St. John believed that, in whatever land an
Orthodox Christian found himself, it was his responsibility to venerate and
pray to its national and local Saints. Wherever St. John went—Russia, Serbia,
China, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Tunisia, America—he researched
the Lives of the local Orthodox Saints. He went to the churches housing their
relics, performed services in their honor, and asked the Orthodox priests there
to do likewise. By the end of his life, his knowledge of Orthodox Saints, both
Western and Eastern, was seemingly limitless.
Perhaps
the most remarkable thing about St. John’s life is that he manifested in
himself so many different kinds of sanctity. It was as if, through the intense
study of the Lives of the Saints that he had undertaken in his early years, he
had internalized and made his own the whole realm of Orthodox sanctity, in all
its varied forms. He was a true student of the Saints, one who sought to follow
in their footsteps, and thus to follow in the footsteps of Christ. By living
like the Saints, he became one of them.
Let’s
look at some of the varied forms of sanctity that could be seen in Archbishop
John:
1. He was
first of all a great ascetic in the tradition of the monastic Saints of old,
such as St. Macarius the Great, St. Pachomius the Great, and others.
2. He was
a clairvoyant reader of hearts, and one who could identify and name people he
had never seen before. Enlightened by the Grace of God, he could hear and
answer people’s thoughts before they expressed them. He also foretold the
future, including the time of his own death. In this way, he was very much in
the tradition of the great monastic elders of the past, especially the
clairvoyant Russian elders such as those of Optina Monastery.
3. He was
an almsgiver in the tradition of St. Philaret the Almsgiver, St. John the
Almsgiver, etc. We have seen how he sacrificed himself for orphaned children,
going himself into dangerous slums and houses of prostitution in order to
rescue children from starvation or unhealthy environments. He was constantly
giving to and working to help the needy. He himself wore clothing of the
cheapest Chinese fabric. He often went barefoot, sometimes after having given
away his sandals to some poor man.
4. He was
a hierarch and theologian, a Church writer and apologist who defended the
Church against error, much in the tradition of St. Athanasius the Great, St.
Gregory the Theologian, and others. Besides his many published sermons, rich in
theological content, he wrote valuable theological treatises in order to defend
traditional Orthodox teachings which were being undermined in modern times.
One of
these works, in which he presents the Orthodox teaching on the Mother of God in
contrast to Protestant and Roman Catholic distortions, has been published in
English. He also wrote an extensive essay pointing out the fallacies of the
modern teaching of Sophiology.
5. He was
an apostle, evangelist and missionary to new lands, in the tradition of Sts.
Cyril and Methodius, St. Nahum of Ohrid, and others. When he was in Western
Europe, he worked hard to establish indigenous Orthodox Churches in France and
the Netherlands: churches made up of the native peoples of these lands who had
converted to the Orthodox Faith. He understood that the Orthodox Church is
universal, and he said that the Orthodox Gospel of Christ must be spread
throughout the world. Later, when he came to America, he instituted English
Liturgies in addition to Slavonic Liturgies, in a Cathedral that had only known
Slavonic Liturgies. He blessed and supported our newly begun St. Herman
Brotherhood, which was dedicated to bringing Orthodoxy to the English-speaking
world.
6. He was
a healer and miracle-worker, in the tradition of St.Martin of Tours, St.
Nicholas of Myra in Lycia, and others. Through his prayers, he healed people of
almost every imaginable malady; and he continues to do so after his repose.
7. He was
a loving and self-sacrificing pastor, in the tradition of St. John of Kronstadt
and all the other hierarch and priest Saints of ages past. So great was his
love that everyone felt that he or she was his “favorite.” He was overflowing
with self-sacrificing love for his flock, and for those outside of his flock as
well, such as a dying Jewish woman whom he suddenly healed with the words
“Christ is Risen.”
8. He was
a deliverer of people from captivity, in the tradition of St. Moses the
God-seer and St. Paulinus of Nola. As we have seen, he brought 5,000 Orthodox
believers out of Communist China and into freedom in America.
9.
Finally, he was to a limited degree a fool-for-Christ in the tradition of St.
Andrew the Fool-for-Christ and others. He could not be a fool-for-Christ in the
full sense of the term, since this would compromise the dignity of his
hierarchical office. And yet at many times he did things which were at odds
with the ideas of the world, and thus he evoked censure from people who did not
see him for what he was: a man of God. He was criticized, for example, for
going about barefoot, and for wearing a collapsible cardboard mitre that had
been lovingly made for him by his orphans.
We have
now looked at nine different types of sanctity manifested in this one Saint,
St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco. Nine types which he had learned about
through his study of the Lives of the Saints.
What the
contemporary hagiographer Constantine Cavarnos says of modern Saints in general
applies perfectly to St. John: “Modern Saints admire and imitate the older
ones: they follow closely their example, study their teaching carefully,
and—what is extremely significant—they confirm it. Those of the modern Saints
who write or preach amplify and illustrate the teaching of the older Saints,
and relate it to modern realities.”
* * *
St. John
believed that, in whatever land an Orthodox Christian found himself, it was his
responsibility to venerate and pray to its national and local Saints. Wherever
St. John went—Russia, Serbia, China, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy,
Tunisia, America—he researched the Lives of the local Orthodox Saints. He went
to the churches housing their relics, performed services in their honor, and
asked the Orthodox priests there to do likewise. By the end of his life, his
knowledge of Orthodox Saints, both Western and Eastern, was seemingly
limitless.
Here is a
story which illustrates St. John’s love for the Saints, and how he went out of
his way to learn about them and venerate them:
One of
St. John’s spiritual children was Archimandrite Spyridon, who later became the
father confessor of our monastery in the 1970s. Like St. John, Fr. Spyridon was
born in Russia, but went to Serbia following the Russian Revolution. He knew St.
John from a young age, when St. John was still studying at the University of
Belgrade.
When
Serbia fell to the Communists, Fr. Spyridon and many of his fellow Russians
settled on the border of Italy and Serbia, in a refugee camp in the Italian
city of Trieste. Fr. Spyridon was ordained to the priesthood in 1951 and was
assigned as a pastor of the camp church in Trieste.
At this
time, St. John had just been assigned as the Bishop of Western Europe, and so
he would visit Fr. Spyridon and his flock in the refugee camp in Trieste. When
St. John came to the place where Fr. Spyridon served, he was already fully
informed about the early Western Saints of Trieste—such as Justus the Martyr,
after whom the city had originally been called Justinopolis, St. Sergio the
Martyr, and St. Frugifer, the first bishop of Trieste. Finding that nothing had
been done to venerate the local Saints, Archbishop John was disappointed.
Fr.
Spyridon later said how he regretted not having thought of it before. No one
had done such a thing: the Saints of Trieste had largely been forgotten, and it
was St. John who restored their local veneration. Before doing anything else in
Trieste, he took Fr. Spyridon to the relics of the Saints, vested in an
epitrachelion and a small omophorion. With a censer and a cross in his hand he
descended into the crypts under cathedrals where, according to his long lists
of information, the Saints had been buried. He sang troparia and kontakia
written on pieces of paper which he pulled out his pockets, imploring the
Saints to intercede for the city. And only then did he go to celebrate the
services in Fr. Spyridon’s camp church.
As Fr.
Spyridon recalled, St. John acted as if the ancient local Saints were present
wherever he walked. Before leaving Trieste, he contacted local Roman Catholic
clergy, acquiring from them various permits so that the Orthodox church in
Trieste would have free access to the relics and sites of the Saints. Then he
gave Fr. Spyridon strict instructions on how to commemorate the Saints, how he
should take his parishioners to the shrines of all local Saints on their feast
days, venerate them, sing services to them, and so on. St. John said that no
services should be conducted without first addressing these local Saints, and
no Liturgies performed without first commemorating them at the proskomedia.
While in
Western Europe, St. John collected the Lives and icons of Orthodox Saints from
many different Western European countries, who lived before the time of the
schism of the Latin Church. Since most of these Saints were included in no
Orthodox Calendar of Saints, St. John compiled a list of these Saints with
information about their lives, and submitted this to his Synod of Bishops for
inclusion in the Orthodox Calendar.
Since he
was an Apostle of Christ, St. John called upon each local Saint he learned
about to provide heavenly help in evangelizing new lands. As Archbishop of San
Francisco, he called upon all the Saints of America, including the most local
of all Saints, the Native American St. Peter the Aleut, who was martyred in
California.
Archbishop
John had an especially great devotion to St. Herman of Alaska as a patron of
the American Orthodox mission. He sought to have St. Herman canonized, and this
occurred four years after St.John’s repose, in 1970.
On June
28, 1966, St. John came to the Orthodox bookshop in San Francisco that had been
started with his blessing by our St. Herman Brotherhood. After he had blessed
the shop and printing room with the miracle-working Kursk Icon of the Mother of
God, he proceeded to talk to the brothers about Saints of various lands. As Fr.
Seraphim Rose later recalled: “He promised to give us a list of canonized
Romanian Saints and disciples of Paisius elichkovsky. He mentioned having
compiled (when in France) a list of Western pre-schism Saints, which he presented
to the Holy Synod.”
In
particular, St. John talked to the brothers in the shop about St.Alban, the
first martyr of Britain. Out of his little portfolio he pulled a short Life of
the Saint, together with a picture postcard of a Gothic cathedral in the town
of St. Albans near London, in which the Saint had been buried. St. John looked
into the brothers’ eyes to see if they got the point. St. Alban, like most of
the Saints of Western Europe, was not in the Orthodox Calendar; and St. John
was letting them know that he should be venerated by Orthodox Christians,
especially in English-speaking lands.
This
turned out to be St. John’s last contact with the shop and our Brotherhood
while he was alive on this earth. Four days later he reposed in Seattle.
Right
after St. John’s repose, Fr. Seraphim wrote in his Chronicle of our
Brotherhood: “Amid the talk of the ‘testament of Vladika John,’ what has our
Brotherhood to offer? This seems to be clearly indicated both by our very
nature and by Vladika John’s instructions to us. On his last visit to us
especially, he talked of nothing but Saints—Romanian, English, French, Russian.
Is it not therefore our duty to remember the Saints of God, following as
closely as possible Vladika’s example? I.e., to know their Lives, nourish our
spiritual lives by constantly reading them, making them known to others by
speaking of them and printing them—and by praying to the Saints.”
This,
then, is St. John’s testament to our Brotherhood, and I believe to all Orthodox
Christians: To remember the Saints of God.
St. John
himself wrote beautiful words about the Saints. These words well express what
he saw as the essence of sanctity, as well as the blueprint of his own life.
“Holiness is not simply righteousness,” St. John wrote, “for which the
righteous merit the enjoyment of blessedness in the Kingdom of God, but rather
it is such a height of righteousness that men are filled with the Grace of God
to the extent that it flows from them upon those who associate with them. Great
is their blessedness; it proceeds from personal experience of the Glory of God.
Being filled also with love for men, which proceeds from the love of God, they
are responsive to men’s needs, and upon their supplication they appear also as
intercessors and defenders for them before God.”
By Hieromonk
Damascene (Christensen)
Source: http://www.pravmir.com/a-true-student-of-the-saints/
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