A
healthy Christian country will produce saints.
Such a statement is not likely to be gainsaid by Protestants, Roman Catholics,
or Orthodox. But what does this word
mean? What is a saint? Do all three have the same thing in mind?
They
do not.
The
Protestants, in their reductionist tendency, have made all Christians saints.
For
the Roman Catholics, it is a matter of legalism (acquiring an excess of merits,
etc.):
In Catholic theology, the term ‘Saint’ is reserved
for those individuals who have led a holy and exemplary life and have now
entered Heaven.
For
the Orthodox, saintliness is more than trusting in Christ to save us from the
Father’s wrath (Protestants) or keeping His (or the Pope’s) commandments (Roman
Catholics). St John Maximovitch says,
"Holiness
is not simply righteousness, for which the righteous merit the enjoyment of
blessedness in the Kingdom of God, but rather 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 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."
A
saint, in the Orthodox understanding of the word, is a man or woman who has
achieved his end in this life: the
acquisition of the Holy Ghost, union with the Uncreated Grace that flows from
Him. There is no greater accomplishment
than this for a man, thereby making the saints the greatest fruit that any
national culture can bring forth. If a
people is not bearing Orthodox saints, it is not living in its full maturity,
whatever else they may be producing, whether literature, paintings, trillions
in GDP, or what have you.
The
saints of a nation, in fact, are the most perfect expressions of its
folkways. Being both born and raised in
that particular culture and also thoroughly filled with God’s Grace, all that
is good in their native culture will shine with an unclouded light in their
lives. But without the saints, national
identity is distorted or forgotten:
At no time in the history
of Western nations has the rediscovery of Western holiness been so important.
The saints carry the soul or spiritual identity, the 'hypostasis', of each
people they come from. It is no coincidence that at a time when the saints of
Western Europe have been forgotten, the nations of Western Europe appear to be
losing their identities in globalizing movements.
--Fr Andrew Phillips, http://orthodoxengland.org.uk/oe10000.htm
Furthermore,
the saints of a nation are the surety for the salvation of the whole
people. They are their kinsmen; they
know their customs, their strengths and weaknesses. But in addition to this, they have attained
holiness, healing of soul and body, the Grace of the Holy Ghost. They are thus faithful guides who show their
countrymen how to do the same, i.e., how to overcome sin and be united to God. By their life and teaching, they have
fashioned a ladder for each of their respective peoples to ascend to God. It is the height of folly and disrespect for
us to kick them away and try to fashion new ones from our own imaginations. Only by honoring them, learning how they
lived, and walking in their ways can we hope to see a long-lasting Christian
revival in the West:
Among others, St. John
Maximovitch of Shanghai and San Francisco strongly encouraged the renewed
veneration of the saints and martyrs of Orthodox England, reminding the
faithful that it is only through the prayers of the saints of their land that
the Church will be restored there . . . .
--Fr Geoffrey Korz, Saint Herman Calendar 2010: Orthodox Saints of Anglo-Saxon England, Platina, Cal., p. 54
As Fr. Spyridon
recalled, St. John [Maximovitch] 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.(3)
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 Velichkovsky. He mentioned having
compiled (when in France) a list of Western pre-schism Saints, which he
presented to the Holy Synod.” (4)
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.
--Hieromonk Damascene, http://www.pravmir.com/a-true-student-of-the-saints/
Fr
Andrew adds,
The restoration of
the veneration of the saints of the West would lead to a threefold restoration:
The restoration of
the unity in diversity of the Trinitarian God worshipped by the saints.
The restoration of
the principle of the Incarnation of the Son of God, of the Life in Christ.
The restoration of
the knowledge in the West of the Holy Spirit Who proceeds from the Father and
comes through the Son.
The restoration of
the veneration of the saints, the spiritual founders of the West will bring
with it the restoration of the nations of the West in the knowledge that we are
now in the latter times, for our preparation for what is to come can only come
through the saints:
'And white robes were
given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest
yet for a little season, until their fellow-servants also and their brethren,
that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled'.
Rev. 6, 11
Remembering
the saints is not an optional extra for Christians. It is an integral part of the life in Christ,
of the journey toward salvation - for individuals, families, and nations. In the narrower sense of national identity,
it is also imperative: Sweden without
the veneration of St Sigfrid is not truly Sweden; France without the veneration
of St Martin is not truly France; Switzerland without the veneration of St Gall
is not truly Switzerland; etc.
The
South has Lee and Jackson, Simms, Timrod, and Hayne, Taylor and Charles Carroll,
and others like them. They are blessings
in many ways, men of great virtue and character whom we would do well to study
and imitate. But they are not saints. We do not pray to them; we do not ask
salvation or miracles of them. If those
in Dixie wish to have a Christian future, they must turn their inner eyes back
to the lands of their forebears in Western Europe and Africa, rediscover the
saints they loved and venerated, and bring that same love and devotion for them
to their own homes and churches on this side of the Atlantic.
Aeneas,
in a praiseworthy act of heathen piety, took his father’s household gods with
him as he fled from Troy to Rome. The
South, in an act of Christian piety, ought to do the same with the veneration
of the Orthodox saints of her forefathers.
Those saints are unquestionably a part of the Southerner’s inheritance -
an extremely important part.
Lord
Jesus Christ, through the prayers of our holy mothers and fathers, save us
sinners here at the South, unworthy though we be!
--
A
deeper look at a national saint:
Hieromartyr Boniface,
Archbishop and Enlightener of Germany
June 5 (+754)
St. Boniface, the greatest
of the missionaries to Germany, was an Anglo-Saxon born in Wessex. His missionary labors on the continent
covered a vast territory: West Frisia
(present-day Netherlands), the lands of the Hessians and Thuringians in the
center of Germany, Bavaria in the southeast, and part of Austria. Here he encountered and overcame virulent
paganism, which included human sacrifice, magic, and demon worship. A turning point occurred when he felled the
Oak of Geismar, which was sacred to the Germans. It fell at one light stroke of his axe, which
convinced the Germans that his God was more powerful than the gods they
worshipped. He established a network of
churches, monasteries for men and women, and bishoprics, in order to establish
and disseminate the Faith; and he and his companions traveled throughout the
countryside adding members to the Body of Christ. He was martyred in old age in Doccum
(Netherlands). His relics are now in
Fulda, Germany, both in the church and in the Cathedral Treasury.
--Saint Herman Calendar 2006: Saints of the German-Speaking Lands,
Platina, Cal., p. 46
--Holy icon
of the Mother of God, Queen of Germany, with St Boniface (right) and St
Matthias the Holy Apostle (left), whose relics rest in Trier. From the St Spyridon Skete in Germany, http://www.spyridon-skite.de/40578/40717.html
--
All
editions of the Saint Herman Calendar
referenced in these posts are available at https://www.sainthermanmonastery.com/product-p/cal_back.htm
--
Holy
Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!
Anathema
to the Union!
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