met Joseph’s Ephraim.” As though he were ‘prophesying’ his presence in America.
In another letter (10-12-1960), he dwells on the subject of founding a monastery in America: “The Orthodox here are in great need of a good monastery.” He expresses the desire of the Orthodox in America to acquire a monastery.
In a later letter (15-8-1962), he continues to insist that an Orthodox monastery be established: “Real monasticism must at all costs be strengthened and grow spiritually and from the point of view of teaching and leadership. Otherwise, we are running a great risk.”
He is extremely concerned, because knows that only the Orthodox Church, through hesychastic monasticism, which expresses the tradition of the Philokalia of the Neptic Saints on the purifying, illuminating and deifying energy of God, can be distinguished from the other Christian traditions.
He had become aware that nothing was said at any of the meetings between the Orthodox and other Christians about warfare against the devil, sin and death, which is the basis of Orthodox theology.
As he found no response, he wrote in one of his letters (2-11-1958): “May God take pity on us. Are we so sinful that we have to have heretics as our shepherds? Anyway, if such things happen, I don’t know what the outcome will be.”
He wrote the same things in a letter (11-5-1958) to Fr Georges Florovsky as well. He spoke about the possibility of transplanting a monastic community from the Holy Mountain “to serve as a core for the development of a spiritual life among our people in the traditional path.”
Such were the anxieties of Fr John Romanides, and he asked God to take pity on the Christians of America.
And God heeded his concern and the desire of his people, and sent Elder Ephraim of Philotheou, the disciple of Joseph the Hesychast, to America, to establish nineteen Orthodox monasteries in America and Canada. In them the Orthodox ascetic teaching of the Church and the Christians’ battle against the devil, sin and death is taught.
Elder Ephraim perceived this concern and people’s longing, and after receiving inner assurance from God, he left the calm of the Holy Mountain and set sail into the ocean full of all sorts of currents and waves, to preach “Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2) in the desert of the big cities, with saintly, prophetic and apostolic strength and energy worthy of the martyrs.
From my many visits to America, and from my contact with Abbots of the Monasteries that he created, and with many laypeople who were his spiritual children, I have personal knowledge of the great work that he accomplished through the monastic communities that he founded and directed with his unsleeping pure nous.
I think that his spiritual children will write about this great work, which is taking place in America and provides genuine criteria to distinguish the Orthodox Tradition from other Christian and non-Christian traditions.
And all this work is accomplished with signs and miracles, which always accompany the apostolic word, in accordance with Christ’s saying: “And these signs will follow those who believe: in My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover” (Mark 16:17-18).
Elder Ephraim of blessed memory was a prophet, an equal to the apostles, a martyr and a saintly ascetic. As such, he entered “the centre of Satan’s kingdom” and taught a kind of monasticism and Christianity that “does not please the devil”, but pleases God.
3. The Art of Salvation
Since the time when Elder Ephraim went to America, we have not met. I did not have the blessing to visit him at the Holy Monastery in Arizona. However, I was, and still am, in contact with his spiritual children. Through them I would ask for his prayers, and he would send me various ‘prophetic words’ and his love.
I used to send him the books that I published, and he was pleased. In fact, he was particularly pleased with one of them, the first book that I wrote about St Paisios of the Holy Mountain, and from the Holy Monastery in Arizona they sent me a photograph of him holding that book in his hands, a sign that he greatly loved St Paisios.
Sometimes I spoke to him on the telephone. I expressed my love and asked for his prayers and his love for my ministry. Gerondissa Photini of blessed memory, the Abbess of the Birth of the Theotokos Monastery (Pelagia), corresponded with him, and the letters show the whole of Fr Ephraim’s personality, and how he guided monks. One day I shall publish this correspondence.
It made a particular impression on me that he asked me, through his spiritual children, to write a foreword to various books of his, which he published in English, such as the book My Elder Joseph, the Hesychast and Cave-Dweller. Because his way of thinking was completely ecclesiastical, he wanted the foreword to be written by a Bishop who loves monasticism.
I was even more impressed when he sent me the type-written book that he intended to publish entitled The Art of Salvation, which consists of homilies that he delivered at the Holy Monastery of Philotheou and in America. With his characteristic humility, he asked me to read it and to identify any points that ought to be corrected, to make sure it did not deviate from Orthodox theology. I read it in draft form with very great inspiration, and I sent him some points that he might be able to correct.
After that, he sent me a letter saying that everything that I suggested to him was acceptable, and he urged me to make any other changes, even without informing him, and to send they direct to the printers for publication. This shows the humility of a great and experienced Father. He also asked me to write a foreword to that book in Greek.
I cite below the foreword to that book, which was written in 2003, sixteen years ago, because it shows my view of Elder Ephraim many years ago. I wrote in the preface:
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“I consider it to be a special and exceptional honour to write a preface for the first volume of the homilies of Elder Ephraim, formerly Abbot of the Holy Monastery of Philotheou on the Holy Mountain, at his own request, and at the request of the fathers of the Holy Monastery of St Anthony in Arizona, America. This sense of honour stems from the fact that Elder Ephraim is an experienced teacher of the neptic life of our Orthodox Church.
I met Elder Ephraim on the Holy Mountain, when he was living as an ascetic in New Skete, and I retain vividly in the memory of my heart the image of the fervent ascetic who had unceasing remembrance of God and spiritual inspiration. He was an ascetic who lived the spiritual life in practice, and knew from experience what the passions are and how they are overcome; what communion with God is, and how it can be acquired. At the same time he is an experienced and discerning spiritual father, and, as an expression of the ecclesiastical way of thinking that characterises him and every real hesychast monk, he also respects the Bishop, whom he asks, in his extreme humility and his greatness that cannot be humbled, to write a foreword to these homilies of his.
Here we see the link between two charismata within the Church, between the life of the monk and the ministry of the Bishop. This reminds me vividly of the relationship, but also the humility on this same matter, between St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain and Bishop Hierotheos of Euripos, as shown in the letters between the two that are published at the beginning of the Handbook of Spiritual Council: The Guarding of the Five Senses.
The texts included in this book are homilies to monks, and cenobitic monks in particular, mainly, as I understand it, homilies to the monks of the Holy Monastery of Philotheou of the Holy Mountain, who are his spiritual children whom he leads in the spiritual life.
The key feature of these homilies is that they bring together theology and the pastoral ministry. Of course, by theology I do not mean academic knowledge, which is useful in some circumstances in the historical life of the Church, but theology as charisma, as experience of God and knowledge of God’s mysteries, as knowledge of the uncreated words that are subsequently passed on as teaching through created words and concepts.
Elder Ephraim himself was obedient to a hallowed Elder, Elder Joseph the Hesychast. He lived noetic prayer, under the guidance of this Elder, who was a desert-dweller and hesychast. He experienced the “first grace” and subsequently the “second grace”, as Elder Joseph used to say so wisely, and afterwards he acquired the discernment of spirits, which is the true theological charisma.
This theology subsequently becomes pastoral expertise, which is offered for the pastoral guidance of spiritual children. Such a theologian, therefore, knows from his experience what the state of Adam was before his disobedience and the fall, because at that time he was in the state of illumination of the nous. He knows what the terrible consequences of the fall were, as the divine image was obscured, the nous was darkened and all the powers of the soul, which began to move contrary to their nature, were perverted, with the result that the passions, as we know them today, were created. Subsequently, such a theologian knows the ascetic-neptic-hesychastic method, in other words, obedience, spiritual vigilance, prayer, noetic hesychia, through which the human being is freed from the dominance of the devil, death and sin, and acquires communion with God “in the person of Jesus Christ”, and actually reaches the point of beholding the glory of God in the human flesh of the Word, which is Paradise.
There is obviously a close connection between theology and the pastoral ministry, between spiritual knowledge and serving people pastorally. Only those who have empirical knowledge of God’s mysteries are able to help people to be liberated from the dominance of the passions, the devil and death. This constitutes the true pastoral ministry of the Church. If someone does not meet these pre-conditions, when he speaks he will simply utter fine words instead of theology, and teach aesthetics instead of asceticism.
The homilies of Elder Ephraim belong within this framework. It is clear that the material that he uses comes from Holy Scripture, which is the words of the Prophets and Apostles, of the eye-witnesses of the unincarnate and incarnate Word; from the writings of the holy Fathers of the Church, the successors to the holy Apostles and the bearers of the revelational experience of Pentecost; from the Sayings of the Fathers and the Synaxaria of the Church, which show the life of the real and sanctified members of the Church, who are members at the same time, not of the mystical, but of the real Body of Christ; and from accounts of, and about, hallowed ascetics on the Holy Mountain. Above all, these texts are created within the personal experience of Elder Ephraim, and for that reason they are offered with authenticity, simplicity, serenity and meekness, which are the fruits of Orthodox hesychia.
I read the homilies that are published in this first volume attentively and prayerfully, most of them in the peace and quiet of the Holy Monastery of the Dormition of the Theotokos Ambelakiotissa in my Holy Metropolis. Reading these texts brought me spiritual benefit and created a state of prayer within me. Most of all, I saw that they described what the human being was like before the fall, what became of him after his fall, and how he can be delivered from the power of death.
These homilies are really full of life; they wake us up and create inspiration and repentance, which are the characteristics of true Orthodox teaching. These homilies, as is the case with the words of people who have the Holy Spirit and have acquired communion with Christ through sacred hesychia, convey the feeling that the nous of the one who is speaking goes beyond human things. They orientate the reader to another sense of things, beyond the energy of the passions and death, in the full spiritual meaning of this word and this state.
When I finished reading these homilies the passage from St Paul came into my mind: ‘Let no one cheat you of your reward, taking delight in false humility and worship of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom all the body, nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with the increase that is from God’ (Col. 2:18-19).
The Apostle Paul is speaking here about a situation at that time relating to the worship of angels. However, we can state that today, too, there are many religions of angels-demons, which rely on the puffing up of the fleshly mind, on imaginary speculations, demonic visions and sociological schemes, and not on the authentic teaching that flows from being united with Christ, the Head of the Church. Thus, the words of the Apostle Paul are also valid here: ‘Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations?’ (Col. 2:20).
Living in such a secularised society, which often influences even the ecclesiastical situation, we must struggle humbly, and with all the Orthodox ecclesiastical presuppositions described in the teachings of the saints, the real members of the Body of Christ, to be closely united with the Head of the Church, Who is Christ, and, as members of the Body of Christ, to be nourished by the Head, to be joined together by Him, and to grow spiritually. In other words, our whole being must ‘grow with the increase that is from God.’ The aim of our life should be to grow according to God, and to advance from our fallen state as far as Paradise, from our dependence on the devil as far as deification, which is the increase that is from God.
These homilies of Elder Ephraim also contribute to this spiritual increase. They reminded me not only of authentic monastic teaching, but also of the ‘spirit’ of the Holy Mountain, as I encountered it in the 60s and 70s, and as I encounter it even today in hallowed monks of the Holy Mountain who live the ascetic and hesychastic life.
I feel the need to thank the venerable Elder Ephraim for the labours he has undertaken to acquire the knowledge of God, of which these homilies are the succulent fruit. I ask him to pray for me and for all those involved in the pastoral service of people, that we may not lose the deeper and more essential aim of the pastoral ministry, which is to lead people, and first of all ourselves, from being in God’s image to being in His likeness, from darkness of the nous to illumination and deification. Because we must grasp firmly that Christianity does not simply aim to perform a social task, but, according to the apt statement of St Gregory of Nyssa, ‘Christianity is the imitation of the divine nature.’” (August 2003)
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Elder Ephraim of the Holy Mountain and Arizona, and the universal teacher of hesychia, has proved to be, as a blessed monk said to me, and as is clear from everything I have written already, a saintly ascetic with a hesychastic tradition and life; an equal to Christ’s apostles, who illuminated America with hesychastic Athonite monasticism; a martyr, because he made war on satanic forces under many different names; but also a prophet, because he saw with his clear-sighted nous the problems that exist today between Christians, and he dealt with them “in the spirit and power” of Elijah the Prophet. God will uphold the works of his hands, the Monasteries that he laboured to create and direct.
I humbly ask for his blessings and prayers to the Lord for all Orthodox Christians, clergy and laity, and among them also for me, the least of men. The remembrance of him will remain eternally in those who loved him, but above all in the memory of the Church.
Vita Prima of St John Maximovitch of San Francisco (+1966)
Fr. Seraphim Rose, USA
Introduction
Barely six months ago there reposed in the Lord a hierarch of the Church of Christ whose life so extraordinarily radiated the Christian virtues and the grace of the Holy Spirit as to make him a pillar of true Orthodoxy and an example of Christian life that is of universal significance. In Archbishop John there are united three kinds of highest Christian activity that are rarely found together: that of a bold and esteemed Prince of the Church; an ascetic in the tradition of the pillar saints, taking upon himself the severest self mortification; and a fool for Christ’s sake, instructing men by a ‘foolishness’ that was beyond the wisdom of this world.
The following account cannot begin to be called a complete life of Archbishop John; it is only a selection of the material that is already available, presented in the form of a preliminary sketch of the life of this holy man. It was compiled by the St Herman Brotherhood, which was organized with the blessing of Archbishop John (who wished to see Father Herman canonized after Father John of Krohnstadt) for the mission of the printed word. Now, in fulfillment of this mission, it is our duty to speak the truth about this man, who was, in our dark times when genuine Christianity has almost vanished, an embodiment of the life of Christ.
The account is based primarily upon personal acquaintance and upon the testimony of witnesses known to the compilers. Archbishop John throughout is referred to by the term Russians use to speak of and address bishops: Vladika. In English this is rendered ‘Master’, but the Russian word, when used by itself, implies a familiarity and endearment that are wanting in the nearest English equivalent. For those who knew him, Archbishop John will always be simply Vladika.
I
Youth
Archbishop John was born on the 4th June 1896 in the village of Adamovka in the province of Kharkov in southern Russia. He was a member of the Little Russian noble family of Maximovitch , to which St John of Tobolsk had also belonged. His father, Boris, was a marshal of nobility in one part of Kharkov province; and his uncle was rector of the Kiev University. He received at baptism the name of Michael, his heavenly protector being the Archangel Michael. He was a sickly child and ate little.
He received his secondary education in the Poltava Military School, which he attended from 1907 to 1914. He loved this school and remembered it fondly in later years. Upon completing military school he entered Kharkov Imperial University in the faculty of law, from which he graduated in 1918, before it was seized by the Soviets. He was then assigned to the Kharkov District Courts, where he served at the time Hetman Skoropadsky was ruling the Ukraine and while the Volunteer Army was there.
Kharkov, where Vladika spent his formative years, was a true town of Holy Russia, and the young Michael, impressionable to revelations of holiness, acquired there the pattern of his future life. There were two miraculous icons of the Mother of God, the Oseryanskaya and Eletskaya, which were carried in a religious procession twice a year from the monasteries where they were treasured to the Dormition Cathedral. In the Protection Monastery, in a frescoed grotto underneath the altar, lay the remains of holy Archbishop Melety Leontovitch, who after his death in 1841 rendered miraculous help to those who served a panikhida [prayer service for the departed] for him at his coffin. Even during his lifetime the Archbishop was venerated for his severe asceticism, especially for the ascetic feat of abstaining from sleep. He was known to spend nights on end standing motionless, with lifted arms, deep in prayer. He foreknew the day and the hour of his own death, The young Maximovitch was known to have a veneration for this holy hierarch.
Today Archbishop John nay be seen to resemble the holy man of Kharkov in at least three respects: he was not known to have slept in a bed for forty years; he knew beforehand of his death; and he now rests under a cathedral in a special grave chapel where panikhidas are sung almost daily and the psalter is read over his coffin by those who ask for his help. This is a unique case of the transplanting, as it were, of a part of Holy Russia to contemporary America.
While at Kharkov university, Vladika spent more time reading the lives of the saints than attending classes; nonetheless he was an excellent student. Evidently his emulation of the saints was apparent even at that age, since Archbishop Anthony of Kharkov, one of the great Church figures of that time (later Metropolitan, first candidate to the Patriarchal See of Moscow, and first Chief Hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad) took special pains to become acquainted with him, and then kept the youth close to him and guided his spiritual formation.
In 1921, during the Russian Civil War, Vladika, together with his parents, his brothers, and his sister was evacuated to Belgrade, where he and his brothers entered the University of Belgrade. One brother graduated in the technical faculty and became an engineer, the other graduated in law and served in the Yugoslav police. Vladika himself graduated in 1925 in the faculty of theology. While he was a student he worked for his living by selling newspapers.
In 1924 Vladika was ordained reader in the Russian church in Belgrade by Metropolitan Anthony, who continued to exert great influence over him; and Vladika in his turn showed the utmost respect and devotion to his superior. In 1926 Metropolitan Anthony tonsured him a monk and ordained him hierodeacon in the Milkov Monastery, giving him the name John, after Vladika’s own distant relative, Saint John Maximovitch of Tobolsk. On the 21st of November of the same year, Vladika was ordained hiermonk by Bishop Gabriel of Chelyabinsk. From 1925 to 1927, Vladika was an instructor of religion at the Serbian State High School, and from 10929 to 1934 he was a teacher and tutor at the Serbian Seminary of St John the Theologian at Bitol. There he served Divine Liturgy in Greek for the local Greek and Macedonian communities, who had great esteem for him.
The city of Bitol was in the diocese of Okhrida, and at that time the ruling bishop of this diocese was Nicholas Velimirovitch, a Serbian Chrysostom, a noted preacher poet, writer, and organizer and inspirer of the popular religious movement. He, as much as Metropolitan Anthony, valued and loved the young Hiermonk John, and himself exerted an beneficial influence upon him. More than once he was heard to say, ‘If you wish to see a living saint, go to Bitol to Father John.’
For, indeed, it began to become evident, that this was an entirely extraordinary man. It was his own students, who first discovered what was perhaps Vladika’s greatest feat of asceticism. They noticed at first that he stayed up long after everyone else had gone to bed; he would go through the dormitories at night and pick up blankets that had fallen down and cover the unsuspecting sleepers, making the Sign of the Cross over them. Finally it was discovered that he scarcely slept at all, and never in a bed, allowing himself only an hour or two each night of uncomfortable rest in a sitting position, or bent over on the floor, praying before icons. Years afterward he himself admitted, that since taking the monastic vows he had not slept lying in a bed. Such an ascetic practice is a very rare one; and yet it is not unknown to Orthodox tradition. The fourth century founder of coenobitic monasticism, St Pachomius the Great, when receiving the Rule of monastic communal life from an angel, heard the following concerning sleep: ‘And they (the monks) shall not take their sleep lying down, but thou shalt make them seats so that when they are sitting down they shall be able to support their heads’ (Rule four).
Archbishop Averky of the Jordanville Holy Trinity Monastery, then a young hiermonk in Carpatho-Russia, was a witness of the deep impression Hiermonk John made upon the seminary students. When they returned home on vacations they would speak of their extraordinary instructor who prayed constantly, served Divine Liturgy or at least received Holy Communion every day, fasted strictly, never slept lying down and with true fatherly love inspired them with high ideals of Christianity and of Holy Russia.
In 1934 it was decided to raise Hiermonk John to the rank of bishop. As for Vladika himself, nothing was farther from his mind. A lady who knew him relates how she met him at this time on a streetcar in Belgrade. He told her that he was in town by mistake, having been sent for in place of some other Hiermonk John who was to be consecrated bishop! When she saw him the next day he informed her that the situation was worse than he had thought: it was him they wished to make bishop! When he had protested that this was out of the question since he had a speech defect and could not enunciate clearly, he had only been told that the prophet Moses had the same difficulty.
The consecration occurred on the 28th May 1934, Vladika was the last bishop of the very many to be consecrated by Metropolitan Anthony, and the extraordiarily high esteem in which that venerable hierarch held the new bishop is indicated in a letter which he sent to Archbishop Dimitry in the Far East. Himself declining an invitation to retire to China, he wrote:
But in place of myself, as my soul, as my heart, I am sending you Vladika Bishop John. This little frail man, looking almost like a child, is actually a miracle of ascetic firmness and strictness in our time of total spiritual enfeeblement.
Vladika was assigned to the diocese of Shanghai.
II
Shanghai
Vladika arrived in Shanghai in late November, on the feast of the Entrance of the Mother of God into the Temple, and found a large cathedral uncompleted and a jurisdictional conflict to resolve. The first thing he did was to restore Church unity. He established contact with Serbs, Greeks, Ukrainians. He paid special attention to religious education and made it a rule to be present at the oral examinations of the Catechism classes in all the Orthodox schools in Shanghai. He at once became a protector of various charitable and philanthropic societies and actively participated in their work, especially after seeing the needy circumstances in which the majority of his flock, refugees from the Soviet Union, were placed. He never went visiting for tea to the rich, but he was to be seen wherever there was need, regardless of times and weather. He organised a home for orphans and the children of needy parents, entrusting it to the heavenly protection of a Saint he highly venerated, St Tikhon of Zadonsk, who loved children. Vladika himself gathered sick and starving children off the streets and dark alleys of Shanghai’s slums. Beginning with eight children, the orphanage later housed up to a hundred children at one time, and some 3 500 in all. When the Communists came, Vladika evacuated the whole orphanage, first to an island in the Philippines, and then to America.
It soon became apparent to his new flock that Vladika was a great ascetic. The core of his asceticism was prayer and fasting. He ate once a day at 11pm. During the first and last weeks of Great Lent he did not eat at all, and for the rest of this and the Christmas Lent he ate only bread from the altar. His nights he spent usually in prayer, and when he finally became exhausted he would put his head on the floor and steal a few hours of sleep near dawn. When the time would come to serve Matins, someone would knock on the door, to no avail; they would open the doort and find Vladika huddled on the floor in the icon corner overcome by sleep. At a tap on the shoulder he wouuld jump up and in a few minutes he would be in church for services – cold water streaming down his beard, but quite awake.
Vladika officiated in the cathedral every morning and evening, even when sick. He celebrated Divine Liturgy daily, as he was to do for the rest of his life, and if for some reason he could not serve, he would still receive Holy Communion, No matter where he was, he would not miss a service. Once, according to a witness,
Vladika’s leg was terribly swollen and the council of doctors, fearing gangrene, prescribed hospitalization, which Vladika categorically refused. Then the Russian doctors informed the Parish Council that they released themselves of any responsibility for the health and even the life of the patient. The members of the Parish Council, after long pleas for mercy and threats of taking him by force, compelled Vladika to agree, and he was sent to the Russian Hospital in the morning on the day before the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. By six o’clock, however, Vladika came limping into the cathedral on foot and served. In a day all the swelling was gone.
Vladika’s constant attention to self-mortification had its root in the fear of God, which he possessed in the tradition of the ancient Church and of Holy Russia. The following incident, told by O. Skopichenko and confirmed by many from Shanghai, well illustrates his daring, unshakable faith in Christ.
A Mrs Menshikova was bitten by a mad dog. The injections against rabies she either refused to take or took carelessly…. And then she came down with this terrible disease. Bishop John found out about it and came to the dying woman. He gave her Holy Communion, but just then she began having one of the fits of this disease; she began to foam at the mouth and at the same time she spat out the Holy Gifts which she had just received. The Holy Sacrament cannot be thrown out. And Vladika picked up and put in his mouth the Holy Gifts vomited by the sick woman. Those who were with him exclaimed: ‘Vladika, what are you doing! Rabies is terribly contageous!’ But Vladika peacefully answered: ‘Nothing will happen; these are the Holy Gifts.’ And indeed nothing did happen.
Vladika wore clothing of the cheapest Chinese fabric, and soft slippers or sandals, always without socks, no matter what the weather. He often went barefoot, sometimes after having given his sandals away to some poor man. He even served barefoot, for which he was severely criticized.
By now it had become known that Vladika not only was a righteous man and an ascetic, but was also so close to God that he was endowed with the gift of clairvoyance and there were healings by his prayers. A striking account told by an eyewitness, Lidia Liu, testifies to Vladika’s spiritual height.
Vladika came to Hong Kong twice. It’s strange, but I, not knowing Vladika then, wrote him a letter asking him to help a widow with children, and I also asked him about some personal spiritual matter, but I never received an answer. A year passed. Vladika came to Hong Kong and I was in a crowd that was to meet him in church. Vladika turned to me and said, ‘It is you who wrote me the letter!’ I was astonished since Vladika had never seen me before. A moleben [prayer service for the living] was sung, after which Vladika, standing before a lectern, was delivering a sermon. I was standing next to my mother, and we both saw a light surrounding Vladika down to the lectern – a radiance around him a foot wide. This lasted a rather long time. When the sermon was over, I, struck by such an unusual phenomenon, told what we had seen to R.V.S., who told us: ‘Yes, many faithful saw it.’ My husband, who was standing a little way off, also saw this light.
Vladika loved to visit the sick and did so every single day, hearing confessions and giving Holy Communion. If the condition of a patient should become critical, Vladika would go to him at any hour of the day or night to pray at his bedside. Here is one undoubted miracle among the many worked by Vladika’s prayers; it was recorded and placed in the archives of teh County Hospital in Shanghai (source N. Makovaya).
L. D. Sadkovskaya was very much taken by the sport of horse racing. Once she was thrown off her horse; she hit her head on a rock and lost consciousness. She was brought to the hospital unconscious. A council of doctors agreed that her condition was hopeless and it was not likely that she would live until morning. The pulse was almost gone; the skull was fractured in places so that small pieces of the skull were pressing on the brain. In such condition she would die on the operating table. Even if her heart would tolerate surgery and the result were successful, she would still remain deaf, dumb, and blind. Her sister, after hearing this, rushed to Bishop John in despair and begged him to save her sister. Vladika agreed: he came to the hospital and asked everyone to leave the room and prayed there for about two hours. Then he called the chief doctor and asked him to examine her again. How surprised the doctor was to discover that her pulse was normal! He agreed to perform the operation immediately, but only in the presence of Bishop John. The operation was successful, and the doctors were amazed when, after the operation, the patient regained consciousness and asked to drink. She can see and hear perfectly. She is still living and can talk, see and hear. I have known her for thirty years.
Vladika visited the prison also, and celebrated the Divine Liturgy for the convicts on a primitive little table. But the most difficult task for a pastor is to visit the mentally ill and the possessed – and Vladika sharply distinguished between the two. Outside Shanghai there was a mental hospital, and Vladika alone had the spiritual power to visit these terribly sick people. He gave them Holy Communion, and they, surprisingly, received it peacefully and listened to him. They always looked forward to his visits and met him with joy.
Vladika possessed great courage. During the Japanese occupation the Japanese authorities tried in every way possible to bend the Russian colony to their will. Pressure was directed through the heads of the Russian Emigrant Committee, Two presidents of this Committee strove to maintain its independence, and as a result both were killed. Confusion and terror seized the Russian colony, and at that moment Vladika John, in spite of warnings from the Russians who were collaborating with the Japanese, declared himself the temporary head of the Russian colony.
During the Japanese occupation it was extremely dangerous to walk on the streets at night and most people took care to be home by dark. Vladika, however, paying no heed to the danger, continued to visit the sick and needy at any hour of the night, and he was never touched.
At the end of the war persuasion and pressure were brought to bear on the Russian clergy everywhere to submit to the newly elected ‘Patriarch’ of the Soviet Church. Of the six hierarchs of the Far East, five submitted; only Bishop John, resisting all persuasions and threats, remained loyal to the Russian Church Abroad. In 1946 he was raised to the rank of Archbishop over all the Russian faithful in China.
With the coming of the Communists, the Russians in China were forced, once again to flee, most of them through the Philippine Islands. In 1949 approximately 5000 Refugees from the Chinese mainland were living in an International refugee Organization camp on the island of Tubabao in the Philippines. This island is located in the path of the seasonal typhoons which sweep through that part of the Pacific. During the 27 months period of the camp’s occupancy, the island was threatened only once by a typhoon, and it changed its course and bypassed the island.
When the fear of typhoons was mentioned by one Russian to the Filipinos, they replied that there was no reason to worry, because ‘your holy man blesses the camp from four directions every night’.They referred to Vladika John; for no typhoon struck the island while he was there. After the camp had been almost totally evacuated and the people re-settled elsewhere (mainly in the U.S.A. and Australia), and only about 200 persons were left on the island, it was struck by a terrible typhoon, that totally destroyed the camp.
Vladika himself went to Washington, DC, to get his people to America. Legislation was changed and almost the whole camp came to the New World – thanks again to Vladika.
III
Europe
The exodus of his flock from China accomplished, Archbishop John was given in 1951 a new field for his pastoral endeavour. He was sent by the Synod of Bishops of the Archdiocese of Western Europe, with his see first in Paris and later in Brussels. He was now one of the leading hierarchs of the Russian Church, and his attendance was frequently required at the sessions of the Synod in New York City.
In Western Europe Vladika took a deep interest not only in the Russians in Diaspora, for whom he exerted himself tirelessly in labours similar to those for which he had been known in Shanghai, but also in the local inhabitants. He received under his jurisdiction local Dutch and French Orthodox Churches, protecting them and encouraging their Orthodox development. He celebrated the Divine Liturgy in Dutch and French, as before he had served in Greek and Chinese, and as later he was to serve in English.
Vladika’s interest in and devotion to the Church’s Saints, of whom his knowledge was already seemingly limitless, was extended now to the Western European Saints dating from before the schism of the Latin Church, many of whom , venerated only locally, were included in no Orthodox calendar of Saints. He collected their Lives and images of them, and later submitted a long list of them to the Synod.
In Western Europe as in China people learned to expect the unexpected of Vladika; for here he continued to base his life upon the law of God, thinking nothing of the inconvenience or surprise this might sometimes occasion in those who are governed chiefly by the standards of men. Once Vladika chanced to be in Marseilles, and he decided to serve a pankhida on the site of the cruel assassination of King Alexander of Serbia. None of his clergy, out of false shame, wished to serve with Vladika. Indeed, what a thing to do – to serve in the middle of the street! So Vladika went alone. The citizens of Marseilles were amazed to see a clergyman in unusual dress, with long hair and beard, walking with a suitcase and a broom in the middle of the street. News photographers caught sight of him and photographed him. Finally he stopped, swept with the broom a small portion of the pavement, opened his suitcase and began taking out its contents. On the swept spot he put a pontifical eagle rug, lit the censer, and began to serve a pankhida.
Vladika’s reputation for holiness, too, spread among the non-Orthodox as well as the Orthodox population. In one of the Catholic Churches of Paris, a priest strove to inspire his young people with these words: ‘You demand proofs, you say that now there are neither miracles nor saints: Why should I give you the theoretical proofs, when today there walks in the streets of Paris a Saint – Saint Jean Nus Pieds (St John the Barefoot)’.
Many people testify to the miracles worked by the prayers of Archbishop John in Western Europe.
IV
San Francisco
In San Francisco, whose cathedral parish is the largest in the Russian Church Abroad, a lifelong friend of Vladika, Archbishop Tikhon, retired because of ill health, and in his absence the construction of a great new cathedral came to a halt as a bitter dispute paralyzed the Russian community. In response to the urgent request of thousands of Russians in San Francisco who had known him in Shanghai, Archbishop John was sent by the Synod in 1962 as the only hierarch likely to restore peace in the divided community. He arrived at his last assignment as bishop twenty eight years to the day after his first arrival in Shanghai on the feast of the Entrance of the Mother of God into the Temple, 21st November (4th December), 1962.
Under Vladika’s guidance a measure of peace was restored, the paralysis of the community was ended, and the cathedral finished. Yet even in the role of peacemaker Vladika was attacked, and accusations and slanders were heaped upon his head. He was forced to appear in public court – in flagrant violation of church canons – to answer to preposterous charges of concealing financial dishonesty by the Parish Council. All involved were completely exonerated; but this Vladika’s last years were filled with the bitterness of slander and persecution, to which he unfailingly replied without complaint, without judging anyone, with undisturbed peacefulness.
Vladika remained true to the end of his path of faithful service to the Church. To those who knew him in his last years, perhaps two aspects of his character stood out. First was his strictness in what regarded the Church and the law of God. He insisted on the proper conduct of Church servers, allowing no levity, or even talking, in the altar. Himself an expert in Divine services, he would correct errors and omissions in the order of service immediately. With the congregation, too, he was strict, allowing no women to kiss the cross or icons while wearing lipstick, and requiring that the antidoron [blessed bread] distributed at the end of the Liturgy be received fasting. He spoke against the desecration of the eves of Sundays and feast days by the organization of balls and other entertainments on them. He staunchly defended the CHurch (Julian) Calendar against new calendar innovators. He forebade his clergy to participate in ‘Pan Orthodox’ services because of the dubious canonicity of some participants; and the activities of Orthodox ‘ecumenists’ caused him to shake his head in disbelief. He was strictest of all with regard to the holy doctrine of Orthodoxy; while he was still a young bishop in Shanghai his critical essay on ‘Sophiology’ of Archpriest S.N. Bulgakov was instrumental in the Synod’s condemnation of the latter’s heresy in 1936. No one who has seen will soon forget Vladika’s fierce look while lowering the pontificial candlesticks at the proclamation of the Anathemas against heretics of the Sunday of Orthodoxy – here he was one with the church in excluding from her bosom all who reject the full and saving Orthodox faith. All this was not from any narrow-minded literalness or ‘fanaticism’, but from the same fear of God which Vladika preserved his whole life long, and which prohibits one from trespassing against God’s law at the peril of one’s salvation.
A recent example of Vladika’s righteous severity invites comparison with an incident from the life of Vladika’s beloved St Tikhon of Zadonsk, who rode into the midst of a pagan celebration held during the Apostles’ Fast and delivered a heated accusing sermon against the participants. On the evening before, 19th October (1st November), 1964, the Russian Church Abroad celebrated the solemn canonization of Father John of Krohnstadt, whom Vladika greatly venerated, taking an active part in the compiling of the service to him. The Latins celebrate on this day the feast of All Saints, and there is a tradition that during the preceding night the dark spirits celebrated their own festival of disorder. In America this ‘Halloween’ has become an occasion on which children make mischief dressed in costumes of witches, devils, ghosts, as if calling on the dark powers – a diabolic mockery of Christianity.
A group of Russians organized on this night (which was also the eve of Sunday) a Halloween Ball. In the San Francisco Cathedral at the time of the first All night Vigil celebrated to St John of Krohnstadt, a number of people were absent , to the great sorrow of Vladika. After the service Vladika went to the place where the ball was still in progress. He climbed the steps and entered the hall, to the absolute astonishment of the participants. The music stopped and Vladika, in complete silence, glared at the dumbfounded people, slowly and deliberately making the round of the entire hall, staff in hand. He spoke not a word and none was necessary; the mere sight of Vladika stung the conscience of all, as was evident from the great consternation. Vladika left in silence and the next day in church he thundered his holy indignation and his flaming zeal calling all to the devout Christian life.
Yet Vladika is not best remembered by his flock for his sternness but rather for his gentleness, his joyfulness, even for what is known as ‘foolishness for Christ’s sake’. The most popular photograph of him captures something of this aspect of his character. It was especially noticeable in his conduct with children. After services he would smile and joke with the boys who served with him, playfully knocking them on the head with his staff. Occasional the Cathedral clergy would be disconcerted to see Vladika, in the middle of a service (though never in the altar) , bend over to play with a small child! And on feast days when blessing with holy water was called for, he would sprinkle the faithful, not on top of the head as is usual, but right in the face(which once led a small girl to exclaim, ‘he squirts you’), with a noticeable glint in his eye and total unconcern at the discomfiture of some of the more dignified. Children were absolutely devoted to him despite his usual strictness with them.
Vladika was sometimes criticized for upsetting the usual order of things. He was often late for services (never on his own account, but because he had been visiting the sick or dying), and he would not allow them to begin without him; and when he celebrated the services would be quite long, as he followed few of the standard abbreviations. He would appear at various places unannounced and at unexpected times; often he would visit hospitals late at night – and always be admitted. At times his judgements would seem to clash with common sense, and his actions would seem strange; and often he would not explain them.
No man is perfect; Vladika was sometimes wrong (and he did not hesitate to admit it when he found out). But usually he was right, and the seeming strangeness of some of his actions and judgments could later be seen to fit into a different pattern of things. Vladika’s life was governed by the standards of the spiritual life, and if this upset the routine order of things it was in order to jolt people out of their spiritual inertia and remind them that there is a higher judgement than the world’s.
A remarkable incident from Vladika’s years in San Francisco (1963) illustrates several aspects of his holiness: his spiritual boldness based on absolute faith; his ability to see the future and to overcome by his spiritual sight the bounds of space; and the power of his prayer, which beyond all doubt worked miracles. The incident is related by the woman who witnessed it, Mrs L. Liu; the exact words of Vladika were confirmed by the Mr T. who is mentioned.
In San Francisco my husband was involved in an automobile accident and was seriously injured; he lost control of balance and suffered terribly. At this time Vladika had many troubles. Knowing the power of Vladika’s prayers, I thought: if I ask Vladika to come to my husband, my husband would recover; but I was afraid to do this, because Vladika was so busy then. Two days passed, and suddenly Vladika came to us, accompanied by Mr B. T., who had driven him. Vladika stayed with us about five minutes, but believed that my husband would recover. The state of his health was at its most serious point then, and after Vladika’s visit there was a sharp crisis and then he began to recover and lived four more years after this. He was quite aged. Afterwards I met Mr T at a Church meeting and he told me that he had been driving Vladika to the airport. Suddenly Vladika had said to him: ‘Let’s go to the Lius’. He had objected that they would be late for the plane and that he could not turn around at that moment. Then Vladika had said: ‘Can you take the life of a man upon yourself?’ He could do nothing but drive Vladika to us. Vladika, as it turned out, was not late for the plane, because they had held it up for him.
With the announcement by Metropolitan Anastassy in 1964 of his retirement, Archbishop John became a leading candidate to succeed him as Metropolitan and Chief Hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad. On the second ballot he was one of the two candidates, with the difference of a single vote between them. To resolve thee equal division of the bishops, that night Vladika asked the youngest of the hierarchs, Bishop Philaret, to his quarters, and there he persuaded this unexpected candidate to accept the awesome responsibility of this office. The next day he withdrew his own candidacy and recommended the election of Bishop Philaret, whom the bishops elected unanimously, seeing in this sudden turn of events the grace of the Holy Spirit.
To such eminence among the hierarchs of the Russian Church was Vladika raised before the end of his earthly life. It was an eminence based not on any external qualities, for Vladika was frail, bent, without ambition or guile, unable even to speak clearly. It was an eminence based solely on those inner, spiritual qualities which made him unquestionably one of the great Orthodox hierarchs of this century, and a holy man. In him righteousness shone.
V
Repose
Among those who knew and loved Vladika, the first response to the news of his sudden death was: it cannot be! And this was more than a reaction to the suddenness of the event; for among those who were close to him there had unaccountably developed the notion that this pillar of the Church, this holy man who was always accessible to his flock, would never cease to be! There would never be a time when one would not be able to turn to him for advice and consolation! In one sense, in a spiritual sense, this has since turned out to be true. But it is also one of the realities of this world that every man who lives must die.
Vladika was prepared for this reality. While others expected of him many more years of fruitful service to the Church of Christ – for he was a relatively young hierarch – he was readying himself for an end which he had foreseen at least for some months, and the very day of which he apparently knew in advance.
To the manager of the orphanage where he lived, who had spoken in the spring of 1966 of a diocesan meeting to be held three years later, he indicated, ‘I will not be here then’. In May 1966, a woman who had known Vladika for twelve years – and whose testimony according to Metropolitan Philaret, is ‘worthy of complete confidence’ – was amazed to hear him say, ‘I will die soon, at the end of June… not in San Francisco, but in Seattle…’ Metropolitan Philaret himself testifies of Vladika’s extraordinary final farewell to him when returning to San Francisco from the last session of the Synod which he attended in New York. After the Metropolitan had served the customary moleben before travelling, Vladika, instead of sprinkling his own head with holy water, as is always done by hierarchs, bent low and asked the Metropolitan to sprinkle him; and after this, instead of the usual mutual kissing of hands, Vladika firmly took the Metropolitan’s hand and kissed it, withdrawing his own.
Again, on the evening before his departure for Seattle, four days before his death, Vladika astonished a man for whom he had just served a moleben with the words, ‘you will not kiss my hand again’. And on the day of his death, at the conclusion of the Divine Liturgy which he celebrated, he spent three hours in the altar praying, emerging not long before his death, which occurred at 3:50 pm. on 2nd July 1066. He died in his room in the parish building next to the church, without preparatory signs of illness or affliction. He was heard to fall and having been placed in a chair by those who ran to help him, breathed his last peacefully and with little evident pain, in the presence of the miracle working Kursk Ikon of the Mother of God. Thus was Vladika found worthy to imitate the blessed death of his patron, St John of Tobolsk.
Today [1966] Archbishop John reposes in a chapel in the basement of the San Francisco cathedral; and there a new chapter has begun in the story of this holy man. Just as St Seraphim of Sarov told his spiritual children to regard him as living after his death, and to come to his grave and tell him what was in their hearts, , so our Vladika also has proved to be hearing those who revere his memory. Soon after his death, a one-time student of his, Fr Amvrossy P., saw one night a dream (or a vision, he could not tell which): Vladika, clad in Easter vestments, full of of light and shining, was censing the cathedral and joyfully uttered to him just one word while blessing him: ‘happy’.
Later, before the end of the forty-day period, Fr Constantine Z., long Vladika’s deacon and now a priest, who had lately been angry at Vladika and had begun to doubt his righteousness, saw Vladika in a dream all light, with rays of light shining around his head so brightly, that it was impossible to look at them. Thus were Fr Constantine’s doubts of Vladika’s holiness dispelled.
Many others have seen Archbishop John in unusual dreams that have a particular significance or message. Some affirm that supernatural help has been granted them. The modest grave chapel [1966], soon to be adorned with icons by Pimen Sofronov in remembrance of Vladika, is the witness already of how many tears, confessions, heartfelt requests…
The manager of the St Tikhon Zadonsky Home and long devoted servant of Vladika, M.A. Shakmatova, saw a remarkable dream. A crowd of people carried Vladika in a coffin into St Tikhon’s Church; Vladika came to life and stood in the royal doors anointing the people and saying to her, ‘Tell the people: although I have died, I am alive!’
It is yet too early to be able even to grasp the fact that we, cold and sinful, living in this evil age, have been witness of such a glorious phenomenon – the life and death of a saint! It is as if the times of Holy Russia have returned to earth, as if to prove the fact that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever (Heb. 13:8). Amen.
Eugene Rose 1966
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Orthodox Alaska
The melding of Orthodoxy and Alaska Native culture
By Yereth Rosen
Deep in the old-growth forest of Alaska’s Spruce Island, 8-year-old Julian Griggs made the Sign of the Cross before dipping his plastic bottle into the cold spring water. “Umm,” he said after a sip. “That tastes sweet.”
Up the trail, Julian’s parents joined other adults for a three-hour liturgy near the Orthodox church that enshrines the tomb of St. Herman of Alaska. But here in the forest, beside a small wooden shelter of candles and icons, the children were partaking in another Orthodox tradition.
The spring water that Julian was drinking is considered holy. According to local tradition, the spring was discovered by the monk Herman, a starets (or spiritual father in Russian), who came to Alaska from Russia in 1794. Until his discovery of the spring, the island was thought to be without fresh water. Pilgrims credit the spring water with healing a number of medical and spiritual ills.
“It’s really good, even if it’s a little brown,” said Xenia Hoffman, 12. The spring, and all that surrounds it, drew her family to Alaska. They moved here from California last year “because of St. Herman,” she said. “We wanted to be closer to him.”
Each summer, the Orthodox Church in America’s Diocese of Alaska organizes a pilgrimage to Spruce Island, an hour’s boat ride from the fishing town of Kodiak. Most come from the Alaska Native villages in the Kodiak region, but some come from as far away as Eastern Europe.
St. Herman was not the first Russian to come to Alaska. Legend holds that Russian settlers first established a colony in 1648. And in the early 18th century, Russian explorers and merchants sailed to Alaska by way of a strait (later named for one such explorer, Vitus Bering, who was in fact a Dane in the employ of Peter the Great) separating Asia from North America. They returned with sea otter pelts, which proved very valuable.
Officially, Gregory Shelikhov founded the first Russian-American colony in 1784. Riches, not religion, were in mind; Russian America was a collection of hunting and trading posts.
While there were isolated attempts to Christianize the Alaska Natives, it was not until 1794 that the Russian Orthodox Church, upon Shelikhov’s request, established its first mission. Traveling from their island monastery of Valaam, near Russia’s border with Sweden, Father Herman and other monks reached Kodiak Island on 24 September.
By then, many Alaska Natives were living as slaves, forced to hunt for furs. The Russian traders had broken up families and resettled communities. When Alaska Natives resisted, Russians retaliated by killing many and destroying the hunting gear vital for their survival. Violence and disease claimed 80 percent of the native population of Alaska during the first 40 years of Russian contact.
Into this climate arrived Father Herman and his companions, who did their best to protect the Alaska Natives from mistreatment at the hands of Russian traders. “They are exploiting in every possible way. One must testify about their barbarous treatment of the [Alaska Natives],” Archimandrite Joseph Bolotov, the head of the Kodiak mission, wrote Shelikhov a year after the group’s arrival in Alaska.
Harsh conditions whittled away the original mission band to Father Herman, who eventually set up a hermitage on Spruce Island. There, safe from the harassment of Russian traders, he lived a life of prayer and service to the native community. Father Herman died on 13 December 1837, his tomb and memory revered by the Alaska Natives of the area.
Over the years, greater efforts were made to strengthen the presence of the Russian Orthodox Church in Alaska. Though Alaska’s first bishop, Joseph Bolotov, drowned in a shipwreck in 1799, missionaries continued to pastor the native community. Father John Veniaminov arrived with his wife and family in 1824, settling on the Aleutian island of Unalaska. His travels throughout Alaska, usually by boat, furthered his familiarity with native dialects. Using Cyrillic letters, he constructed an alphabet for the most common dialect, Unagan, and eventually translated biblical and liturgical texts.
While in Russia reporting on the Alaskan missions, Father John learned of his wife’s death. He took monastic vows, taking the name Innocent, and was later consecrated bishop, returning to Alaska and his people. In addition to his studies of Alaska’s native peoples, Bishop Innocent and his colleagues lobbied for the extension of Russian citizenship to Alaska Natives, a few of whom rose high in the ranks of the Russian Navy and other branches of public service. In 1867, Bishop Innocent was elected Metropolitan of Moscow, historically the most important see in the Russian Orthodox Church. He died 12 years later and was canonized in 1977.
This golden age of the Russian Orthodox Church in Alaska ended with Russia’s sale of Alaska to the United States in 1867. Protestant missionaries, not Orthodox priests, received government support in the new territory. But even today — as the annual pilgrimage to Spruce Island attests — there remains a significant Orthodox influence, particularly among Alaska Natives. About 90 percent of the Alaskan diocese’s 30,000 to 60,000 members come from indigenous groups: the Aleuts, Alutiiqs, Athabascans, Tlingits and Yupiks.
On Spruce Island, prayers and blessings are recited in English, Church Slavonic and Yup’ik, the language of Western Alaska’s Yupiks. Some, for example, are specific to Alaska: “The Bering Sea is warmed today. The Arctic night is illuminated. Rivers, islands, tundra and forest lands, mountains, volcanoes and glaciers resound with the hymns of Alaska’s native peoples and of all Orthodox Christians throughout the world.”
The Orthodox Church has always placed a special emphasis on maintaining a harmony between church doctrine and native culture. This is evident in Eklutna, a Tanaina Athabascan Indian village on the outskirts of Anchorage. In the village cemetery, neat rows of traditional “spirit houses” rise above the gravesites. It is said the spirits of the departed reside in these tiny houses, starting 40 days after death. The houses are painted in family colors, and family members occasionally bring offerings of tea and snacks.
But traditional Russian Orthodox three-bar crosses also can be found atop the spirit houses — native and Orthodox conceptions of the afterlife are considered complimentary.
Though there is no active parish at Eklutna, a new church is used for special occasions, such as weddings, funerals and holiday services. The church is painted in red and blue, tribal colors. “If you go to Russia, you won’t find the colors that are here,” said Father Christopher Stanton, an Orthodox priest posted in nearby Wasilla, who helps the diocese manage the Eklutna facilities.
After the purchase of Alaska by the United States, the Alaska Natives’ situation did not improve, said Father Michael Oleksa, an Anchorage-based Orthodox priest and historian. U.S. officials, nearly all Protestant, were bent on “civilizing” and “Christianizing” a heathen land. Never mind the fact that to a large degree they were already literate and Christian.
Presbyterian missionary Sheldon Jackson and his colleague, S. Hall Young, were tasked with this “civilizing” mission. They were suspicious of native culture and Russian Orthodoxy, which in their view and typical of the 19th century, was a muddle of idolatry, strange rituals and linguistic gibberish. They divided the territory into regions where either the Catholic Church or various Protestant denominations would hold sway.
Bringing English to Alaska was another priority, Young wrote in his autobiography. “We should let the old tongues with their superstition and sin die — the sooner the better — and replace the languages with that of Christian civilization, and compel the natives in all our schools to talk English and English only. Thus we would soon have an intelligent people who would be qualified to be Christian citizens.”
The consequence of this approach was the loss of a rich culture. Ceremonial works of art, such as totem poles and intricately woven blankets, were burned.
Among the traditions lost was the potlatch, the ceremonial feast given to honor individuals and give gifts to the community. In 1924, Father Andrew Kashevaroff lamented its passing. “It was a social function and as such far more important than any that the white man has,” he told a local newspaper.
It was no coincidence, Father Michael said, that the largest Russian Orthodox mass baptism in Alaska occurred just after the American takeover. “Given the choice between a form of Christianity and education that denied their culture and one that affirmed it, they chose the one that affirmed it,” he said of the 1894 event in Juneau in which hundreds of Tlingits were baptized into the Orthodox faith.
In recent decades, the Orthodox Diocese of Alaska, like many churches, has been struggling to staff its parishes. In 2001, there were only 16 active priests and 10 deacons serving more than 90 churches and chapels.
With only two students in attendance, the St. Herman Theological Seminary in Kodiak, established in 1972, was on the brink of closing; the seminary had lost its accreditation from the Association of Theological Schools. There was even talk of entrusting the Alaska diocese to the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, a separate jurisdiction founded by refugees of the Bolshevik Revolution then in schism with much of the Orthodox world.
Since the 2002 appointment of Bishop Nikolai Soraich as Bishop of Sitka, Anchorage and Alaska, the Orthodox Church of Alaska has undergone a resurgence. Bishop Nikolai, who served 22 years in Las Vegas and now resides in Anchorage, quickly settled church legal disputes and put the diocese’s finances in order. He also replenished the ranks of the clergy, recruiting men from other jurisdictions of the Orthodox Church in America. There are now 39 active priests, and there are 15 students at the seminary.
“We have more priests and deacons in the diocese than ever in the history of Alaska,” Bishop Nikolai said.
Not all diocesan priests are Alaska Natives. Many are people like Father Michael, from Allentown, Pennsylvania. “When I was four, I wanted to be an Indian chief,” Father Michael said of his early enthusiasm for Native American culture.
As a priest, Father Michael was first posted in small villages in the Alaskan hinterland. He learned the native languages and, prior to his ordination, he married a woman from the village of Kwethluk. He is now a grandfather and part of an extended Yupik family. He has also served on government commissions, where he has been a strong advocate of native Alaskan causes, particularly those involving hunting and fishing rights. “Without traditional means of subsistence, Alaskan natives will die spiritually, emotionally and eventually physically,” Father Michael said.
After his many years in rural Alaska, Father Michael now pastors St. Alexis of Wilkes-Barre Orthodox Church, a storefront church in a south Anchorage strip mall. The church is known for its coziness — in contrast to the much more regal atmosphere of Anchorage’s St. Innocent Cathedral, the seat of the diocesan bishop — and also for its linguistic richness. Father Michael and the congregation use native languages as much as possible, and on holidays it is possible to hear a word of Arabic, Finnish, French, Greek and Spanish.
“Father Michael is always saying we have a liturgy like nowhere else in the world because we have such a combination of languages,” said Anastasia Dushkin, a parishioner from the Aleut village of Atka.
Bishop Nikolai has put a special emphasis on seeking out Alaska Native priests. A new recruit is Father Andrew Kashevarof, an Aleut from St. George, who was ordained last year. Before joining the seminary, he had a successful career. But his life was a mess, recalled the priest, the father of six. “There was a lot missing in my life, [even] after I walked away from drugs and alcohol. The church filled the void.”
Alcohol abuse, family disintegration and loss of culture remain troubling issues in Alaska, Bishop Nikolai said. “Many of the issues that St. Innocent wrote about 150 years ago are the same issues I’m dealing with today,” he concluded.
Back on Spruce Island, Mary Haakanson and her daughter, Phyllis, were enjoying a picnic on the beach overlooking Monk’s Lagoon. They live in the nearby Alutiiq village of Old Harbor and have been visiting the island for years. “It’s such a lovely, peaceful place, and the service didn’t seem that long,“ Phyllis said.
Holly Finnan, a visitor from Seattle, said it has been her dream to come to Spruce Island. Brought up as a Seventh-day Adventist, Ms. Finnan embraced Orthodoxy in 1990. “There’s a spirituality here that I think people on the mainland would like to emulate,” she said. “They want it, but it’s here.”
Yereth Rosen has written about Alaska for The Christian Science Monitor and Reuters.
https://cnewa.org/magazine/orthodox-alaska-33247/
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Oscar Mauricio Lopez Casillas, Mexico: "I took Dostoyevsky so seriously that I converted to Orthodoxy"
Besides being one of the most famous and popular authors in the world, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky is an Orthodox philosopher whose ideas still influence his readers and familiarize them with profound Christian concepts. To commemorate his 200th birthday celebrated in November 2021, we are publishing an interview with Oscar Mauricio Lopez Casillas, a graduate of the Faculty of Philosophy of Universidad Vasco de Quiroga in Mexico. After discovering Dostoyevsky, Oscar became a researcher of his work and converted to Orthodoxy.
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—Oscar, do people know and read Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky in your country?
—First, I’d like to thank you for giving me an opportunity to talk about Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, as he is my favorite author! It is especially important for me considering that las month celebrated his 200th birthday.
It goes without saying that people in Mexico know and read Dostoyevsky’s novels. He’s so popular that the words of one of the characters from The Pianist1 come to mind: “Nowadays everybody only wants to read Dostoyevsky.” However, even though Dostoyevsky is very popular in my country and almost all of his books can be found in bookshops or libraries, few people understand him, at least when it comes to the true motives and meanings of his work. People usually focus on his nihilism, although Dostoyevsky wrote about it only to show how its principles can be overcome by the strong faith of his positive protagonists. Unfortunately, Dostoyevsky’s A Writer’s Diary is not as well-known, so even finding a copy is no easy task. It’s too bad, for this book is crucial for understanding Dostoyevsky. It contains the author’s personal account of his work and life. Dostoyevsky’s books have also been popularized by the American literary scholar Joseph Frank2 whose works on Dostoevsky are well known in my country.
—How did you discover Dostoyevsky? Was it because you studied in the Department of Philosophy?
—Yes, I graduated from the Department of Philosophy of Universidad Vasco de Quiroga,3 but unfortunately the curriculum didn’t include Dostoyevsky or any other Russian philosophers like Kireyevsky, Solovyov or Berdyaev. Studying their works would have been very useful. The curricula of our universities does include similar authors, such as Kierkegaard, Miguel de Unamuno and Gabriel Marcel. I believe that our students would benefit from studying Dostoyevsky’s works, considering their philosophical, psychological and religious subject matter.
The Brothers Karamazov got to me more than any other book I’ve ever read.
If memory serves me right, I first heard of Dostoyevsky when I was a first-year student at the university. I was reading The Tragic Sense of Life by Miguel de Unamuno and came across a passage where he called The Brothers Karamazov the greatest Christian drama. When I went to the International Book Fair in Guadalajara the same year, I remembered these words and bought the book. After reading it, I had to agree with Miguel de Unamuno – this book got to me more than any other book I’ve ever read. It made me want to learn more about Dostoyevsky’s life, reconsider my approach to Christianity and study Christian concepts in earnest, referring to the original sources.
—What impressed you the most when you read Dostoyevsky’s dramatic biography?
—Obviously, the most impressive episode is the pardon he received from Tsar Alexander II just a few moments before his execution was supposed to take place. This was the moment of Dostoyevsky’s rebirth, both as a person and as a Christian. This process was completed in the labor camp, where experiencing hardships and reading of the Gospel made him, in the words of Apostle Paul, “put on the new man”. This period of his life, from the cancellation of the death sentence to release from prison, is the most shocking part of this biography, and I’m probably not the only one who thinks so. This experience more than anything else explains that profundity, preciseness and wisdom so characteristic of Dostoyevsky’s work.
—Which of Dostoyevsky’s works is the most meaningful for you, who is your favorite character, and what is the most important quote?
The devil wants our demise while God wants our salvation, and we and our freedom are between them.
—My favorite quote is from The Brothers Karamazov. It was the first book by Dostoyevsky that I read, and later it became my favorite book. It goes like this: “Here, God and the devil are fighting and the battlefield is the heart of man.” If I’m not mistaken, it is Dmitry Karamazov who said it. This phrase contains a profound wisdom based on the works of the Holy Church Fathers. They remind us that we must continually fight our internal temptations so that we can overcome them and allow divine grace to descend upon us and guide us. The devil wants our demise while God wants our salvation, and we and our freedom are between them. The works of the Holy Fathers and Dostoyevsky’s books can give us the means to be victorious in this spiritual battle.
My favorite character is Alyosha Karamazov. Although, there are other characters that I like too, like elder Zosima, count Myshkin, Sonya Marmeladova and even such a clearly negative character as Nikolai Stavrogin. But it is Dostoyevsky’s Alyosha Karamazov who has the most important features that epitomize the values praised by the Gospel, such as amazing humility and modesty as well as the ability to love and not to judge even the lowliest of people. In my opinion, this character has all the qualities that with God’s help could overcome evil.
In terms of understanding the spiritual content of Dostoyevsky’s works, I am partial to the interpretations by Mikhail Dunayev.4
—Dostoyevsky is one of the main philosopher writers of the world. Which of the philosophical issues he wrote about do you find the most important?
There is no doubt that Dostoyevsky’s works are philosophical. Although he didn’t write philosophical treatises, his characters communicated important philosophical ideas. Dostoyevsky’s books may be classified as a special literary genre of “philosophical literature”. He put his ideas in literary form without sacrificing the philosophical profundity. I should say that the succinct dialogues of Dostoyevsky’s characters are more meaningful than the lengthy writings of some philosophers.
Dostoyevsky’s works covered many philosophical problems, including the existence of God, the existence of evil, relationship between an individual and a society as well as other issues. But I would like to emphasize the most important one—freedom. Recently, I read in George Florovsky’s Theology and Literature that Dostoyevsky had been considering the problem of freedom and its paradoxes all his life. Throughout the history of philosophical thought, the problem of freedom had been considered from various points of view. Following the Christian concept, Dostoyevsky posits that every individual is free because each individual was created in the image and likeness of God. This resolves the paradoxes described by his contemporary materialists and socialists who stated that social evil may be explained by disorder in the society, that a criminal is a victim of this disorder and that a crime is a justified and natural protest against an unjust society. Dostoyevsky had a different, Christian opinion of freedom and harshly criticized such a justification of evil in the world.
—Is the Christian component of Dostoyevsky’s works relevant today? How did it influence you personally?
—It is a complicated issue that requires a lengthy answer, but I’ll try to be brief.
Naturally, faith always comes from God. But in my case, I can say that God used Dostoyevsky to get to me, a stubborn and rebellious youth as I was at the time. All the obstacles that seemed to separate me from faith were torn down by the original true Christianity described by this Russian author. It was Dostoyevsky who helped my quick transition from uncertainty to firm belief that the truth is in Christianity, and from that moment on my life became different and meaningful. Since Dostoyevsky was Orthodox, and I never really related to my Roman Catholic background and never considered turning to Protestantism, I decided to give Orthodoxy a chance and started reading up on it. Divine grace guided me to the true Orthodox Church, and Dostoyevsky and his books were my bridge to Orthodox Christianity. I frequently tell my friends that I took Dostoyevsky’s works so seriously that I became an Orthodox Christian. Although I converted with God’s help, I must admit that Dostoyevsky played an important role in my conversion.
I want to tell all people who are interested in Dostoyevsky’s personality and books that they must make an effort and learn about Orthodoxy, because without this knowledge they won’t be able to understand the profundity of his literary legacy. Recently, at the presentation of his new book, Dostoyevsky’s Gospel, Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev) said that the ideas of Orthodoxy were clearly reflected in Dostoyevsky’s books and that his global popularity is facilitating the expansion of Orthodoxy. I personally believe that such missionary work is crucial, so I’m trying to do something like this for Latin America where people know Dostoyevsky well but know very little about Orthodox Christianity.
Elena Maler
spoke with Oscar Mauricio Lopez Casillas
Translation from the Russian version by Talyb Samedov
Pravoslavie.ru
12/6/2021
Notes:
1 The Pianist (2002)—a film by Polish director Roman Polanski.
2 Joseph Frank—American literary scholar, Russian scholar, and Western biographer of Feodor M. Dostoevsky; author of five monographs, which were translated into Spanish and Portuguese.
3 Universidad Vasco de Quiroga—a Catholic institution of higher education, one of the top five universities in Mexico, located in Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico.
4 Mikhail Mikhailovich Dunayev, literary scholar, professor of the Moscow Theological Academy, author of six volumes of Orthodoxy and Russian Literature.
https://orthochristian.com/143259.html
FJTO
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Saint John Kochurov of Chicago, Illinois, USA, hieromartyr in Russia (+1917)
October 31 / November 13
Saint John Alexandrovich Kochurov, hieromartyr of the Soviet revolution, was one of a number of young educated priests who came to the United States in the late 1890s as missionaries among the émigrés from Carpathian Ruthenia and Galicia. He was active in establishing parishes and aiding communities, mainly in the Midwest. After returning to Russia he was assigned to Estonia where he put into action the teaching skills he learned in America before he was assigned in 1916 to Tsarskoe Selo. Here he was killed during the early days of the Bolshevik revolution. His feast day is celebrated on October 31. He is also commemorated on the Synaxis of the first martyrs of the American lands on December 12 and on the feast of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, celebrated on the Sunday nearest to January 25, which was the date of the martyrdom of Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev, the first of the new martyrs.
Early years
John Kochurov was born on June 13, 1871. His father was a priest. His education included attendance at the Ryazan Theological Seminary before continuing at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy. He excelled at his studies at both the seminary and academy.
After graduating in 1895, Fr. John married and then entered his life's work when he was ordained deacon. On August 27, 1895, he was ordained a priest at the St. Alexander Nevsky Lavra in St. Petersburg by Bishop Nicholas (Ziorov) of the Diocese of the Aleutians and Alaska.
America
Having expressed the desire to be a missionary priest in the United States, Fr. John was soon transferred and became the first permanent priest at St. Vladimir's Church in Chicago. This parish was later to become the Holy Trinity Cathedral. As St. Vladimir's parish did not yet have their own building, his first major project was construction of the church building. Under the guidance of Bishop Tikhon, later Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow and saint, Fr. John enlisted the services of the noted architect Louis Sullivan to design the church. To finance the project, Fr. John sought and obtained donations from Tsar Nicholas II as well as from a few Americans, notably Harold Fowler McCormick and Charles R. Crane who was the American ambassador to China. Construction of the church began in April 1902 and was completed the next year for the consecration by Bishop Tikhon.
Fr. John devoted much effort to aiding the establishment of other parishes in the Chicago area. He performed the first service for the future Archangel Michael Orthodox Church in southwest Chicago. In the Chicago area he was active in the formation of the parishes in Madison, Streator, and Joliet (all in Illinois), as well as aiding the parishes in Buffalo, NY, and Hartshorne, OK.
His presence at the consecration of an Episcopalian (aka Anglican) bishop long predates the anathema against ecumenism of 1982 and does not fall under it.
On the social side of parish life, he, with Fr. Alexis Toth, future Saint Alexis of Wilkes-Barre, was influential in the establishment of a major Orthodox mutual aid society that provided support for the many newly arrived immigrants. He also translated religious texts into English, looking to the time when the church in America would consist of English-speaking members. Before his return to Russia, Fr. John helped to organize the first All-American Council that was held in Mayfield, Pennsylvania, in 1907.
Russia and martyrdom
Fr, John returned to Russia in 1907 where he was assigned to Narva (now Estonia). Here he put to use the skills he had learned in the United States teaching catechism in the schools.
Then in 1916, he was transferred to St. Catherine's Cathedral in Tsarskoye Selo, just outside St. Petersburg. At St. Catherine's, he established himself as a popular priest who was skilled in presenting moving sermons. Then in October 1917 the Bolshevik uprising in St. Petersburg spilled over quickly into Tsarskoye Selo as the town was attacked by Bolshevik elements. The people thronged to the churches where the clergy held prayer services and led processions throughout the town praying for peace.
On October 31, 1917 (Old Style), the Bolsheviks entered Tsarskoe Selo in force and arrested Fr. John. He was taken by the Bolsheviks out of town where he was summarily shot. By this act, Fr. John became the proto-hieromartyr of the Bolshevik revolution and the Soviet yoke. Fr. John was buried several days later in the crypt of St. Catherine's Cathedral.
On December 1994, Fr. John was glorified by the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church, in session at St. Daniel's Monastery, Moscow, Russia, as the first of the new martyrs of the 20th century. In the United States he is also honored as a missionary and inspired preacher.
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Life and Miracles of Saint John Maximovich of Shanghai and San Francisco (+1966) - One of the Greatest Saints of the 20th Century
"Sanctity is not just a virtue. It is an attainment of such spiritual heights, that the abundance of God's grace which fills the saint overflows on all who associate with him. Great is the saint's state of bliss in which they dwell contemplating the Glory of God. Being filled with love for God and man, they are responsive to man's needs, interceding before God and helping those who turn to them."
Thus describing the ancient Saints, Vladyka John simultaneously summarized his own spiritual attitude which made him one of the greatest Saints of our time.
Childhood
Michael Maximovitch, the future Archbishop John, was born on June 4, 1896, in the village of Adamovka in the province of Kharkov in southern Russia. He was a member of the Little Russian noble family of Maximovitch, to which St. John of Tobolsk also had belonged. He received at baptism the name of Michael, his heavenly protector being the Archangel Michael. He was a sickly child and ate little.
He received his secondary education in the Poltava Military School, which he attended from 1907 to 1914. Upon completing military school he entered Kharkov Imperial University in the faculty of law, from which he graduated in 1918, before it was seized by the Soviets.
Kharkov, where Vladyka spent his formative years, was a true town of Holy Russia, and the young Michael, impressionable to revelations of holiness, acquired there the pattern of his future life. There were two miraculous Icons of the Mother of God, the Oseryanskaya and Eletskaya, which were carried in a religious procession twice a year from the monasteries where they were treasured to the Dormition Cathedral. In the Protection Monastery, in a frescoed grotto underneath the altar, lay the remains of the holy Archbishop Melety Leontovitch, who after his death in 1841 rendered miraculous help to those who served a panikhida for him at his coffin. Even during his lifetime the Archbishop was venerated for his severe asceticism, especially for the ascetic feat of abstaining from sleep. He was known to spend nights on end standing motionless, with lifted arms, deep in prayer. He foreknew the day and the hour of his own death. The young Maximovitch was known to have a veneration for this holy hierarch.
Today Archbishop John may be seen to resemble the holy man of Kharkov in at least three respects: he was known not to have slept in a bed for forty years; he knew beforehand of his death; and before his glorification in 1994 his relics rested under a cathedral in a special grave-chapel where panikhidas were sung almost daily and the Psalter read over his coffin by those asking for his help. This is a unique case of the transplanting, as it were, of a part of Holy Russia to contemporary America.
While at Kharkov University, Misha Maximovitch spent more time reading the lives of the saints than attending classes; nonetheless he was an excellent student. Evidently his emulation of saints was apparent even at that age, since Archbishop Anthony of Kharkov, one of the great Church figures of that time (later Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky, the first Chief Hierarch and founder of the Russian Church Abroad) took special pains to become acquainted with him, and then kept the youth close to him and guided his spiritual formation.
Belgrade
In 1921, during the Civil War in Russia, the future archbishop, together with his parents, his brothers, and his sister, was evacuated to Belgrade, where he and his brothers entered the University of Belgrade. One brother graduated in the technical faculty and became an engineer, the other graduated in law and served in the Yugoslav police. Michael himself graduated in 1925 in the faculty of theology. While he was a student he worked for his living by selling newspapers.
In 1924, Michael was ordained reader in the Russian church in Belgrade by Metropolitan Anthony, who continued to exert great influence over him; and Michael in his turn showed the utmost respect and devotion to his superior. In 1926 Metropolitan Anthony tonsured him a monk and ordained him hierodeacon in the Milkov Monastery, giving him the name John, after the future archbishop's own distant relative, Saint John (Maximovitch) of Tobolsk. On November 21 of the same year Fr. John was ordained hieromonk.
The city of Bitol was in the diocese of Okhrida. At that time the ruling bishop of this diocese was Nicholas Velimirovich—a noted preacher, poet, writer, and inspirer of the popular religious movement. He, as much as Metropolitan Anthony, valued and loved the young Hieromonk John, and himself exerted a beneficial influence upon him. More than once he was heard to say, "If you wish to see a living saint, go to Bitol to Father John."
For, indeed, it began to become evident that this was an entirely extraordinary man. His own students were first to discover what was perhaps Fr. John's greatest feat of asceticism. They noticed at first that he stayed up long after everyone else had gone to bed; he would go through the dormitories at night and pick up blankets that had fallen down and cover the unsuspecting sleepers, making the Sign of the Cross over them. Finally it was discovered that he scarcely slept at all, and never in a bed, allowing himself only an hour or two each night of uncomfortable rest in a sitting position, or bent over on the floor praying before icons. Years afterward he himself admitted that since taking the monastic vows he had not slept lying in a bed. Such an ascetic practice is a very rare one; and yet it is not unknown to Orthodox tradition.
Archbishop Averky of the Jordanville Holy Trinity monastery, then a young hieromonk in Carpatho-Russia, witnessed the deep impression Hieromonk John made upon the seminary students. When they returned home on vacations they would speak of their extraordinary instructor who prayed constantly, served the Divine Liturgy or at least received Holy Communion every day, fasted strictly, never slept lying down, and with true fatherly love inspired them with the high ideals of Christianity and of Holy Russia.
In 1934 it was decided to raise Hieromonk John to the rank of bishop, althought nothing was farther from his mind. A lady who knew him relates how she met him at this time on a streetcar in Belgrade. He told her that he was in town by mistake, having been sent for in place of some other Hieromonk John who was to be consecrated bishop! When she saw him the next day he informed her that the situation was worse than he had thought: it was him they wished to make bishop! When he protested that this was out of the question, since he had a speech defect and could not enunciate clearly, he was only told that the Prophet Moses had the same difficulty.
The consecration occurred on May 28, 1934. Vladyka was the last bishop of the very many to be consecrated by Metropolitan Anthony, and the extraordinarily high esteem in which that venerable hierarch held the new bishop is indicated in a letter which he sent to Archbishop Dimitry in the Far East. Himself declining an invitation to retire to China, he wrote: "Dear friend! I am very old and unable to travel … But in place of myself, as my soul, as my heart, I am sending you Bishop John. This little, frail man, looking almost like a child, is in actuality a miracle of ascetic firmness and strictness in our time of total spiritual enfeeblement." Vladyka was assigned to the Diocese of Shanghai, China.
Vladyka arrived in Shanghai in late November, on the Feast of the Entrance of the Mother of God into the Temple, and found a large cathedral uncompleted and a jurisdictional conflict to resolve. The first thing he did was to restore Church unity. He established contact with Serbs, Greeks, Ukrainians. He paid special attention to religious education and made it a rule to be present at the oral examinations of the catechism classes in all the Orthodox schools in Shanghai. He at once became a protector of various charitable and philanthropic societies and actively participated in their work, especially after seeing the needy circumstances in which the majority of his flock, refugees from the Soviet Union, were placed. He never went visiting for tea to the rich, but he was to be seen wherever there was need, regardless of times and weather. He organized a home for orphans and the children of needy parents, entrusting it to the heavenly protection of a Saint he highly venerated, St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, who loved children. Vladyka himself gathered sick and starving children off the streets and dark alleys of Shanghai's slums. Beginning with eight children, the orphanage later housed up to a hundred children at one time, and some 1500 in all. When the Communists came, Vladyka evacuated the whole orphanage, first to an island in the Philippines, and then to America.
It soon became apparent to his new flock that Vladyka was a great ascetic. The core of his asceticism was prayer and fasting. He ate once a day at 11 p.m. During the first and last weeks of Lent he did not eat at all, and for the rest of this and the Christmas fast he ate only bread from the altar. His nights he spent usually in prayer, and when he finally became exhausted he would put his head on the floor and steal a few hours of sleep near dawn. When the time would come to serve Matins, someone would knock on the door, to no avail; they would open the door and find Vladyka huddled on the floor in the icon-corner, overcome by sleep. At a tap on the shoulder he would jump up, and in a few minutes he would be in church for services — cold water streaming down his beard, but quite awake.
Vladyka officiated in the cathedral every morning and evening, even when sick. He celebrated the Divine Liturgy daily, as he was to do for the rest of his life, and if for some reason he could not serve, he would still receive Holy Communion. No matter where he was, he would not miss a service. Once, according to a witness, "Vladyka's leg was terribly swollen and the concilium of doctors, fearing gangrene, prescribed immediate hospitalization, which Vladyka categorically refused. Then the Russian doctors informed the Parish Council that they released themselves of any responsibility for the health and even the life of the patient. The members of the Parish Council, after long pleas for mercy and threats of taking him by force, compelled Vladyka to agree, and he was sent to the Russian Hospital in the morning of the day before the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. By six o'clock, however, Vladyka came limping to the cathedral on foot and served. In a day all the swelling was gone."
Vladyka's constant attention to self-mortification had its root in the fear of God, which he possessed in the tradition of the ancient Church and of Holy Russia. The following incident, told by 0. Skopichenko and confirmed by many from Shanghai, well illustrates his daring, unshakable faith in Christ. "Mrs. Menshikova was bitten by a mad dog. The injections against rabies she either refused to take or took carelessly… And then she came down with this terrible disease. Bishop John found out about it and came to the dying woman. He gave her Holy Communion, but just then she began having one of the fits of this disease; she began to foam at the mouth, and at the same time she spit out the Holy Gifts which she had just received. The Holy Sacrament cannot be thrown out. So, Vladyka picked up and put in his mouth the Holy Gifts vomited by the sick woman. Those who were with him exclaimed: `Vladyka, what are you doing! Rabies is terribly contagious!' But Vladyka peacefully answered: `Nothing will happen; these are the Holy Gifts.' And indeed nothing did happen."
By now it had become known that Vladyka was not only a righteous man and an ascetic, but was also so close to God that he was endowed with the gift of clairvoyance, and there were healings by his prayers. A striking account told by an eyewitness, Lidia Liu, testifies to Vladyka's spiritual height. "Vladyka came to Hong Kong twice. It's strange, but I, not knowing Vladyka then, wrote him a letter asking him to help a widow with children, and I also asked him about some personal spiritual matter, but I never received an answer. A year passed. Vladyka came to Hong Kong and I was in a crowd that went to meet him in church. Vladyka turned to me and said, `It is you who wrote me the letter!' I was astonished, since Vladyka had never seen me before."
"A moleben was sung, after which Vladyka, standing before a lectern, was delivering a sermon. I was standing next to my mother, and we both saw a light surrounding Vladyka down to the lectern — a radiance around him a foot wide. This lasted a rather long time. When the sermon was over, I, struck by such an unusual phenomenon, told what we had seen to our friend, who replied to us: `Yes, many faithful saw it.' My husband, who was standing a little way off, also saw this light."
A similar event occured in 1939, when a certain parishioner began to lose her faith due to many tribulations which had befallen her. Once, upon entering the Church during Vladyka's service, she witnessed during the transubstantiation of the Holy Sacraments a little flame in the form of a large tulip descended into the Chalice. After this miracle her faith returned, and she began repenting of her faint-heartedness.
Vladyka visited prisons and celebrated the Divine Liturgy for the convicts. On one occasion in Shanghai, Vladyka John was asked to give communion to a dying man in a Russian hospital. This time he took another priest with him. On his arrival he spotted a gregarious young man in his twenties, playing a harmonica. This lad was to be discharged the next day. Vladyka John called to him and said: "I want to give you communion right now." The young man immediately confessed his sins and received communion. The astonished priest asked Vladyka why he did not go to the one dying, but tarried instead with an obviously healthy young man. Vladyka answered: "He will die tonight, and the other, who is seriously ill, will live many years." It happened just as he foretold.
Vladyka loved to visit the sick and did it every single day, hearing confessions and giving Holy Communion. If the condition of a patient should become critical, Vladyka would go to him at any hour of the day or night to pray at his bedside. Here is one undoubted miracle among the many worked by Vladyka's prayers; it was recorded and placed in the archives of the County Hospital in Shanghai.
L. D. Sadkovskaya was very much taken by the sport of horse racing. Once she was thrown off her horse; she hit her head on a rock and lost consciousness. She was brought to the hospital unconscious. A concilium of doctors agreed that her condition was hopeless and it was not likely that she would live until morning. The pulse was almost gone; the skull was fractured in places so that small pieces of the skull were pressing on the brain. In such a condition she would die on the operating table. Even if her heart would tolerate surgery and the result were successful, she would still remain deaf, dumb, and blind.
Her sister, after hearing all this, rushed to Bishop John in despair and begged him to save her sister. Vladyka agreed. He came to the hospital and asked everyone to leave the room and prayed there for about two hours. Then he called the chief doctor and asked him to examine her again. How surprised the doctor was to discover that her pulse was normal! He agreed to perform the operation immediately, but only in the presence of Bishop John. The operation was successful, and the doctors were amazed when, after the operation, the patient regained consciousness and asked to drink. Soon she was released from the hospital and lived for many years a normal life.
Vladyka visited the prison also, and celebrated the Divine Liturgy for the convicts on a primitive little table. But the most difficult task for a pastor is to visit the mentally ill and the possessed—and Vladyka sharply distinguished between the two. Outside Shanghai there was a mental hospital, and Vladyka alone had the spiritual power to visit these terribly sick people. He gave them Holy Communion, and they, surprisingly, received it peacefully and listened to him. They always looked forward to his visits and met him with joy.
Vladyka possessed great courage. During the Japanese occupation the Japanese authorities tried in every way possible to bend the Russian colony to their will. Pressure was directed through the heads of the Russian Emigrant Committee. Two presidents of this Committee strove to maintain its independence, and as a result both were killed. Confusion and terror seized the Russian colony, and at that moment Vladyka John, in spite of warnings from the Russians who were collaborating with the Japanese, declared himself the temporary head of the Russian colony.
During the Japanese occupation it was extremely dangerous to walk on the streets at night, and most people took care to be home by dark. Vladyka, however, paying no heed to the danger, continued to visit the sick and needy at any hour of the night, and he was never touched.
In Shanghai, a voice teacher, Anna Petrovna Lushnikova, taught Vladyka the proper method of breathing and pronunciation of words, thus helping him to better his diction. At the end of each lesson Vladyka paid her 20 dollars. In 1945, during the war, she was gravely wounded and happened to be in a French hospital. On a very stormy night, feeling that she might die, Anna Petrovna began asking the nurses to call Vladyka John, who was in France, so that he would give her Communion. The nurses refused since the hospital was locked up during the night due to war-time conditions. Anna Petrovna was beside herself and kept calling upon Vladyka. Suddenly, around eleven o'clock in the evening, Vladyka appeared in the ward. Unable to believe her eyes, Anna Petrovna asked Vladyka, weather this was a dream or did he really come to her. Vladyka smiled, prayed and administered communion to her. Following this she calmed down and slept. The next morning she felt cured. No one believed Anna Petrovna that Vladyka visited her that night since the hospital was tightly secured. However, her ward neighbor substantiated the fact that she also saw Vladyka. The greatest surprise was that under Anna Petrovna's pillow was found a 20 dollar bill. Thus Vladyka left a material evidence of his visit.
A former Shanghai altar boy of Vladyka's and presently Archpriest George Larin, relates: "Notwithstanding Vladyka's strictness, all the altar boys loved him very much. To me, Vladyka was an ideal whom I wished to emulate in every way. Thus, during Lent, I stopped sleeping in bed and lay on the floor, I stopped eating the usual meals with the family, but partook of bread and water in solitude … My parents became worried and took me to Vladyka. Hearing them out, the prelate asked the guard to go to the store and bring a sausage. To my tearful outcries that I did not wish to break Lent, the wise prelate admonished me to eat the sausage and to remember always that obedience to parents is more important than personal accomplishments. "How then shall I go on Vladyka?'—I asked wishing nevertheless to 'especially' apply myself. 'Go to Church as you always did, and at home do what your mother and father ask.' I remember how grieved I was then that Vladyka did not assign to me some 'special’ deeds."
With the coming of the Communists, the Russians in China were forced once again to flee, most of them through the Philippine Islands. In 1949 approximately 5,000 refugees from the Chinese mainland were living in an International Refugee Organization camp on the island of Tubabao in the Philippines. This island is located in the path of the seasonal typhoons which sweep through that part of the Pacific. During the 27-month period of the camp' s occupancy, the island was threatened only once by a typhoon, and it changed course and bypassed the island.
When the fear of typhoons was mentioned by one Russian to the Filipinos, they replied that there was no reason to worry, because "your holy man blesses your camp from four directions every night." They referred to Vladyka John; for no typhoon struck the island while he was there. After the camp had been almost totally evacuated and the people resettled elsewhere (mainly in the USA and Australia), it was struck by a terrible typhoon that totally destroyed the camp.
Paris
Vladyka himself went to Washington, D. C., to get his people to America. Legislation was changed and almost the whole camp came to the New World—thanks again to Vladyka. The exodus of his flock from China accomplished, Archbishop John was given in 1951 a new field for his pastoral endeavor: he was sent by the Synod of Bishops to the Archdiocese of Western Europe, with his see first in Paris, and later in Brussels. He was now one of the leading hierarchs of the Russian Church, and his attendance was frequently required at the sessions of the Synod in New York City.
In Western Europe Vladyka took a deep interest not only in the Russians in the diaspora, for whom he exerted himself tirelessly in labors similar to those for which he had been known in Shanghai, but also in the local inhabitants. He received under his jurisdiction local Dutch and French Orthodox Churches, protecting them and encouraging their Orthodox development. He celebrated the Divine Liturgy in Dutch and French, as before he had served in Greek and Chinese, and as later he was to serve in English.
Vladyka's interest in and devotion to the Church's Saints, of whom his knowledge was already seemingly limitless, was extended now to Western European Saints dating from before the schism of the Latin Church, many of whom, venerated only locally, were not included in any Orthodox calendar of Saints. He collected their lives and images of them, and later submitted a long list of them to the Synod.
From this period of Vladyka's presence in Western Europe, Mrs. E. G. Chertkova reminisces: "On several occasions I visited Vladyka when he lived in the Cadet Corps building near Paris. He had a small cell on the top floor. In the cell were a table, an armchair and several chairs and in the corner—icons and a lectern with books. There was no bed in the cell since Vladyka did not lie down to sleep, but prayed by leaning on a tall stick with a cross-bar on top. Sometimes he prayed on his knees; most likely when he prostrated himself he would then fall asleep for a little while in that position on the floor. That is how he exhausted himself! Sometimes during our conversation it seemed to me that he dozed. But when I stopped, he would immediately say: "Continue, I hear you.'"
"Since for a long time our church did not have a permanent priest, once a priest from another parish came to us to celebrate Vespers. The whole service lasted only 45 minutes (usualy it takes 2 and a half hours)! We were horrified! So many parts of Vespers were skipped that we decided to tell Vladykaabout this. We hopped that he will influence the priest to follow the established order of Orthodox services. But Vladyka, smiling pleasently, said to us: `How difficult it is to please you people. I celebrate too long, and he too short!' With such kindness and meeknes he taught us not to judge."
Vladyka's reputation for holiness, too, spread among the non-Orthodox as well as the Orthodox population. In one of the Catholic churches of Paris, a priest strove to inspire his young people with these words: "You demand proof, you say that now there are neither miracles nor saints. Why should I give you theoretical proof, when today there walks in the streets of Paris a Saint — Saint Jean Nus Pieds (Saint John the Barefoot)." Many people testify to the miracles worked by the prayers of Archbishop John in Western Europe.
V. D. recounts: "Many were aware that it was not necessary to ask Vladyka to visit someone. The Lord Himself inspired him where and to whom to go. Vladyka John was known to many in the French hospitals and was admitted therein at any time. Besides, Vladyka unerringly directed his steps to where he was needed. My brother was once taken to the hospital after receiving a head wound. The x-ray revealed a large fracture of the skull. His eyes swelled and became sanguinous; he was in critical condition. Vladyka, who did not know my brother, somehow found him in the hospital, prayed over him and gave him Communion. When my brother underwent a follow up of head x-rays, there was no fracture to be found. My brother recuperated very fast. The doctor was dumbfounded!"
In San Francisco, where the cathedral parish is the largest in the Russian Church Abroad, Vladyka's life-long friend, Archbishop Tikhon, retired due to of ill-health, and in his absence the construction of a great new cathedral came to a halt as a bitter dispute paralyzed the Russian community. In response to the urgent request of thousands of Russians in San Francisco who had known him in Shanghai, Archbishop John was sent by the Synod in 1962 as the only hierarch likely to restore peace in the divided community. He arrived at his last assignment as bishop twenty-eight years to the day after his first arrival in Shanghai—on the feast of the Entrance of the Mother of God into the Temple, November 21, 1962.
Under Vladyka's guidance a measure of peace was restored, the paralysis of the community was ended, and the cathedral finished. Yet, even in the role of peacemaker, Vladyka was attacked, and accusations and slanders were heaped upon his head. He was forced to appear in public court—in flagrant violation of church canons—to answer to preposterous charges of concealing financial dishonesty by the Parish Council. All involved were completely exonerated; but this filled Vladyka's last years with the bitterness of slander and persecution, to which he unfailingly replied without complaint, without judging anyone, with undisturbed peacefulness.
Vladyka remained true to the end to his path of faithful service to the Church. To those who knew him in his last years, perhaps two aspects of his character stood out. First was his strictness regarding the Church and the Law of God.
At the end of October, the Roman Catholic Church celebrates the feast of All Saints. There is a tradition that during the preceding night the dark spirits celebrated their own festival of disorder. In America this "celebration" called Halloween has become an occasion on which children make mischief dressed in costumes of witches, devils, ghosts, as if calling on the dark powers—a diabolic mockery of Christianity. A group of Russians organized on this night a Halloween Ball. In the San Francisco Cathedral at this time was the All-night Vigil celebrated, and a number of people were absent, to the great sorrow of Vladyka. After the service Vladyka went to the place where the ball was still in progress. He climbed the steps and entered the hall, to the absolute astonishment of the participants. The music stopped and Vladyka, in complete silence, glared at the dumbfounded people, slowly and deliberately making the round of the entire hall, staff in hand. He spoke not a word, and none was necessary; the mere sight of Vladyka stung the conscience of all, as was evident from the general consternation. Vladyka left in silence; and the next day in church he thundered his holy indignation, in his flaming zeal calling all to the devout Christian life.
Yet Vladyka is not best remembered by his flock for his sternness, but rather for his gentleness, his joyfulness, even for what is known as "foolishness for Christ's sake." The most popular photograph of him captures something of this aspect of his character. It was especially noticeable in his conduct with children. After services he would smile and joke with the boys who served with him, playfully knocking the mischievous ones on the head with his staff. Occasionally the Cathedral clergy would be disconcerted to see Vladyka, in the middle of a service (though never in the altar), bend over to play with a small child! And on feast days when blessing with holy water was performed, he would sprinkle the faithful—not on the top of the head as is usual, but right in the face (which once led a small girl to exclaim, "He squirts you"), with a noticeable glint in his eye and total unconcern at the discomfiture of some of the more dignified. Children were absolutely devoted to him, despite his usual strictness with them.
Anna Hodyriva recounts: "My sister Xenia Yarovoy, who lived in Los Angeles, suffered for a long time with a painful hand. She sought physicians, tried home remedies, yet nothing helped. She finally decided to turn to Vladyka John and wrote to him in San Francisco. Some time went by and the hand was healed. Xenia began to forget about the previous pain in her hand. On one occasion, when she visited San Francisco, she went to the Cathedral for services. At the end of the service Vladyka John held the cross to be kissed. On seeing my sister he asked: `How is your hand?' Vladyka saw my sister for the first time! How then did he recognize her and know that it was she who had a painful hand?"
Anna S. recollects: "My sister Musia and I got into an accident. A drunken young man was driving towards us. He struck the door with great force on the side where my sister was sitting. The ambulance was called and she was taken to the hospital. Her condition was very serious—a lung was punctured and a rib broken, which caused her great pain. Her eyes were invisible in her swollen face. When Vladyka visited her, she lifted her eyelid with her finger and upon seeing him took his hand and kissed it. She could not speak since she had a tracheotomy, but tears of joy flowed from her eyes. After that Vladyka visited her several times and she began to get better. Once Vladyka entered the ward and announced, `Musia is feeling very poorly now.' He then went to her and, closing the drape around her bed, he prayed for a long time. During his prayer we were approached by two physicians and I asked them how serious was my sister's condition, and if I should summon her daughter from Canada? (We had not informed the daughter yet of her mother's accident.) The physicians answered: `To call or not to call the family is your problem—we cannot guarantee that she will survive until the morning.' Thank God that she not only survived that night, but was completely cured and returned to Canada. My family and I believe that Musia was saved by the prayers of Vladyka John."
Vladyka's life was governed by the standards of the spiritual life, and if this upset the routine order of things it was in order to jolt people out of their spiritual inertia and remind them that there is a higher judgment than the world's. A remarkable incident from Vladyka's years in San Francisco (1963) illustrates several aspects of his holiness: his spiritual boldness based on absolute faith; his ability to see the future and to overcome by his spiritual sight the bounds of space; and the power of his prayer, which beyond all doubt worked miracles. This incident is related by the woman who witnessed it, Mrs. L. Liu; the exact words of Vladyka were confirmed by the Mr. T. who is mentioned.
"In San Francisco my husband was involved in an automobile accident and was seriously injured; he his balance and suffered terribly. At this time Vladyka had many troubles. Knowing the power of Vladyka's prayers, I thought: "If I ask Vladyka to come to my husband, he will recover;" But I was afraid to do this because Vladyka was so busy then. Two days passed, and suddenly Vladyka came to us, accompanied by Mr. B. T., who had driven him. Vladyka stayed with us about five minutes, but I believed that my husband would recover. The state of his health was at its most serious point then, but after Vladyka's visit there was a sharp crisis, and then he began to recover, living four more years after this. He was quite aged. Afterwards I met Mr. T. at a Church meeting and he told me that he had been driving Vladyka to the airport. Suddenly Vladyka had said to him: "Let's go now to the Liu's." He objected that they would be late for the plane and that he could not turn around at that moment. Then Vladyka had said: "Can you take the life of a man upon yourself?" He could do nothing but drive Vladyka to us. Vladyka, as it turned out, was not late for the plane."
The Death of a Saint
Among those who knew and loved Vladyka, the first response to the news of his sudden death was: it cannot be! And this was more than a reaction to the suddenness of the event; for among those who were close to him there had unaccountably developed the notion that this pillar of the Church, this holy man who was always accessible to his flock, would never cease to be! There would never be a time when one would not be able to turn to him for advice and consolation! In one sense, in a spiritual sense, this has since turned out to be true. But it is also one of the realities of this world that every man who lives must die. Vladyka was prepared for this reality.
To the manager of the orphanage where he lived, who had spoken in the spring of 1966 of a diocesan meeting to be held three years later, he indicated, "I will not be here then." In May, 1966, a woman who had known Vladyka for twelve years and whose testimony, according to Metropolitan Philaret, is "worthy of complete confidence" was amazed to hear him say, "I will die soon, at the end of June—not in San Francisco, but in Seattle."
Again, on the evening before his departure for Seattle, four days before his death, Vladyka astonished a man for whom he had just served a moleben with the words, "You will not kiss my hand again." And on the day of his death, at the conclusion of the Divine Liturgy which he celebrated, he spent three hours in the altar praying, emerging not long before his death, which occurred on July 2, 1966. He died in his room in the parish building next to the church. He was heard to fall and, having been placed in a chair by those who ran to help him, breathed his last peacefully and with little evident pain, in the presence of the miracle-working Kursk Icon of the Sign.
Before the of canonization of Archbishop John his relics reposed in a chapel in the basement of the San Francisco cathedral (after the canonization in July of 1994 the relics of Archbishop John were moved to the main floor of the cathedral). Soon after his repose, a new chapter began in the story of this holy man. Just as St. Seraphim of Sarov told his spiritual children to regard him as living after his death, and to come to his grave and tell him what was in their hearts, so our Vladyka also has proved to be hearing those who revere his memory. Soon after his death a one-time student of his, Fr. Amvrosy P., saw one night a dream or a vision: Vladyka, clad in Easter vestments, full of light and shining, was censing the cathedral. He joyfully uttered to him just one word while blessing him: "happy."
Later, before the end of the forty-day period, Fr. Constantine Z., long Vladyka' s deacon and now a priest, who had lately been angry at Vladyka and had begun to doubt his righteousness, saw Vladyka in a dream all in light, with rays of light shining around his head so brightly that it was impossible to look at them. Thus were Fr. Constantine's doubts of Vladyka's holiness dispelled.
The manager of the St. Tikhon of Zadonsk Home and long a devoted servant of Vladyka, M. A. Shakmatova, saw a remarkable dream. A crowd of people carried Vladyka in a coffin into St. Tikhon's Church; Vladyka came to life and stood in the royal doors anointing the people and saying to her, "Tell the people: although I have died, I am alive!"
As during his life time, Vladyka continues to be very active in helping those who need him. Here are just two of the thousands of cases of Vladyka's miracles. Victor Boyton, who witnessed the healing of his friend by Vladyka John, recounts: "The miracle occurred after I had received the copyright to the English publication of Orthodox Life from Jordanville, N.Y., which included photos of Vladyka John. I had a friend, a Moslem from Russia, who was suffering from leukemia and was losing his sight. The doctors concurred that in three months time he would be blind. Placing the picture of Vladyka John by my vigil light, I began to pray daily for my friend. After a short period of time my friend was healed from the leukemia and began to see normally. The eye doctors were amazed at this occurrence. From then on, my friend has lead a normal life and reads without impediment."
The archpriest Stephan Pavlenko recollects: "My brother Paul, although not in the military, lived for some years in Vietnam. There he sought children who were wounded or orphaned due to the then continuing war. He placed them either in orphanages or hospitals. Thus he became close with his future wife, a certain Vietnamese Kim En who was also involved with helping the unfortunate children. My brother introduced Kim to the Christian faith and to the lives of many of God's Saints. She told my brother that during her very difficult times there appeared to her in her dreams a certain monk who consoled her and told her what to do. Once, towards Easter time, I sent my brother some cassettes of monastic songs as well as some books and journals of a spiritual context. Having received my parcel and having shown the spiritual literature to Kim he was surprised, when upon seeing the cover of a certain journal she exclaimed: `This is the monk who appears to me in my sleep!' She pointed to a well known picture of Vladyka John, taken among the graves of the New Diveevo monastery in Spring-Valley, New York. Kim was baptized in the Orthodox Church with the name Kyra."
Epilogue
Blessed Archbiship John of Shanghai and San Francisco was canonized as a Saint by the Russian Church on July 2 1994. It was a wonderfull and unforgettable event to which hundreds of clergy and many thousands of laymen came from all over the world!
The importance of St. John for the people of the twentieth century cannot be underestimated. Those who knew him personally or have read about his life and miracles have learned of the tremendous spiritual power embodied in this frail little man. God was drawn to the burning, loving heart of Vladyka John, which became a vessel of His grace. He entrusted the Saint with heavenly secrets and the ability to transcend physical laws, making him a point of contact between Himself, the Creator, and us, His creatures.
There can be no doubt that Vladyka John has been sent by God as a gift of holiness to the people of the last days. At a time when imitation has become the norm in all aspects of life, when the authentic spirit of the Christian Faith has been so hidden that most are oblivious of its very existence, he can be seen as a model of genuineness.
Vladyka John has set the right "tone" of true apostleship in the modern world. As more people are drawn into the Orthodox Church of Christ before the final unleashing of evil, may they look to him as their loving guide and a pastor who knows no death. He is a kind of "measuring stick" that indicates who and what is real in our confusing times. The unit of measure is nothing other than pure Christian love, which he possessed and distributed in abundance. With this love, the intense struggle of spiritual life becomes worth the effort.
By the prayers of Saint John may God bless and save us. Amen!
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Why I Abandoned Papism
Saint Paul Ballaster-Convolier, Bishop-Martyr in Mexico, from Spain (+1984)
Bishop Paul de Ballester-Convallier: A contemporary New Martyr of Orthodoxy (25th anniversary of his martyrdom: 1984-2009)
Last year marked the 25th anniversary of the death as a martyr of the late Bishop Paul de Ballester-Convallier (1927-1984). As a memorial to him we reprint here his article which explains why and how he was converted to Orthodoxy from Roman Catholicism.
The article below of the then Hierodeacon Fr. Paul Ballester-Convollier was published in two follow up articles by Kivotos magazine (July 1953, p. 285-291 and December 1953 p. 483- 485). Previously a Franciscan monk who had turned to Orthodoxy, Bishop Paul was made titular bishop of Nazianzus of the Holy Archdiocese of North and South America with its seat in Mexico. There he was met with a martyric death.
The news of his murder was reported on the first page of the newspaper Kathemerini (Saturday, February 4, 1984) which says:
THE GREEK ORTHODOX BISHOP PAUL WAS MURDERED IN MEXICO
As it became known from the city of Mexico, before yesterday the Bishop of Nazianzus, Paul De Ballester of the Greek Archdiocese of North and South America, died. He was murdered by a 70 year old Mexican, a previous military man who was suffering from psychiatric illness. The funeral was attended by Archbishop Iakovos who was aware of the work of the active bishop. It should be pointed out that Bishop Paul was of Spanish origin, was received into Orthodoxy as an adult and excelled as a shepherd and author. The Mexican authorities do not exclude the possibility that his murderer was driven to his act through some sort of fanaticism.Bishop Paul was a native of Catalonia, Barcelona and studied in seminaries at Athens and Halki. He was ordained in Athens as a deacon in 1953 and as a priest in 1954. His ministry as a priest was first in Constantinople (1954-1959) and then in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (1959-1984). In 1970 he was consecrated titular Bishop of Nazianzus (in New York) with its seat in Mexico. His work there as a churchman, university professor and voluminous author was brilliant and conspicuous, but unfortunately it was sealed with his premature death. He was murdered after the end of the Divine Liturgy in the city of Mexico in 1984. His funeral was attended by Archbishop Iakovos who praised the exceptional work of this vibrant bishop.
Bishop Paul of Nazianzus not only proved worthy of his calling, but also became a neomartyr of Orthodoxy. In a recent visit to Mexico of His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in 2006, the order was given to Metropolitan Athenagoras of Mexico and Central America to transfer the relics of the late Bishop Paul of Nazianzus to the Metropolis and laid to rest at the monument of this Bishop that lies in the front court of the Cathedral Church of Saint Sophia which was erected by this ever-memorable hierarch.
This was taken from John Sanidopoulos excellent blog, Mystagogy, and he has corrected some of the typographical errors of previous translations of this text for it to make more sense and be more readable.
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Why I Abandoned Papism
Hierodeacon Paul de Ballester-Convallier
1. How It All Began
My conversion to Orthodoxy began one day while I was re-ordering the Library catalogues of the monastery I belonged to. This monastery belonged to the Franciscan order, founded in my country of Spain. While I was classifying different old articles concerning the Holy Inquisition, I happened to come across an article that was truly impressive, dating back to 1647. This article described a decision of the Holy Inquisition that anathematized as a heretic any Christian who dared believe, accept or preach to others that he supported the apostolic validity of the Apostle Paul.
It was about this horrible finding that my mind could not comprehend. I immediately thought to calm my soul that perhaps it was due to a typographical error or due to some forgery, which was not so uncommon in the Western Church of that time when the articles were written.
However, my disturbance and my surprise became greater after researching and confirming that the decision of the Holy Inquisition that was referred to in the article was authentic. In fact already during two earlier occasions, namely in 1327 and 1331, the Popes John XXII and Clemens VI had condemned and anathematized any one who dared deny that the Apostle Paul during his entire apostolic life was totally subordinate to the ecclesiastical monarchical authority of the first Pope and king of the Church, namely the Apostle Peter.
And a lot later Pope Pius X in 1907 and Benedict XV in 1920, had repeated the same anathemas and the same condemnations.
I had therefore to dismiss any possibility of it being due to an inadvertent misquoting or forgery. So I was thus confronted with a serious problem of conscience.
Personally it was impossible for me to accept that the Apostle Paul was disposed of under whatever Papal command. The independence of his apostolic work among nations, against that which characterized the apostolic work of Peter among the circumcised, for me was the unshakable event that shouted from the Holy Bible.
The thing was totally clear to me who he was, as the exegetical works of the Fathers on this issue do not leave the slightest doubt.
“Paul”, writes St. Chrysostom, “declares his equality with the rest of the apostles and should be compared not only with all the others but with the first one of them, to prove that each one had the same authority”.
Truly, together all the Fathers agree that “all the rest of the apostles were the same like Peter, namely they were endowed with the same honour and authority”. It was impossible for any of them to exercise higher authority over the rest, for the apostolic title that each had was the “highest authority, the peak of authorities”. They were all shepherds, while the flock was one. And the flock was shepherded by the apostles in conformity by all.
The matter was therefore crystal clear. Despite this, the Latin teaching was against the situation. This way for the first time in my life I experienced a frightful dilemma. What could I say? On one side was the Bible and Holy Tradition and on the other side the teaching of the Church?
According to Latin theology it is essential for our salvation to believe that the Church is a pure monarchy, whose monarch is the Pope. This way the synod of the Vatican, voting together all the earlier convictions, declared officially that “if any one says … that Peter (who is assumed to be the first Pope) was not ordained by Christ as the leader of the Apostles and visible Head of all the Church … is under anathema”.
2. I Am Addressing My Confessor
Within this psychological disturbance I addressed my confessor and naively described the situation. He was one of the most famous priests of the monastery. He heard me with sadness, aware that it involved a very difficult problem. Having thought for a few minutes while looking in vain for an acceptable resolution, he finally told me the following that I confess I did not expect.
“The Bible and the Fathers have harmed you, my child. Set it and them aside and confine yourself to following the infallible teachings of the Church and do not let yourself become victim of such thoughts. Never allow creatures of God whoever they may be to scandalize your faith in God and the Church.”
This answer he gave very explicitly and caused my confusion to grow. I always held that especially the word of God is the only thing that one cannot set aside.
Without allowing me any time to respond, my confessor added: “In exchange, I shall give you a list of prominent authors in whose works your faith will relax and be supported”. And asking me if I had something else “more interesting” to ask, he terminated our conversation.
A few days later, my confessor departed from the monastery for a preaching tour of churches of the monastic order. He left me the list of authors, recommending that I read them. And he asked me to inform him of my progress in this reading by writing him.
Even though his words did not convince me in the least, I collected these books and started to read them as objectively and attentively as possible.
The majority of the books were theological texts and manuals of papal decisions as well as of Ecumenical Synods. I threw myself to the study with genuine interest, having only the Bible as my guide, “Thy law is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my paths” (Ps. 118:105).
As I progressed in my study of those books, I would understand more and more that I was unaware of the nature of my Church. Having been proselytized in Christianity and baptized as soon as I completed my encyclical studies, I continued with philosophical studies and then as I speak to you I was just at the beginning of the theological studies. It consisted of a science totally new to me. Until then Christianity and the Latin Church was for me an amalgam, something absolutely indivisible. In my monastic life I was only concerned with their exterior view and I was given no reason to examine in depth the bases and reasons of the organic structure of my Church.
3. The Preposterous Teaching About the Pope
Exactly then, within the bouquet of articles that wisely my spiritual leader had put together, the true nature of this monarchical system, known as the Latin Church, started to unravel. I suppose a summary of her characteristics would not be superfluous.
First of all, to the Roman Catholics, the Christian Church
“is nothing more than an absolute monarchy”
whose monarch is the Pope who functions in all her facets as such. On this Papal monarchy
“all the power and stability of the Church is found”
which otherwise
“would not have been possible”.
Christianity is supported completely by Papism. And still some more,
“Papism is the most significant agent of Christianity”, that is “it is its zenith and its essence”.
Pilgrims kissing the Pope's feet.
The monarchic authority of the Pope as the supreme leader and the visible head of the Church, the cornerstone, Universal Infallible Teacher of the Faith, Representative (Vicar) of God on earth, shepherd of shepherds and Supreme Hierarch, is totally dynamic and dominant and embraces all the teachings and legal rights that the Church has. “Divine right” is extended on all and individually on each baptized man across the whole world. This dictatorial authority can be exercised at any time, over anything and on any Christian across the world, whether lay or clergy, and in any church of any denomination and language it may be, in consideration of the Pope being the supreme bishop of every ecclesiastical diocese in the world.
People who refuse to recognize all this authority and do not submit blindly are schismatic, heretic, impious and sacrilegious and their souls are already destined to eternal damnation, for it is essential for our salvation that we believe in the institution of Papism and submit to it and its representatives. This way the Pope incarnates that imaginary Leader, prophesied by Cicero, who writes that all must recognize him to be holy.
Always in the Latin teaching,
“accepting that the Pope has the right to intervene and judge all spiritual issues of each and every Christian separately, that much more does he have the right to do the same in their worldly affairs. He cannot be limited to judging only through spiritual penalties, denying the eternal salvation to those who do not submit to him, but also he has the right to exercise authority over the faithful. For the Church has two knives, symbols of her spiritual and worldly power. The first of these is in the hands of the clergy, the other in the hands of Kings and soldiers, though they too are under the will and service of the clergy”.
The Pope, maintaining that he is the representative of Him whose
“kingdom is not of this world”,
of Him who forbade the Apostles to imitate the kings of the world who “conquer the nations”, nominates himself as a worldly king, thus continuing the imperialism of Rome. At different periods he in fact had become lord over great expanses, he declared bloody wars against other Christian kings to acquire other land expanses, or even to satisfy his thirst for more wealth and power. He owned a great number of slaves. He played a central role and many times a decisive role in political history.
The duty of the Christian lords is to retreat in the face “of the divinely appointed king” surrendering to him their kingdom and their politico-ecclesiastical throne “that was created to ennoble and anchor all the other thrones of the world”. Today the worldly capital of the Pope is confined to Vatican City. It consists of an autonomous nation with diplomatic representations in the governments of both hemispheres, with an army, weapons, police, jails, currency, etc.
And as a crown and peak of the almightiness of the Pope, he has one more faithful privilege that even the most ignoble idolaters could not even imagine – the infallible divine right, according to the dogmatic rule of the Vatican Synod that took place on 1870. Since then on
“humanity ought to address to him whatever it addresses to the Lord: ‘you have words of eternal life'”.
From now on there is no need of the Holy Spirit to guide the Church
“into all truth”.
There is no more need of the Holy Bible nor of Sacred Tradition, for now there is a god on earth based on the infallible. The Pope is the only canon of truth who can even express things contrary to the judgment of all the Church, declare new dogmas which the faithful ought to accept if they do not wish to be cut off from their salvation.
“It depends only on his will and intention to deem whatever he wishes, as sacred and holy within the Church”
and the decreetal letters must be deemed, believed and obeyed “as canonical epistles”. Since he is an infallible Pope, he must receive blind obedience. Cardinal Bellarmine, who was declared a Saint by the Latin Church, says this simply:
“If the Pope some day imposed sins and forbade virtues, the Church is obliged to believe that these sins are good and these virtues are bad”.
4. The Answer of My Confessor
Having read all those books, I felt myself as a stranger within my Church, whose organizational composition has no relation to the Church that the Lord built and organized by the Apostles and their disciples and as intended by the Holy Fathers. Under this belief I wrote my first letter to my superior:
“I read your books. I shall not contravene the divine warrants so that I may follow the human teachings that have no basis at all in the Holy Bible. Such teachings are a string of foolishness by Papism. From the provisions of the Holy Bible we can understand the nature of the Church and not through human decisions and theories. The truth of faith does not spring but from the Holy Bible and from the Tradition of the whole Church”.
The reply came fast:
“You have not followed my advice,” complained my elder, “and thus exposed your soul to the dangerous impact of the Holy Bible, which, like fire burns and blackens when it does not shine. In such situations like yours, the Popes have pronounced that it ‘is a scandalous error for one to believe that all the Christians could read the Holy Bible’, and the theologians assure us that the Holy Bible ‘is a dark cloud’. ‘For one to believe in the enlightenment and clarity of the Bible is a heterodox dogma,’ claim our infallible leaders. As far as the Tradition, I do not consider it necessary to remind you that we should primarily follow the Pope on matters of Faith. The Pope is worth, in this case, thousands of Augustinians, Jeromses, Gregories, Chrysostoms…”.
This letter accomplished to strengthen my opinion rather than demolish it. It was impossible for me to place the Holy Bible below the Pope. By attacking the Holy Bible, my Church was losing every worthy belief ahead of me, and was becoming one with the heretics who “being elected by the Bible turn against it”. This was the last contact I had with my elder.
5. The Pope is Everything and the Church is Nothing
However I did not stop there. I had already started to “skid due to the skid” of my Church. I had taken a road that I was not allowed to stop until I found a positive solution. The drama of those days was that I had estranged myself from Papism, but I did not accost any other ecclesiastical reality.
Orthodoxy and Protestantism then were for me vague ideas and I had not reached the time and opportunity to ascertain that they could offer something to soothe my agony. Despite all this I continued to love my Church that made me a Christian and I bore her symbol. I still needed more profound thinking to reach slowly, with trouble and grief, to the conclusion that the Church I loved was not part of the Papal system.
Truly, against the monocracy of the Pope, the authority of the Church and of the episcopal body is not intrinsically subordinate. Because according to Latin theology
“the authority of the Church exists only when it is characterized and harmonized by the Pope. In all other cases it is nullified”.
This way it is the same thing whether the Pope is with the Church or the Pope is without the Church, in other words, the Pope is everything and the Church is nothing. Very correctly did Bishop Maren write, “It would have been more accurate if the Roman Catholics when they recite the ‘I Believe’ would say ‘And in one Pope’ instead of ‘And in one … Church'”.
The importance and function of the bishops in the Latin Church are no more than that of representatives of the Papal authority to which the bishops submit like the lay faithful. This regime they try to uphold under the 22nd chapter of St. John’s Gospel, which according to the Latin interpretation,
“the Lord entrusts the Apostle Peter, the first Pope, the shepherding of His lambs and of His sheep”,
namely, He bestows on him the job of the Chief Shepherd with exclusive rights on all the faithful, who are the lambs and all the others, Apostles and Bishops, namely, the sheep.
However, the bishops in the Latin Church are not even successors to the Apostles, for as it dogmatizes:
“The apostolic authority was lacking with the Apostles and was not passed down to their successors, the bishops. Only the Papal authority of Peter, namely the Popes.”
The bishops then, having not inherited any apostolic authority, have no other authority but the one given to them, not directly from God but by the Supreme Pontiff of Rome.
And the Ecumenical Synods also have no other value than the one given to them by the Bishop of Rome,
“for they cannot be anything else except conferences of Christianity that are called under the authenticity and authority of the Pope”.
It would suffice the Pope to exit the hall of the Synod saying, “I am not in there anymore”, to stop from that moment on the Ecumenical Synod from having any validity. If it is not authorized and validated by the Pope, who could impose this authority on the faithful?
6. The Frightful Answer of a Jesuit
I almost gave up on my studies during that period, taking advantage of the hours that my Order allowed me to retire to my cell, to think of nothing else but my big problem. For whole months I would study the structure and organization of the early Church, straight from the apostolic and patristic sources.
However, all this work could not be done totally in secrecy. It looked obvious that my exterior life was greatly affected by this great concern which had overwhelmed all my interest and sapped all my strength. I never lost an opportunity to inquire from outside the monastery whatever could contribute towards shedding light to my problem. This way I started to discuss the topic with known ecclesiastical acquaintances in relation to the trust I had in their frankness and their heart. This way I would receive continuously the impressions and opinions on the topic which were for me always interesting and significant.
I found most of these clerics more fanatical than I expected. Even though they were deeply aware of the absurdity of the teaching on the Pope, being stuck to the idea that
“the required submission to the Pope demands a blind consent of our views”
and in the other maxim by the founder of Jesuits: “That we may possess the truth and not fall in fallacy, we owe it to always depend on the basic and immovable axiom that what we see as white in reality it is black, if that is what the hierarchy of the Church tells us”. With this fantastic bias a priest of the Order of Jesus entrusted me with the following thought:
“What you tell me I acknowledge that they are most logical and very clear and true. However, for us Jesuits, apart from the usual three vows, we give a fourth one during the day of our tonsure. This fourth vow is more important than the vow of purity, obedience and poverty. It is the vow that we must totally submit to the Pope. This way, I prefer to go to hell with the Pope than to Paradise with all your truths.”
7. “A Few Centuries Ago They Would Have Burnt You in the Fires of the Holy Inquisition”
According to the opinion of most of them, I was a heretic. Here’s what a bishop wrote to me: “A few centuries ago, the ideas you have, would have been enough to bring you to the fires of the Holy Inquisition”.
However, despite all this I intended to stay in the monastery and give myself to the purely spiritual life, leaving the responsibility to the hierarchy for the deceit and its correction. But could the important things of the soul be safe on a road of superficial life, where the arbitrariness of the Pope could pile up new dogmas and false teachings concerning the pious life of the Church? Moreover, since the purity of teaching was built with falsehoods about the Pope, who could reassure me that this stain would not spread into the other parts of the evangelical faith?
It is therefore not strange if the holy men within the Latin Church started to sound the alarm by saying things such as:
“Who knows if the minor means of salvation that flood us do not cause us to forget our only Savior Jesus…? Today our spiritual life appears like a multi-branch and multi-leaf tree, where the souls do no more know where the trunk is that everything rests on, and where the roots are that feed it.”
With such a manner we have decorated and overloaded our religiosity, so that the face of Him who is the “focus of the issue” is lost inside the “decorations”. Being therefore convinced that the spiritual life within the bosom of the Papal Church will expose me to dangers, I ended up taking the decisive step. I abandoned the monastery and after a little while I declared I did not belong to the Latin Church. Some others seemed prepared until then to follow me, but at the last moment no one proved prepared to sacrifice so radically his position within the Church, with the honor and consideration they enjoyed.
This way I abandoned the Latin Church whose leader, forgetting that the Kingdom of the Son of God “is not of this world” and that “he who is called to the bishopric is not called to any high position or authority but to the deaconate of all the Church”, but instead imitating him who “wishing in his pride to be like God, he lost the true glory and put on the false one” and “sat in the temple of God as god”. Rightly did Bernard De Klaraval write about the Pope:
“There is no more horrible poison for you, no sword more dangerous, than the thirst and passion of domination”. Coming out of Papism, I followed my voice of conscience that was the voice of God. And this voice was telling me, “Leave her … so you may not partake of her sins and that you may not receive of her wounds”.
8. In the Bosom of Orthodoxy
Secondly, as my departure from Papism became more broadly known within the ecclesiastical circles and was receiving more enthusiastic response in the Spanish and French Protestant circles, so was my position becoming more precarious.
In the correspondence I received, the threatening and anonymous abusive letters were plentiful. They would accuse me that I was creating an anti-papist wave around me and I was leading by my example into “apostasy” Roman Catholic clerics “who were dogmatically sick” and who had publicly expressed a sympathetic feeling for my case.
This fact forced me to leave Barcelona, and settle in Madrid where I was put up – without my seeking – by Anglicans and through them I came in contact with the World Council of Churches.
Not even there did I manage to remain inconspicuous. After every sermon at different Anglican Churches, a steadily increasing number of listeners sought to know me and to confidently discuss with me some ecclesiological topics.
Without therefore wishing it, a steadily increasing circle of people started forming around me, with most being anti-papists. This situation was exposing me to the authorities, because in the confidential meetings I had agreed to attend some Roman Catholic clerics started to appear who were generally known “for their lacking and weakening faith regarding the primacy and infallibility of the Highest Hierarch of Rome”.
The fanatical vindictiveness that some papists bore against my person I saw fully expressed and reach its zenith the day I replied publicly to a detailed ecclesiological dissertation which they had sent to me as an ultimate step to remove me from the “trap of heresy” that I had fallen in. That work of apologetic character had the expressive title: The Pope, Vicar of our Lord on Earth. And the slogan that the arguments in the book ended up with, was the following: “Due to the infallibility of the Pope, the Roman Catholics are today the only Christians who could be certain for what they believe”.
In the columns of a Portuguese book review, I replied:
“The reality is that due to this infallibility you are the only Christians who cannot be certain about what they will demand that you believe tomorrow”.
My article ended with the following sentence:
“Soon, the road you walk, you will name the Lord vicar of the Pope in heaven”.
Soon after I published in Buenos Aires my three volume study, I put an end to the skirmishes with the Papists. In that study I had collected all the clauses in the patristic literature of the first four centuries, which directly or indirectly refer to the “primacy clauses” (Matt 16:18-19; John 21: 15-17; Luke 22: 31-32). I proved that the teachings about the Pope were absolutely foreign and contrary to the interpretation given by the Fathers on the issue.
And the interpretation of the Fathers is exactly the rule on which we understand the Holy Bible.
During that period, even though from unrelated situations, for the first time I came in contact with Orthodoxy. Before I continue to recount the events, I owe it to confess here that my ideas about Orthodoxy had suffered an important development from the beginning of my spiritual odyssey. Certain discussions I had on ecclesiological topics with a group of Orthodox Polish, who passed through my country, and the information I received from the World Council regarding the existence and life of Orthodox circles in the West, had caused me a real interest.
Furthermore, I started to get different Russian and Greek books and magazines from London and Berlin, as well as some of the prized books that were provided by Archimandrite Benedict Katsenavakis in Napoli, Italy. Thus my interest in Orthodoxy would continue to grow.
Slowly, slowly in this way I started losing my inner biases against the Orthodox Church. These biases presented Orthodoxy as schismatic, without spiritual life, a drained group of small churches that do not have the characteristics of the true Church of Christ. And the schism that had cut her off, “had made the devil for their father and the pride of the Patriarch Photios for mother”.
So when I started to correspond with a respected member of the Orthodox hierarchy in the West – whose name I do not believe I am permitted to publish due to my personal criterion that was based on those original informations – I was thus totally free from every bias against Orthodoxy and I could spiritually gaze objectively. I soon realized and even with a pleasant surprise that my negative stance I had against Papism was conforming completely to the ecclesiological teaching of Orthodoxy. The respectable hierarch agreed to this coincidence in his letters, but refrained from expressing himself more broadly because he was aware that I lived in a Protestant surrounding.
The Orthodox in the West are not at all susceptible to proselytism. Only when our correspondence continued enough, the Orthodox bishop showed me to read the superb book by Sergei Boulgakov titled Orthodoxy, and the not less in depth dissertation under the same title by Metropolitan Seraphim. In the mean time I had also written specifically to the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
In those books I found myself. There was not even a single paragraph that did not meet completely the agreement of my conscience. So much in these works as in others that they would send to me with encouraging letters – now even from Greece.
I clearly saw how Orthodox teaching is profound and purely evangelical and that the Orthodox are the only Christians who believe like the Christians of the catacombs and of the Fathers of the Church of the Golden Age. They are the only ones who can repeat with holy boasting the patristic saying, “We believe in whatever we received from the Apostles”.
That period I wrote two books, one with the title The Concept of the Church According to the Western Fathers and the other with the title Your God, Our God and God. These books were to be published in South America, but I did not proceed with their release so that I may not give an easy and dangerous hold to the Protestant propaganda.
From the Orthodox side they advised me to let go of my simply negative position against Papism, in which I was dirtied, and to shape my personal “I Believe” [Faith or Creed] from which they could judge how far I was from the Anglican Church as well as the Orthodox.
It was a hard task that I summarized with the following sentences: “I believe in everything that are included in the Canonical books of the Old and New Testament, according to the interpretation of the ecclesiastical Tradition, namely the Ecumenical Synods that were truly ecumenical, and to the unanimous teaching of the Holy Fathers that are acknowledged catholically as such”.
From then on I began to understand that the sympathy of the Protestants towards me was cooling down, except of the Anglicans who were governed by some meaningful support. And it is only now that the Orthodox interest, despite being late, as always, started to manifest itself and to attract me to Orthodoxy as one who was “possibly Catechumen”.
The undertakings of a Polish university professor, whom I knew, cemented my conviction that Orthodoxy is supported by the meaningful truths of Christianity. I understood that every Christian of the other confessions is required to sacrifice some significant part of the Faith to arrive at complete dogmatic purity, and only an Orthodox Christian is not so required. For only he lives and remains in the substance of Christianity and the revealed and unaltered truth.
So, I did no more feel myself alone against the almighty Roman Catholicism and the coolness that the Protestants displayed against me. There were in the East and scattered around the world, 280 million Christians who belonged to the Orthodox Church and with whom I felt in communion of faith.
The accusation of the theological mummification of Orthodoxy had for me no value, because I had now understood that this fixed and stable perseverance of the Orthodox teaching of truth was not a spiritual solidified rock, but an everlasting flow like the current of the waterfall that seems to remain always the same yet the waters always change.
Slowly, slowly the Orthodox started to consider me as one of their own.
“That we speak to this Spaniard about Orthodoxy”
wrote a famous archimandrite, “is not proselytism”. They and I perceived that I was already birthed in the port of Orthodoxy, that I was finally breathing freely in the bosom of the Mother Church. In this period I was finally Orthodox without realizing it, and like the disciples that walked towards Emmaus close to the Divine Teacher, I had covered a stretch close to Orthodoxy without conclusively recognizing the Truth but at the end.
When I was assured of this reality, I wrote a long dissertation on my case to the Ecumenical Patriarchate and to the Archbishop of Athens through the Apostolic Diaconate of the Church of Greece. And having no more to do with Spain – where today there does not exist an Orthodox community – I left my country and went to France where I asked to become a member of the Orthodox Church, having earlier let some more time for the fruit of my change to ripen.
During this period I further deepened my knowledge of Orthodoxy and strengthened my relationship with her hierarchy. When I became fully confident of myself, I took the decisive step and officially was received in the true Church of Christ as her member. I wished to realize this great event in Greece, the recognized country of Orthodoxy where I came to study theology. The blessed Archbishop of Athens received me paternally. His love and interest were beyond my expectations.
I should say the same for the then chancellor of the Sacred Archdiocese and presently Bishop Dionysius of Rogon who showed me paternal love. It is needless to add that in such an atmosphere of love and warmth, the Holy Synod did not take long to decide my canonical acceptance in the bosom of the Orthodox Church. During that all-night sacred ceremony I was honored with the name of the Apostle of Nations, and following that I was received as a monk in the Holy Penteli Monastery. Soon after, I was tonsured deacon by the Holy Bishop of Rogon.
Since then I live within the love, sympathy and understanding of the Greek Church and all her members. I ask from all their prayers and their spiritual support that I may always stand worthy of the grace that was given me by the Lord.+
FJTO
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