Save as PDFSermon On the Sunday of All the Saints Who Shone Forth in the Rus Land
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ!
Today, by celebrating the memory of all the Saints, who shone in Rus, the Holy Russian Orthodox Church opens in front of us our native spiritual Heaven. These Saints truly shine for us as bright stars in the night sky, and the first among them is St. Vladimir!
The Saints of North America from Russ.
Many determine today’s feast as that of “All the Russian Saints of Rus”. This is not exact. Today’s feast honours the Saints of a huge multinational territory, which stretches from the borders of Poland to the Sea of Japan and from Karelia to Alaska… Their nationalities are not only Eastern Slavs, but also Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Germans (for instance, St. Procopius of Ustyug was from Northern Germany, as was St. Martyr Grand Duchess Elizabeth (Romanoff), Hungarians (St. Moses Ugrin, the monk of Kiev-Pechersk Lavra), Italians, a certain number of baptized Tatars and Aleuts (Martyr Peter Aleut, Jacob Netsvetov, the first Aleut priest, and his Matushka Olga).
Today’s feast was instituted in 1918, at a time when the terrible persecution of the Church had started in Russia. Because of the oppression, the Church deemed it to be important to have a church feast, enabling the faithful to turn to the Saints for intercession, protection and, indeed, survival.
As we know now, the number of Martyrs from the Soviet yoke, probably, exceeds the number of Martyrs of the first three centuries of persecution of Orthodox Christians throughout the world. In the 20th century Russia became a battleground of good against evil, and yet, by the 1940’s, people knew that the Church would survive; they continued to believe in this even into the 1960’s, when the head of the Soviet State, tyrant Khrushchev, announced that he would destroy the Church by the end of that decade… Instead, it was him, who was destroyed… Today atheism’s rule is defeated in Russia. The present Russian leader is a faithful Orthodox Christian, who has a chapel in his home; nowadays about 85% of the citizens of the Russian Federation are baptized. This is a real and well-observable miracle of God!
Times have now changed, but the Church is unchangeable and immutable: in our time (as it was before), even in a foreign land (as well as in our own), we learn from our Church and its best representatives how to conduct the truly Orthodox way of life. Maybe we cannot fulfill everything physically, as our forefathers did, but psychologically we can and we should continue to participate in the Church life, in spite of the fact that sometimes our life is strained, and we have to work intensely hard, and that our tempo sometimes goes mad. Look attentively around and you will see: even non-Orthodox are now coming to our churches and accepting our Faith and its way of life.
Today, in Canada, we have a chance to offer thanksgiving for the Saints who ministered in the Old world, as well as to those Holy men and women who settled this continent, country, and province and literally built our church a hundred years ago. They sought to guarantee a future of peace and mercy by making real the presence and work of the Holy Spirit in their lives.
Some of them have been revealed by the Lord as Saints and intercessors. Among them are St. Herman of Alaska, St. Alexis Toth, St. Jacov Korchinsky (the first rector of our cathedral), St. Patriarch Tikhon, and most recently, St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco (Great Wonderworker and the Healer, who walked among us. Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of this Great Saint’ glorification and 50th years since his departure. Today we have a Holy Relic and Icon of him in our church!).
All of the above mentioned Saints have given us something profound. Regardless if we are third or fourth generation of Ukrainians, Russians, Romanians etc., or Orthodox Canadians, or new immigrants, or the converts to Orthodoxy, we all share the same Faith, the same witness and love from our Lord. «Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb.13:8), so is our Faith in His Saving Grace, revealed in our own homes!
May this Sunday of the Saints, who shone in Rus, serve as the beginning of our new life, which will bring us to the Eternal Life! Amen!
July 3rd, 2016.