| Back in Alaska he took the time to use his mechanical skills, building two small pipe organs which he donated to two of the California missions he had visited (San Jose and Santa Clara)- " a rare gesture of ecumenical goodwill for the time. " In 1841-the same year the Russians abandoned Fort Ross-Father Veniaminov was made Bishop of Kamchatka and the Kuril Islands of Russia and the Alaskan Aleutian Islands. As is the custom in the Russian Orthodox Church, he chose the Bishopric name of Innocent. In 1850 he was elevated to Archbishop and in 1869 was appointed Metropolitan of Moscow, the highest rank in the Russian Orthodox Church. He died in 1879 at the age of 82. He was canonized a saint in 1977. Blessed Dabovich Jovan Dabovich was born in San Francisco in 1863 to Serbian immigrant parents. He was ordained an Orthodox priest in 1892. He was the first American to be ordained an Orthodox priest. Upon ordination he took the name Sebastian. In 1897 the young priest accompanied his Bishop Nicholas Ziorov on a trip from San Francisco to Fort Ross. The trip included a ferry boat ride from San Francisco to Sausalito, California. There the clerics boarded a train which took them over the coastal range along Tamales Bay, California and inland to Cazadero, California. From Cazadero they took a stagecoach up Fort Ross Road. The entire trek from San Francisco took about fifteen hours. Bishop Ziorov has left us an accurate account of the trip and his impressions. They only spent a day and a night at the Fort. Like St. Innocent, he enjoyed the trip and surroundings; " Such air, such nature, an enchantment! " he wrote. He gasped when he caught his first sight of the fort: " It stands on a hillock as if in the (palm) of God " s hand above the ocean. " Ziorov and Dabovich were disappointed with the condition of the chapel and cemetery, both of which had degraded significantly in the fifty odd years since the colony was abandoned by the Russians. The chapel, in disrepair, had been turned into a barn for animals. When they visited the cemetery they saw further disrepair with " only insignificant remains " of unkempt graves. Dabovich " emotionally " performed an Orthodox religious rite over the cemetery graves- " with difficulty he pronounced the prayers. " Ziorov expressed anger at " the desolating sacrilege in a holy place. " Dabovich wrote in the Fort Ross Hotel Register, " I have had the honor to visit this place and pray in the old cemetery yonder on the hill. " He laments that he couldn " t pray in the chapel " which is now a house of cattle. " |
| Emperor Alexander III, when he was the heir, became ill with a serious form of typhus. The Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna was very alarmed by her spouse " s illness. One of the valets, seeing her in the corridor, related to her how Blessed Xenia helps the sick, gave her sand from the cherished grave and added that he himself had been healed from illness by the prayer of the righteous one. The Grand Duchess placed the sand under the pillow of the patient. That same night, while sitting at the head of the bed, she had a vision of Blessed Xenia, who told her that the patient would recover and that a daughter would be born in their family. She should be called Xenia. The prediction of the blessed one was fulfilled exactly. In the Pskov province, a relative from Petersburg came to stay for a while with a landowner and recounted how they revere Blessed Xenia in the capital. Under the influence of this account, the pious landowner prayed before sleep for the repose of her soul. At night, she dreamed that Xenia was walking round her house and pouring water on it. In the morning, the hay barn on the country estate caught on fire, but the fire did not spread further and the home remained whole. A colonel " s widow arrived in Petersburg to enroll her two sons into the Cadet Corps. She did not succeed in this. The money borrowed for the trip had come to an end, and the widow walked along the street and wept bitterly. Suddenly, some woman of the common people came up to her and said: " Serve a panikhida for Xenia. She helps in sorrows. " " Who is this Xenia? " asked the colonel " s widow. " The tongue [that asks the way] will lead to Kiev, " she answered, quickly vanishing. Indeed, the colonel " s widow easily learned who this Xenia was. She served a panikhida for her at her grave in the Smolensk Cemetery, and shortly after received the unexpected news that both her sons had been accepted into the Cadet Corps. A multitude of similar instances of Blessed Xenia " s help is known also in our days. |
| " Man is an animal which has been given the vocation to become God. " The only real and lasting happiness we will find in life comes in connecting with this truth and living it out moment by moment. That black hole of a barn inside begins to close when Jesus is allowed to enter our conscious lives for He is the only one who can fill that immense and infinite space. And it is simple, oh so simple. Once we have opened that door our job is to keep the door open! How? By living each moment with a conscious awareness of our vocation and the Lord " s presence. By living each moment as if life really mattered. By learning to see God in every blade of grass, in every changing leaf, in every child, in every friend, in every neighbor, in every stranger. By mining the great treasure that God has placed in our depths by meditation and prayer. By touching the divine image deeply. By rejoicing that we have been so marvelously and gloriously made. By learning to sing His praises with every breath we take. And ultimately by silence. The Name of God in the Old Testament cannot be pronounced. It is represented by four letters in Hebrew called the sacred tetragrammaton, YHVH. Although unpronounceable one can try, but the only sound you can squeeze out of those mysterious, sacred letters is the sound of the breath going in and going out. Thus, with every breath, whether we know it or not, we are saying the Name of God. The secret is to remember this as often as we possibly can. It is as simple as that. This is the foundation of Christian spirituality. That is how we have been made. That is how close God is to us. He is in the very air we breathe and in every breath we take. When we become conscious of this, a new life takes root and one little breath at a time we begin to wake up from our long sleep and see things as they really are. At last we begin to remember who and why we are. Discuss this article © Copyright 2007 by pravmir.com Top of Page Our Faith Lifes of Saints New Russian Martyrs Analytical articles Sermons My Way to Orthodoxy Parish Library Family life Children " s page History of Christianity Spiritual music Service Orthodoxy in the World |
| God provided a downpour to bless the start of the procession; steady showers continued for the next four hours. Undeterred by the weather, the pilgrims set out while singing the prayerful refrains: “O Most-Holy Theotokos, save us!”, “O holy hierarch father Peter, pray to God for us!”, “Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit”, “Both now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.” These prayers continued for more than 70% of the walk, echoing in English and Slavonic along the rural roads of southern Michigan. As the day wore on and rain gave way to 88° F and 95% humidity, the character of these refrains changed from intentional to necessary: without them, the walking became a chore; with them, Grace enlivened the pilgrims – Grace sufficient to overcome fatigue, to assist in carrying heavy banners or icons, and to mask the discomfort of feet trudging along in rain-soaked shoes and socks. The Grace of these prayers, sent up in praise of The Creator, likewise animated His creation. During one of the more difficult periods on Saturday, a distant troika of grand horses raised their heads and galloped across their pasture to trot alongside the pilgrims, as if joining in the common praise of the Lord. Shortly thereafter, three cows and then three more horses did the same. Clearly enamored with the spirit of the procession, they all walked beside us to the last possible moment. When a single donkey then joined in, the Lord’s triumphal procession into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday involuntarily came to mind: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. Indeed! This abundant Grace, provided by the spiritual aid of St. Peter and the Lord’s Most-Pure Mother, ensured that all the pilgrims safely arrived at the Waterloo Farm Museum shortly before sunset, having carried their Crosses for more than eight hours. Pilgrims quickly assembled their tents and then dined on a meal prepared under the direction of St. Vladimir parish head sister, Leta Nikulshina. Pilgrims whose feet had become blistered or had other physical difficulties were well attended to by Svetlana Sokolova, a parishioner of St. Vladimir’s. An historic hay barn, with its tall doors thrown open, provided the venue for an open-air service. While legs stiffened, hymns to the Resurrected Lord and St. Peter rose through the air, chanted by Subdeacon Methodius Chwastek and Reader Alexander Rusakov, along with a volunteer choir. |
| After the collapse of the Soviet Union, locals went to the mainland –– there was no work on the islands. But now there is a reverse flow of people. For many, Solovki is a place to experience the ongoing revival of traditional Russian culture and spirituality. Inside a barn a marine yacht is being built according to Dutch blueprints from the time of Peter the Great. Others are trying to recover forgotten crafts: tailoring traditional kosovorotka shirts, sculpting earthenware pots, and woodcutting. The Solovetsky Islands also attract fans of esotericism and advocates of the paleocontact theory. Ancient mazes made of stone, whose purpose has not yet been discovered, are preserved on the islands. Most scientists believe that these were places of worship for local fisherman tribes. But fans of UFOs are sure that the mazes were left on the islands by aliens, or at least by a powerful ancient civilisation. Tourists wander through the maze, hoping to attain enlightenment, or trying to meditate while sitting in the centre of a stone spiral. “You can’t wear white trousers!” a veteran esotericist instructs a girl trying to enter the maze. “The energy will be the wrong colour!” The Church is not very approving of the pagan mazes, but at least it won’t destroy them. A ride on a Church boat with a visit to the pagan shrines is a must on the list of the major tours offered to pilgrims. Every Sunday, there is a feast in the village. A procession of songs and Church banners snakes around the monastery. Bells ring, the parishioners carry icons, and priests sprinkle holy water on the crowd. It seems as if all the islanders take part in the procession. Here in Solovki, it’s easy to be a believer. It helps that the monastery’s domes are visible from any part of the island, and there is the sweet sound of bells, far from the worldly temptations of big cities. To meet the needs of parishioners, there are church shops selling icons, amulets, edificatory literature, and even trouser belts with prayers. You can get up in the morning, pull on your trousers, and you’ve already done a charitable deed! |
| Next let him bear in mind the character of the country in which they dwelt, how they lived in a vast desert, and were cut off from intercourse with all their fellow-men, and thus were able to have their minds enlightened, and to contemplate, and utter those things which perhaps will seem impossibilities to the uninitiated and uninstructed, because of their way of life and the commonplace character of their habits. But if any one wants to give a true opinion on this matter, and is anxious to try whether such perfection can be attained, let him first endeavour to make their purpose his own, with the same zeal and the same mode of life, and then in the end he will find that those things which used to seem beyond the powers of men, are not only possible, but really delightful. But now let us proceed at once to their Conferences and Institutes. Chapter 1. Of our stay in Scete, and that which we proposed to Abbot Moses. All the arts and sciences, said he, have some goal or mark; and end or aim of their own, on which the diligent pursuer of each art has his eye, and so endures all sorts of toils and dangers and losses, cheerfully and with equanimity, e.g., the farmer, shunning neither at one time the scorching heat of the sun, nor at another the frost and cold, cleaves the earth unweariedly, and again and again subjects the clods of his field to his ploughshare, while he keeps before him his goal; viz., by diligent labour to break it up small like fine sand, and to clear it of all briers, and free it from all weeds, as he believes that in no other way can he gain his ultimate end, which is to secure a good harvest, and a large crop; on which he can either live himself free from care, or can increase his possessions. Again, when his barn is well stocked he is quite ready to empty it, and with incessant labour to commit the seed to the crumbling furrow, thinking nothing of the present lessening of his stores in view of the future harvest. Those men too who are engaged in mercantile pursuits, have no dread of the uncertainties and chances of the ocean, and fear no risks, while an eager hope urges them forward to their aim of gain. |
| When the Son of God became a human being for the salvation of the world, He did not do so with all the trappings of the false hopes we typically embrace. He was not born in a palace or in a family of great wealth, power, or fame. There was certainly no sin involved in the virginal conception of our Lord, but the circumstances were hardly conventional. His teenage virgin mother became pregnant by a miracle of the Holy Spirit. Joseph, the older man to whom the Theotokos was betrothed as her guardian, would have divorced her quietly, had not an angel told him the truth about the situation in a dream. Living under the military occupation of the Roman Empire, the Lord’s parents had to go to Bethlehem for a census at the time of His birth, where He came into the world in the unthinkably lowly circumstance of being born in a cave used for a barn with an animals’ feeding trough as His crib. Despite the temptation throughout Christ’s ministry to overthrow the Romans by force and set up an earthly reign, He refused to be distracted from His vocation to conquer death itself, which required that He submit to execution on a Roman cross and wearing a crown of thorns, being mocked as the king of the Jews. Though the false hopes of His disciples had been crushed, the Savior rose in victory on the third day in a fashion no one expected. His disciples then learned to hope anew for the fulfillment of God’s promises in ways that required a complete change of mind and heart, for they took up their crosses as they served a kingdom not of this world. Along with countless generations of martyrs and confessors, they repudiated the idolatry of serving themselves as they learned to hope only in the Lord. In the remaining days before Christmas, let us embrace the radically disorienting calling to hope in nothing and no one other than the God-Man Who is born to heal and fulfill all who bear the divine image and likeness. His human lineage shows that He came for people as conflicted, confused, and compromised as we are. They wanted to be like the other nations and endured exile in foreign lands as a result. We wander as aliens from the everlasting joy of His Kingdom whenever we put serving ourselves or any worldly goal before obedience to Him. Like Daniel and the three holy youths, it is time for us to refuse to worship false gods and to trust that our Savior will not abandon us to destruction in the lions’ dens and fiery furnaces of life in a world enslaved to the fear of death. Through prayer, fasting, generosity, and repentance, let us complete our preparation this week to receive the God-Man born for our salvation at Christmas, for He alone is our hope and the hope of the entire world. |
| Watching from his window, Fr Vladimir saw the holy hierarch visiting all of the buildings of the monastery proper wherein the brethren abided: the faraway barn house, the seminary building across the road.... And then, to his surprise, the steps again began to ascend the stairs; and again Archbishop John slowly walked the long corridors of the main building, and so continued throughout the whole night. In the morning, the Archbishop attended Liturgy, and blessed whomever came for the blessing. Hardly had Fr. Vladimir finished telling of his experience of the night before, when he said that at this moment he heard the familiar steps once again, and that now was my chance. If Blessed John should come into the office now, he said, I should ask him for prayers for my sick sister. He told me that upon meeting him I should make a prostration to the ground, ask his blessing, give the name of the sick person on a piece of paper, and give a little donation for the Archbishop " s orphanage. When I said that I had no money, Fr. Vladimir pulled out a couple dollars from his desk. Suddenly the door opened up behind me, and Fr. Vladimir called out with a joyful air, " Holy Vladika, bless us! " I turned around, and in front of me stood an extremely short, bent-over monk, with disheveled gray hair, with a black klobuk askew, and with a rather stern facial expression. In fact, his whole appearance was so stern, even fierce, as he stood right in front of me, with the cold winter air still emanating from him, that I shuddered. I knew that before me stood a saint coming from the other world and that here was a living martyr from crucified Russia. Although I knew very little about his life and had no specific knowledge of his miracles or ascetic labors, I felt that something raw and extraordinary was centered upon this frail, bent-over, yet energetic old man. Remembering the words of Fr. Vladimir about how I should address the holy hierarch, I fell on my knees before him, asking for his blessing, and in fear and haste I asked him to pray for my sister. |
| Herman’s attitude towards the aboriginal inhabitants of Alaska and the way in which he understood Russia’s relation to them is well worth attention. He wrote to the Governor of the colony: “The Lord gave this land to our beloved mother country like a new-born babe, who has not as yet any faculty to acquire knowledge, nor the sense to do so; because of its lack of strength and its infancy, it not only needs protection, but even support; but this it has as yet no ability to ask of anyone. And as Providence has made the prosperity of this people to depend, until some unknown date, on the Russian authorities … I, the humble servant of the people of this land, and their nurse, standing before you on behalf of all, do implore you, writing with tears of blood. Be our father and our benefactor. It is needless to say we have no eloquence. But with our inarticulate infant tongues we say to you: ‘Wipe the tears of defenseless orphans, cool the hearts which are melting in the fire of sorrow, help us to understand what joy is.’” Herman’s self-abnegation in his devotion to the Aleutian people was complete. A ship from the United States brought to Sitka a very contagious fatal disease, which spread from there to Kadiak. The plague ran its deadly course in three days. There were no doctors and no drugs on the island. The mortality was such that dead bodies lay unburied for days. Herman wrote of it in the following words: “I can imagine nothing more sad or more horrible than the sight I beheld on visiting an Aleutian kajem. It is a big barn or barrack with bunks, in which the Aleutians live with their families. It held about one hundred people. Some were dead and were cold already, but lay side by side with the living; some were in their last agony; their moaning and screaming were enough to rend one’s soul with pity… I saw mothers over whose dead bodies crawled little hungry babies.” And throughout this terrible epidemic, which lasted for a whole month, gradually declining, Herman never gave a thought to his own discomfort or danger. He stayed most of the time with the sick, tending them, praying with them, comforting them or preparing them to die as Christians should. |
| Barlaam Monastery, Meteora, Greece, showing the atmosphere created by a low ambient lighting. Photo by Andrea Kirkby Our modern age bombards us with visual and audio information. Its advertising pesters us to look outside of our hearts and seek contentment it accruing more possessions. Of all peoples who have existed throughout history it is surely the modern person who needs most to learn the art of stillness, watchfulness, interiority. Low level lighting plays an important role in creating this inner state. This sense of mysterious depth is traditionally reinforced by the use of blue -black or dark grey backgrounds in wall paintings, and rich but deep ochres for the figures. One might call this a Persian rug palette. Such a light-absorbent background reduces light reflection (which incidentally is a great help with a church brightly lit by large windows) while the warmer ochres of the drapery make the figures stand forward. The frescoed chapel of the Monastery of St Anthony and St Cuthbert, U.K., illustrating the quietening effect of a blue/black background. A place apart A church interior should give a sense to incomers that this is a special place, a sacred space, not separate from but nevertheless distinct from the world outside. If the lighting inside is as intense as daylight, or is just like a well-lit work place, then we have little reminder that this is a place set side. One can think of low lighting as an evocation of the sepulchre from which the resurrection light breaks forth, or the mouth of a spring from which gushes the water of life to “bring life wherever it flows” (Ezekiel 47:9). I recall the effect on visitors made by the small frescoed chapel of the Monastery of St Anthony and St Cuthbert in Shropshire, England when I lived there. The hermitage is high up and has breath-taking views, and yet people were invariably moved by the other form of mysterious beauty that they encountered within this small converted barn. Its low lighting, frescoes, wooden mosaic floor, and fragrances of incense and beeswax candles, all set it apart from a normal domestic interior. |
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