Saint John the Wonderworker

Enough people have asked me the same question that I can see it is on most people's minds: How is it that the Hermitage has ended up in the Russian Orthodox Church? I mean, a Franciscan monastic community (Roman Catholic) in the rainforests of remote Haiti and now in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Haiti? How does that happen? This is what our attorney, who dropped us from his practice for that reason, wanted to know: "Why did you do that?!"

The question comes from several directions, I perceive.. Among people who were formed in the 1950s (as the Sisters and I were), the Russians were the enemy and undoubtedly evil. Bob Dylan captured it with one sentence: "I've learned to hate the Russians all through my whole life" ("With God on our Side," 1964). The leopard doesn't change his spots, I am told. But I'll leave that question to others, pointing out that the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (the ROCOR), who recently celebrated their centennial in this country, came to that conclusion — that the Soviet Union was evil — long before Americans did.

But this whole conversation is wrong-headed. For when one sets out to find God, it must not be through a political calculus, it must not be through social customs and their associated values, it must not be on account of familiarity or convenience. If the Gospels contain one, ringing message throughout its four volumes, it is this: God came into the world, so we would know Who He Is and, its corollary, so we would know who we are. You see, these are questions of identity, famously deep and difficult questions of identity. So it must not be the familiar that we seek. It must be the Divine. And while God was present with us on the earth, He taught us repeatedly that we must forsake the world in order to follow Him. "You lack one thing," He says to those who inquire. "You must turn your back on the world. And Follow Me", .... follow Him through this earthly life and on to the Kingdom of Heaven, we pray. His command is, "Follow Me!" There is no other way! .... though many have exhausted themselves trying to find one.

He founded the Church to be an alternative to the world. The Apostles made this point clearly. Followers of the Way were to renounce earthly property and to place all in the common fund for everyone's welfare. For the Church, founded by God Himself upon the Apostles and endowed with Divine properties, is a life-giving alternative ..... and a healing and cleansing refuge if one has fallen back into its muck. And let's face it. Almost all of us do.

If the Church does not have these qualities: authentic, holy, healing, and cleansing, then it is not the Church. I have said many times. When Jesus founds the Church, breathing it upon the Apostles, the first Sacrament or Mystery He gives is Reconciliation. Cleansing. The Church must be cleansing. For God Himself is pure.

I suppose the first thing one learns about the Hermitage, is that it represents journey — starting in the Roman Catholic Church, taking refuge in the Anglican Church, and finally arriving to Holy Orthodoxy, which is the only Church actually and historically founded by the Lord Jesus. You know, the Roman Catholic Church was part of, one-fifth of, the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. In 1054 it split off to establish its own (and eventually very different) Church.

My experience of the first two of these Communions was as a widely traveled priest who got to know roughly a dozen dioceses, mostly Roman Catholic. The atmospherics from one diocese to another were mostly the same, and that "same" was little different from the world outside the parishes and chanceries. Priests striving for holy life were a rarity. Most priests did not like to be near devout parishioners, whom they regarded as "religious fanatics" (said in private). The bishops I met were, by and large, businessmen, not mature spiritual elders. Not men you approached for the deepest wisdom. And the spaces said to be "sacred" tragically were devoid of any feeling of holiness.

I will not go into the "elephant in the room" ..... only to say that the problem grows worse, measurably and demonstrably worse.

Without question, we sought the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia initially as a refuge. But once we were well established in it, and we had acclimated ourselves, we discovered that our new Church, indeed, was authentic, holy, healing, and cleansing. We discovered that our bishops were holy men and were selected for consecration purely on that basis. We discovered that our priests were sincere, devout men having devout people all about them and in relationship with them. They were the exemplars leading forward on the quest for God. We discovered that the ROCOR's worship spaces were mysterious places with the Divine palpably present.

I visited the Church of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk in San Francisco. It is a wonderful variegated place. It was once the orphanage founded by our Saint today, St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco. It was established for his orphans from Shanghai and from other places. But it is also a church, and near the entrance to the nave, of course, on an analogion is an icon of the Most Holy Theotokos. But this icon had a fragrance .... roses. And I stooped down to view it sideways (for I saw cotton filling with a liquid on its bottom edge) and it was dripping with holy myrrh. The icon itself had become a yielding fountain of holiness.

Now, there was no news team present with microphones and cameras. There was no van out front having a satellite dish on top. No one was broadcasting this astonishing fact to the world: that here on a residential street in San Francisco were palpable evidences of God's grace .... visibly verified, its fragrance detected. But none of these things of the world were present. In fact, there was nothing of the noise the world to be found in this holy place. There was simply quiet holiness doing what the holy does: being. The holy does not do. The holy is. Being. Unstoppable, inexorable being. I thought of e.e. cummings description of life-transforming love:

For me, that perfectly captures the scene in the Soviet Union as our beloved-Church-in-exile left. All the policemen in the world executing 100,000 clergy and persecuting and killing many millions.

Isn't this the description also of the source of all authentic Love, which is God. Perhaps no one is mindful of Him. He is silent and quietly present. His Divine properties cannot be amplified nor hurried. Yet, it is the greatest force in the world which no one and nothing can hold back or resist. We became aware of this quality of Russian Orthodox life. May I venture to say that the Sisters and I had never experienced anything like this on a sustained basis. Yes, we have experienced holiness. We have seen the Divine. But it is this quiet, present, sustained experience which was new.

Several years ago, Metropolitan Jonah, the retired Patriarch of the Orthodox Church in America (now in the ROCOR) visited us for a week-long retreat. He told as that when he was a monk of the Russian Orthodox monastery at Valaam, in northern Russia, he, along with others charged with the rebuilding of the great monastery, explored the old buildings as through a great ruin. Passing by a door, he noticed the faint scent of roses. And when he opened the door, he was enveloped by a great cloud of grace. For stacked on shelves in a cupboard, he found icons, crosses, and other sacred vessels — all dripping with myrrh.

I myself lately journeyed to a neighboring island to visit the Church of the Iveron Icon of the Mother of God in Kailua on Oahu. And there I witnessed the incommensurably holy Presence of the Mother of God in her aspect of a Myrrh-streaming Icon.

You know the Orthodox teaching on icons. There are many icons of the Most Holy Theotokos: the Icon of the Sign, the Hodegetria, the Tenderness Icon, the Oranta Icon, and so forth. It is our circumstances that account for the variety and differences. But She is always One. Changeless. And mysteriously She is Present in each. When you approach an Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos, you have approached the Mother of God.

I bowed deeply and petitioned Her to heal my body (which is constantly being injured as we continue to build the monastery, and my soul and my mind stricken with an infarction of the basal ganglia within my brain. Instantly, I felt something inside me. And then, during the subsequent days and weeks, I noticed, and the Sisters noticed, that I had been substantially healed from the effects of my stroke. Glory to God!

It is right to relate these Presences of undoubted grace throughout the Russian Orthodox lifeworld. I have descrined Valaam near Finland and Honolulu and San Francisco. But I would be remiss if I did not speak of our Diocese, which is itself a Presence of Holiness stretching over thousands of miles. As all who know him do, we revere His Eminence, our Archbishop Kyrill. We love him as the Protector and Spiritual Father of the Hermitage. And we follow his example as he rightly bows to another who is the Spiritual Father of our Diocese: Saint John the Wonderworker, Saint John of Shanghai and San Francisco.

Resting incorrupt in our Cathedral Church — the Holy Virgin, the Joy of All who Sorrow — St. John continues to preside still as Archbishop, but also as a glorified Saint praying for, sustaining, and attesting the fullness of the Church as an instance of the Kingdom of Heaven. This is much more than an idea if you are there with him. It is an overwhelming fact.

The first day I arrived to the Cathedral, I went straightway to his shrine and prayed. And then I went back every day during my five-day sojourn. I prayed thanksgivings for being granted the privilege of approaching him as his own priest, a priest of the Diocese. I asked him to intercede for my many unworthinesses. I asked him to pray for others on my daily list. And then I prayed for certain practical things.

Days later, I met a priest from South America. He had traveled thousands of miles for this same privilege. (We were all there to observe the 30th Anniversary of the Glorificaion of St. John.) My Spanish is very fragmentary, but as we shared our love of Saint John, the Reverend Father, pointing to the great saint, said, "Mas rapido."

I had heard this about St. John before. "Watch what you pray for," it is said. "For St. John gets right down to business." Things happen fast.

I was present when he was moved from his place at the north side of the Cathedral from beneath the gold ciborium of his shrine, so he would preside over the approaching Akathist and Liturgy visibly at center. At the height of those services, with hundreds of rapt men and women and their children present, with many having tears streaming down their faces, and with powerful feelings sweeping up and down my spine, I experienced what Prince Vladimir's delegates must have felt, reporting after they had returned from Hagia Sofia:

I cannot forget the beauty of my Church. Not just when the great bells of the Cathedral rang out the Creed with two choirs raising up their voices — one from Jordanville and one from the Cathedral — and all the people were singing. And tears were streaming down my face. (And I experienced the majesty of Church Slavonic.) There was that beauty. And there are the many, incommensurable beauties of our Church. And like those delegates I cannot find it anywhere else in the world ..... though God knows I have tried. Not only the visible beauty but also the mysterious, invisible quality that is seen everywhere in the Russian Orthodox lifeworld. For where else do you find ..... I have recited this litany to the Sisters many times: What else do you find .....

Why did I discover it so late in life? I suppose it is so I can return to my many brothers and sisters in the faith and tell them what I have seen and heard and smelled and touched.

Oh yes, and during the months following my pilgrimage to his shrine, the practical things for which I prayed have all come to pass. I do not doubt that he was with us every step of way. For our place in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia is itself a miracle.

This is the way we venerate St. John the Wonderworker, St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco on his feastday. For through him and under his spiritual episcopal care, we have been touched by God. We have been changed ..... or our world has. But, as W.B. Yeats has written, "How can we know the dancer from the dance." And now our lives at the Hermitage have become a thing of miracles. You see, we have pushed back the world. And the Divine things which were always there in a sense begin to stream myrrh.

I recall the words of Fr. Nectarios, Guardian of the Hawaiian Myrrh-streaming Iveron Icon: "When it becomes the day-to-day duty to live so close to Her, one constantly has to be watchful not to lapse into a 'day-to-day' mindset." For to live with the incommensurably holy is to be holy. And that is an unceasing discipline.

Yes. One need go no further than the Gospel According to St. Mark to attest this all-too-human fact — not seen among angels, but all too familiar among humans. Living so close to God day-to-day and for so long, Jesus' disciples often lapsed into less-than-holy men.

But this is the nature of theosis: to journey toward the holy, to find it in its fullness, and to be watchful lest holy life slip away. But let us state this in the positive sense. We Christians strive for holy life. We find it in its fullness with the constant assistance of the saints to whom we pray, and especially on this day, to the mas rapido saint, St. John the Wonderworker. And we do as he did. We fix our minds and our eyes and our all upon the Lord. We expect a miracle every day, for that is the nature of life with God. And we pray ceaseless prayers of thanksgiving. I am sure each of us wakes up every morning in bed, makes the sign of Cross, and gives thanks for many blessings .... of being who we are, being granted our religious vocations, being placed in this holy Hermitage, and many, many other things .... blessings too many to count.

Intercede for us St. John, for you are our own eternal Spiritual Father and glorified Saint embracing an aching and needful world. With Jesus, "Come quickly!"

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.