1. The Significance of the Lives of the Saints
|
| St. Justin Popovic |
In
order to begin to understand the importance of the
Lives of the Saints for our spiritual lives, I
believe we can turn to no better or more thorough
source than St. Justin Popovich's
Introduction to his own compilation of the
Lives of the Saints. A theologian, St. Justin saw no
dichotomy between the Lives of the Saints and the
theological writings of the Church. For him, as for
the Church, theology and the Lives of the Saints form
one whole. He called the Lives of the Saints
"experiential theology" or "applied
dogmatic theology," and he viewed them and wrote
about them in a theological manner. Likewise, he
viewed theological writings as an expression of the
experience of the life of Grace in the Church, and
not just an intellectual, abstract or polemical
exercise.
How does St. Justin view the Lives of the Saints
theologically? At the center of all of St. Justin's
thought is the Theanthropic vision: the fact that
God became man in Jesus Christ, uniting human nature with
Divine Nature. The fact of the God-man, the Theanthropos,
is the axis of the universe: it is the reality according
to which everything else must be viewed, whether it be the
nature of the Church or the problems and issues of
everyday life.
Thus, when St. Justin looks at the Lives of the Saints, he
does so in the light of the God-man. Real and true
life—eternal life in God—became possible only
with the Incarnation, death and Resurrection of the
Saviour, and this life is the Life of the Saints. St.
Justin saw the Lives of the Saints as bearing witness to
one life: the Life in Christ.
St. Justin wrote: "What are Christians? Christians
are Christ-bearers, and, by virtue of this, they are
bearers and possessors of eternal life.... The Saints are
the most perfect Christians, for they have been sanctified
to the highest degree with the podvigs of holy
faith in the risen and eternally living Christ, and no
death has power over them. Their life is entirely Christ's
life; and their thought is entirely Christ's thought; and
their perception is Christ's perception. All that they
have is first Christ's and then theirs.... In them is
nothing of themselves but rather wholly and in everything
the Lord Christ."[1]
The Saints live in Christ, but Christ also lives in them
through His Divine Energies, His Grace. And where Christ
is, there is the Father and the Holy Spirit also. Christ
says, Abide in Me, and I in you; and elsewhere He says,
If a man love Me, he will keep My words: and My Father
will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our
abode with him (John 15:4; 14:23).
Thus, St. Justin makes bold to say that the Lives of the
Saints not only bear witness to the Life in Christ: they
may even be said to be the continuation of the Life of
Christ on earth. "The Lives of the Saints," says
St. Justin, "are nothing else but the life of the
Lord Christ, repeated in every Saint to a greater or
lesser degree in this or that form. More precisely, it is
the life of the Lord Christ continued through the Saints,
the life of the incarnate God the Logos, the God-man Jesus
Christ Who became man."[2]
This is an amazing thing that St. Justin is saying: when
we read the Lives of the Saints, we are reading the Life
of our Lord Jesus Christ. This in itself should be enough
to convince us of the importance of filling our souls with
the Lives of the Saints.
St. Justin also says that the Lives of the Saints are a
continuation of the Acts of the Apostles. "What are
the 'Acts of the Apostles'?" he asks. "They are
the acts of Christ, which the Holy Apostles do by the
power of Christ, or better still: they do them by Christ
Who is in them and acts through them. "And what are
the 'Lives of the Saints'? They are nothing else but a
certain kind of continuation of the 'Acts of the
Apostles.' In them is found the same Gospel, the same
life, the same truth, the same righteousness, the same
love, the same faith, the same eternity, the same 'power
from on high,' the same God and Lord. For the Lord
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for
ever (Heb. 13:8): the same for all peoples of all
times, distributing the same gifts and the same Divine
Energies to all who believe in Him."[3]
With these words of St. Justin before us, we might well
ask ourselves if Orthodox spiritual life is even possible
without the testimony of the Lives of the Saints. The
answer to this, I believe, must be "no." True
spiritual life begins when we live in Christ and Christ
lives in us, right here on this earth. And the Lives of
the Saints bear witness to us that the Life of Christ on
earth did not end with His Ascension into Heaven, nor with
the martyrdom of His Apostles. His Life continues to this
day in His Church, and is seen most brilliantly in His
Saints. And we, too, in our own spiritual lives, are to
enter into that continuing, never-ending Life.
I spoke recently to an Orthodox priest who had converted
to Orthodoxy from Protestantism. He told me that, when he
was received into the Church, the officiating priest told
him: "You will never be truly Orthodox without
reading the Lives of the Saints." Later, when he
himself became a priest, he found that the most pious
people in the churches are those who read the Lives of the
Saints, and that those who make the most progress in the
spiritual life are those who read the Saints' Lives.
The Orthodox Faith is not, first of all, of the head.
First of all, it is of the heart: it is felt
and believed by the heart. Through the Lives of the
Saints, we develop an Orthodox heart. Our monastery's
co-founder, Fr. Seraphim Rose, emphasized constantly this
"Orthodoxy of the heart," especially in his
writings and talks at the end of his life; and he
frequently referred to Lives of the Saints as a means of
developing this.
2. How to Make Use of the Lives of the Saints
Having looked at the importance and meaning of the Lives
of the Saints, let us look now at the various ways we can
make use of them in our spiritual lives.
First, we look to the Saints as our examples. Be ye
imitators of me, even as I also am of Christ (I Cor.
11:1), the Saints say to us along with the Holy Apostle
Paul. As Christians, we want to grow in the likeness of
Christ, to have that likeness shine in us. For this to
occur, we need to look often to the Saints to see that
shining likeness: we must look to them for real, practical
examples of how to live. St. Basil the Great gives this
analogy:
"Just as painters, in working from models, constantly
gaze at their exemplar and thus strive to transfer the
expression of the original to their own artistry, so too
he who is eager to make himself perfect in all kinds of
virtue must gaze upon the Lives of the Saints as upon
statues, so to speak, that move and act, and must make
their excellence his own by imitation."[4]
Secondly, we must look to the Saints as our heavenly
friends, as our brothers and sisters in the Faith, and as
our preceptors. We read about them not as people who are
dead, but as people who are living. And this is even more
immediate than just reading a biography about someone who
is still alive. Let's say we are reading the biography of
some famous living person. As we read it, we may dream of
perhaps one day meeting this person, or perhaps of writing
him a letter and having it actually reach him, and even of
receiving a reply from him, despite the fact that he is so
famous that thousands of people are probably writing to
him. Reading the Lives of the Saints offers us much more
than this, because the Saints are alive in God, and are
not bound by time and space in the same way we are. We can
address them in prayer immediately and at any time, even
right in the middle of reading their Lives. And they will
hear us. Besides our private prayers to them, the Church
offers us many other ways of communing with them as our
friends and honoring them as our preceptors. We sing their
troparia, we venerate their icons, we perform services to
them, and with a blessing from our Bishop we can even
compose services in their honor.
As we read the Lives of the Saints each day, we will
discover little by little those Saints whom our hearts go
out to. They will become our close friends, those whom we
pray to most of all, those in whom we confide our joys and
sorrows. As Archimandrite Aimilianos, the present Abbot of
the Holy Monastery of Simonos Petras on Mount Athos,
writes: "These close friends will be the guides of
our choice and a great comfort to us along the strait and
narrow way that leads to Christ. We are not alone on the
road or in the struggle. We have with us our Mother, the
All-Holy Mother of God, our Guardian Angel, the Saint
whose name we bear, and those close friends we have chosen
out of the Great Multitude of Saints who stand before the
Lamb (Rev. 7:9). When we stumble through sin, they will
raise us up again; when we are tempted to give up hope,
they will remind us that they have suffered for Christ
before us, and more than us; and that they are now the
possessors of unending joy. So, upon the stony road of the
present life, these holy companions will enable us to
glimpse the light of the Resurrection. Let us search,
then, in the Lives of the Saints, for these close friends,
and with all the Saints let us make our way to
Christ."[5]
St. Justin Popovich, as we have said, called the Lives of
the Saints "applied dogmatic theology." The
Saints are proofs and illustrations of the reality of
Christ, of His saving work of redemption. The Saints are
transformed human beings, proof positive that people are
redeemed, purified, illumined, transformed and recreated
by Jesus Christ.
St. Justin also calls the Lives of the Saints
"applied ethics." They are embodiments of the
life of Divine virtue that is possible only in Jesus
Christ. They are embodiments of the life of Grace in the
Church, through the Holy Sacraments, through the
life-giving Body and Blood of the Lord.
Fr. Seraphim Rose once counseled a budding Orthodox writer
to make use of the Lives of the Saints as "applied
dogmatic theology" and as "applied ethics."
Fr. Seraphim said that, when one is writing on a spiritual
subject, one should try to not only discuss it in the
abstract, but to give living examples from the Lives of
the Saints. Fr. Seraphim wrote to his fellow Orthodox
writer: "If I have any suggestion for your future
articles, it would simply be to keep in mind the Lives of
the Saints. In your article, there is a point that would
be more forceful by references to the life of the author
of the citations, who is a Saint. You quote St. John of
Kronstadt on 'love'—but he is not merely a great
Orthodox Saint of this century, he is a very incarnation
of the love he talks about, and there is scarcely to be
found a parallel in the Lives of other Saints to his
absolute self-crucifying love and service to others,
blessed by God in the manifestation of an abundance of
miracles that can only be compared to those of St.
Nicholas."[6]
3. An Example of How to Make Use of the Lives of the
Saints
I will now attempt to implement Fr. Seraphim's advice
here. In speaking about how to make use of the Lives of
the Saints, I will give the example of a Saint who made
use of them to an astounding degree. This is Fr.
Seraphim's mentor, and the Bishop who blessed the
establishment of our Brotherhood: St. John Maximovitch,
Archbishop of Shanghai and San Francisco.
Archbishop John was born Michael Maximovitch in the city
of Kharkov in southern Russia in 1896. As a boy he
collected religious and historical books, and loved above
all to read the Lives of the Saints. Being the oldest
child, he had a great influence on his four brothers and
one sister, who knew the Lives of the Saints through him.
When he was eleven years old Michael was sent to the
Poltava Cadet Corps (military academy). When he graduated
in 1914, he wished to attend the Kiev Theological Academy.
His parents insisted, however, that he attend Law School
in Kharkov, and out of obedience to them he put away his
own desire and began to prepare for a career in law.
It was during his university years that the Orthodox
education and outlook which Michael had received in his
childhood came to maturity. Young Michael saw the point of
this upbringing. He saw that the Lives of the Saints, in
particular, contain a profound wisdom which is not seen by
those who read them superficially, and that the proper
knowledge of the Lives of the Saints is more important
than any university course. And so it was, as his
classmates noticed, that Michael spent more time reading
the Lives of the Saints than attending academic lectures,
although he did very well in his university studies also.
One could say that he studied the Orthodox Saints
precisely "on the university level': he assimilated
their world-outlook and their orientation toward life, and
studied the variety of their activity and ascetic labors
and practice of prayer. He came to love them with all his
heart, was thoroughly penetrated by their spirit—and
began to live like them. Many years later, during the
sermon he gave when he was consecrated a Bishop, he said:
"While studying the worldly sciences, I went all the
more deeply into the study of the science of sciences,
into the study of the spiritual life."
In 1921, as the Russian Civil War was raging,
Michael—then twenty-four years old—was
evacuated with his entire family to Belgrade. There he
entered the University of Belgrade, from which he
graduated in 1925 in the faculty of theology. A year later
he was tonsured a monk in Serbia and was given the name
John, after his own distant relative, St. John Maximovitch
of Tobolsk. During the same year he was ordained a
hieromonk.
For five years Hieromonk John was a teacher and tutor at
the Seminary of St. John the Theologian in Bitol, Serbia.
The city of Bitol was in the diocese of Ohrid, and at that
time the ruling bishop of this diocese was another future
Saint: St. Nikolai Velimirovich. St. Nikolai valued and
loved the young Hieromonk John, and exerted a beneficial
influence on him. More than once he was heard to say,
"If you wish to see a living Saint, go to Bitol to
Father John."
One of the seminarians who was at the Bitol Seminary at
that time recalls: "Bishop Nikolai often visited the
seminary and spoke with the teachers and students. For us
his meeting with Fr. John was unusual. After mutual
prostrations, there was an unusually cordial, loving
conversation. Once, before parting, Bishop Nikolai turned
to a small group of students (of whom I was one) with
these words: 'Children, listen to Fr. John; he is an angel
of God in human form.' We ourselves became convinced that
this was the correct characterization of him. His life was
angelic. One can rightly say that he belonged more to
Heaven than to earth. His meekness and humility were like
that recorded in the Lives of the greatest ascetics and
desert-dwellers."
By this time, it had indeed become evident that Fr. John
was an entirely extraordinary man. It was his own students
who first discovered what was perhaps his 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; yet it is not unknown in the Orthodox tradition
of the Lives of the Saints. In the fourth century, St.
Pachomius the Great of Egypt was told by an angel to have
his monks follow this practice.
In 1934, Fr. John was consecrated a Bishop in the Russian
Church in Belgrade, and he was assigned to the diocese of
Shanghai in China. The first thing he did in Shanghai was
to restore Church unity, establishing contact with the
Serbs, Greeks, and Ukrainians. He paid special attention
to religious education. He actively participated in
charitable activities, especially after seeing the needy
circumstances in which the majority of his flock, refugees
from the Soviet Union, were placed. He organized a home
for orphans and the children of needy parents. He himself
gathered sick and starving children off the streets and
dark alleys of Shanghai's slums: Russian children, Chinese
children, and others. The orphanage housed up to a hundred
children at a time, and some 3,500 in all.
It soon became apparent to his new flock that Archbishop
John 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 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.
Then it became known that Archbishop John 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 was
a great miracle-worker. There are many, many firsthand
accounts of both his clairvoyance and his miracle-working,
which show him to be equal to the great Saints of ancient
times. On more than one occasion, he was seen surrounded
in the Uncreated Light of deification while praying.
In 1949, the Communists took over China. Archbishop John
was forced to evacuate his flock, including his entire
orphanage. He brought 5,000 refugees to camps in the
Philippines. He 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 to St.
John. Later he was assigned to Western Europe, and then to
San Francisco, where reposed in 1966.[7]
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 ascetic, 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 would express 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.[8]
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 helped 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 his people from captivity, in the
tradition of St. Moses the God-seer. 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 serving 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."[9]
4. "Remember the Saints of God"
It should not be thought that, after his formative years
at the Cadet Corps and at the University of Belgrade, St.
John finished his profound study of the Lives of the
Saints. Quite the contrary: he continued to learn about
the Saints right up until the time of his repose.
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 would descend
into the crypts under cathedrals where, according to his
long lists of information, the Saints had been buried. He
would sing troparia and kontakia written on pieces of
paper which he would pull out his pockets, imploring the
Saints to intercede for the city. And only then would 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.[10]
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 icon, 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 VelichkovskyPaisius Velichkovsky, Elder. He
mentioned having compiled (when in FrancFrancee) a list of
Western pre-schism Saints, which he presented to the Holy
Synod."[11]
In particular, St. John Maximovitch, Archbp talked to the
brothers in the shop about St. Alban, St.n, 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, England.
St. Albans near, London in which he 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 Rose 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 Maximovitch, Archbp'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 of them,
making them known to others by speaking of them and
printing them—and by praying to the
Saints."[12]
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."[13]
5. The Call to Sanctity
In remembering the Saints of God according to the
testament of St. John, we must always remember, as he did,
that each one of us is called to be a Saint.
The Saints, says St. Justin Popovich, are the most perfect
Christians, who have been sanctified to the highest
degree. The Saints, says St. John Maximovitch, are those
who show forth in themselves a height of righteousness and
are filled with the Grace of God to such an extent that it
flows from them upon those around them. Both St. Justin
and St. John are saying the same thing. The Saints are
deified human beings, who are filled with the Grace, the
Uncreated Energies of God, and who live the Divine-human
life of Christ in the Church.
Every Orthodox Christian partakes to some extent of this
Divine-human life. St. Justin Popovich writes:
"Christ's life is continued through all the ages;
every Christian is of the same body with Christ, and he is
a Christian because he lives the Divine-human life of this
Body of Christ as Its organic cell.
"Life according to the Gospel, holy life, Divine
life, that is the natural and normal life for Christians.
For Christians, according to their vocation, are
holy." To become completely holy, both in soul and in
body—that is our vocation. This is not a miracle,
but rather the norm, the rule of faith. "Having
united themselves spiritually and by Grace to the Holy
One—the Lord Christ—with the help of faith,
Christians themselves receive from Him the Holy Energies
that they may lead a holy life."[14]
It is our task as Christians, then, to acquire more and
more of this Divine-human life, to go deeper and deeper
into it, to grow more and more in the likeness of Christ,
to be filled with more and more of his Grace. Perhaps we
will never acquire such Grace as was seen in St. Nicholas
the of Myra in Lycia, St. Sava of Serbia, St. Seraphim of
Sarov, St. Nektarios of Pentapolis, or St. John of
Shanghai and San Francisco, but we are called to be
growing toward such an overflowing measure of Grace.
If we have much further to go in the spiritual life, we
are not alone: even the greatest Saints had further to go.
"Sanctification admits of degrees," explains
Constantine Cavarnos. "The sanctification or
perfection of a human being attained even in
theosis [deification] is not complete during this
life. It is an 'unfinished perfection,' as it is called in
the Ladder of Divine Ascent by St. John
Climacus."[15]
Furthermore, spiritual perfection or holiness is not even
complete in the other world; it grows endlessly in the
life to come. St. Symeon the New Theologian, himself a
deified human being, writes concerning this: "Through
a clear revelation from Above, the Saints know that in
fact their perfection is endless, that their progress in
glory will be eternal, that in them there will be a
continual increase in Divine radiance, and that an end to
their progress will never occur."[16]
6. Overcoming Doubt and Discouragement
The Saints of God—the martyrs and ascetics,
miracle-workers and apostles—truly did accomplish
those great feats which we read about in their Lives. If
we have underlying doubts regarding the veracity of these
accounts, we should acquaint ourselves more thoroughly
with the Lives of Saints who lived in times close to our
own—Saints like Archbishop John of Shanghai and San
Francisco—so that by seeing what is possible in our
own times through the power of Christ, we may believe in
what occurred through that same power in the remote past.
St. Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain, in his Introduction to
The New Martyrologion, discusses this in connection
with the New Martyrs of the Church: "The antiquity of
the period during which the early Saints lived, the long
time that has intervened from then to the present, can
cause in some, if not unbelief, at least some doubt and
hesitation. One may, that is, wonder how humans, who by
nature are weak and timid, endured so many and frightful
tortures. But these New Martyrs of Christ, having acted
boldly on the recent scene of the world, uproot from the
hearts of Christians all doubt and hesitation, and implant
or renew in them unhesitating faith in the old Martyrs.
Just as new food strengthens all those bodies that are
weak from starvation, and just as new rain causes trees
that are dried from drought to bloom again, so these New
Martyrs strengthen and renew the weak, the withered, the
old faith of present-day Christians."[17]
What St. Nicodemus says about the relevance of the New
Martyrs to contemporary Orthodox Christians can, of
course, be applied to all the other orders of modern
Saints: hierarchs, missionaries, monastics, etc.
Even if we do not have doubts concerning the veracity of
the Lives of the Saints, we may come up against another
stumbling block: discouragement that their feats of
asceticism and faith are beyond us. If we ever experience
this, we must pray for more humility. As Archimandrite
Aimilianos of Simonos Petras says, "Reading about the
exploits of the Saints discourages only the proud who rely
on their own strength. For the humble it is a chance to
see their own weaknesses, to weep over their insufficiency
and to implore God's help."[18]
St. John Climacus tells us: "The man who despairs of
himself when he hears of the supernatural virtues of the
Saints is most unreasonable. On the contrary, the Saints
teach you supremely one of two things: Either they arouse
you to emulation by their holy courage, or they lead you
by way of thrice-holy humility to deep self-contempt and
the realization of your inherent weakness."[19]
As we study the Lives of the Saints, humility must be our
safeguard. We need to soberly apply what we read to
our own conditions and circumstances, realizing our own
infirmity, not thinking too much of ourselves, not
dreaming of ascetic feats that truly are beyond us.
As Fr. Seraphim Rose used to say, we must take spiritual
life step by step, and not expect to make one great leap
into sanctity.
At the same time, however, we must not make excuses for
ourselves, as if we are somehow separated from the Saints
by some eternally unbridgeable gulf. The Saints are our
fellow Orthodox Christians. The Saints have lived, and
still live, the same life in the Church that we live. They
are sinners like we are, but they have borne the fruits of
repentance and have been transfigured by Christ. They are
more perfect than we are, but we are called to seek their
"unfinished perfection" as God gives us
strength.
May St. Justin Popovich be a guide to us in understanding
the theological significance of the Lives of the Saints,
and may St. John Maximovitch be an example to us of how to
make us of the Lives of the Saints in our own spiritual
lives. The Saints are called stars in the spiritual
firmament. May we, by remembering the Saints of God, also
begin shine in that firmament. And by making the Saints
our friends and preceptors now, may we have them as our
heavenly companions in the never-ending Kingdom of Light.
Amen.
From The Orthodox Word, Vol. 37, No. 6 (221,
Nov.–Dec. 2001), pp. 261-281. Copyright 2001 by the
St. Herman of
Alaska Brotherhood, Platina, California. Used
with permission.
