Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
Glory to Jesus Christ!
My brothers and sisters in Christ:
It is a glorious Feast! And it is always so when we remember our beloved Patron, who in this instance has intervened on our behalf to permit fair weather for his Feast Day!
Many of us will remember, some of us vividly, the process that we have gone through for what will in one more month be sixteen years of laboring together to establish a place for Orthodox worship in this area. We’ve researched, recommended, planned, visited, built, and maintained within at least four locations in that time frame. And through the prayers of St. Herman, we’ve been blessed to worship in a place as wonderful as this – a piece of heaven on earth, God’s house in Hudson.
Not so many of us will remember the process we underwent sixteen years ago when His Eminence gave us instructions to recommend to him possible selections for a Patron for our new community, while we were still under the Patronage of St. Thomas the Twin. There’s still a notebook on my bookshelf at home that contains the myriad of pages of lives of saints that the group present in 2004 read, studied, and met about, ultimately selecting three as instructed by His Eminence whom we recommended to him – St. Herman, St. Catherine the Great Martyr, and St. John the Theologian. It is the reason that to this very day, we honor all three of these saints in our closing benedictions from the ambo, for they were all selected as intercessors before the Lord on our behalf.
Having sent our list of three saints to Metropolitan Joseph, I think all of us who were members of the community at that time had a particular soft spot in our hearts, hoping that His Eminence would tell us that his selection was Saint Herman. It seemed from the very beginning that he was our favorite choice, and his inclusion in our petition list was unanimous. As it turns out, His Eminence tells us after the fact that he too had a hope that St. Herman would be the choice. His process? He put the names into a hat! St. Herman was selected, and we ALL “won” that lottery!
As we read from the Old Testament readings prescribed for tonight, one can’t help but imaging King Solomon visualizing Saint Herman as he wrote. “The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God.” “In the time of their visitation they will shine forth.” “The righteous live forever, and their reward is with the Lord.”
But the one which most catches my eye is, “For honorable age is not that which stands in length of time, nor that is measured by number of years. But wisdom is the gray hair unto men.”
Attaining an ‘honorable age’ is a goal that each of us seeks. Perhaps we might at first misunderstand that goal. But the attaining of an ‘honorable age’ is not the accumulation of years, just as the verse states. There are many who have attained great numbers of years, and yet remain without honor. Similarly, there are those who are comparatively young, and those who serve our country in its armed services come to mind here, who are honorable beyond their years.
We seek honor through wisdom. Proverbs Chapter 2 states this beautifully. “My son, if you receive my words, and treasure my commands within you, so that you incline your ear to wisdom, and apply your heart to understanding; Yes, if you cry out for discernment, and lift up your voice for understanding, if you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures; Then you will understand the fear of the Lord, And find the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom; From His mouth come knowledge and understanding; He stores up sound wisdom for the upright; He is a shield to those who walk uprightly; He guards the paths of justice, and preserves the way of His saints. Then you will understand righteousness and justice, Equity and every good path.”
Saint Herman is this to us. He is the model of the wisdom of God for us. He is the light that shines in the darkness of our world, showing us the way toward our Lord, if only we seek him as our intercessor.
Saint Herman lived a life that was in accordance with the Lord’s will and the Lord’s commandments. Archbishop Leo of Finland wrote this concerning Saint Herman: (He) manifested (Christ) in his words and deeds: love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control… And isn’t it true that in his saintly way of life he crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts. He lived in the Spirit and also walked in the Spirit. He was poor and therefore his is the kingdom of God. He hungered and was filled. He wept, and he shall laugh. Truly, his reward is great in Heaven. In the middle of the feast of St. Herman we have an opportunity to contemplate how we could become like him and finally like Christ.
On this day of remembering our Patron, let’s focus on his unending devotion to serving the needs of others. As you saw in today’s bulletin, St. Herman’s life after leaving Russia to make a new home on this continent was not exactly filled with the greatest human joys. But the one event we’ll call to attention here is his dealing with the epidemic that struck his spiritual children in 1819 – 200 years ago. Let’s ponder that event as we ask St. Herman’s intercession for our needs through the current pandemic that plagues our own homeland.
In 1819, a vessel coming from the US mainland brought with it a contagious disease. Theories suggest that it was most likely a form of the flu, but that whatever its form, it most often proved fatal to those who contracted it. The ship docked in Sitka, which at the time was called Novoarchangelski, “New Archangel” in English. From Sitka, the disease spread to Kodiak Island, about 650 miles away across the Gulf of Alaska. We can only imagine “how” the disease spread. Suffice it to say, it did.
For those who contracted the disease, it began with a fever, a heavy cold, and difficulty in breathing. Sound familiar? Ultimately, it ended with the person going into convulsions, and death occurred typically within 3 days.
On Kodiak Island, there was no doctor. There was no medicine. When one person contracted the disease, it spread through the whole village, and from there to neighboring areas. Unlike Covid, it affected everyone the same way, from infant to elderly. Many of the Aleut families were totally wiped out – entire families dead from the disease. Bodies of the dead remained in houses for many days because there were no able bodies available to bury as many as were perishing. The following is a testimony from one who was an eyewitness to the events:
I cannot imagine anything more tragic and horrible than the sight which struck me when I visited an Aleutian ‘Kazhim’ or village. This was a large building, or barracks, with dividing sections, in which the Aleuts lived with their families; it contained about 100 people. Here, some had died. Their cold bodies lay near the living; others were dying; there were groans and weeping which tore at one’s soul. I saw mothers over whose bodies cold in death crawled a hungry child, crying and searching in vain for its food. [...] My heart was bursting with compassion! It seemed that if anyone could paint with a worthy brush the full horror of this tragic scene, he would have successfully aroused fear of death in the most embittered heart.
And who was there to provide help and consolation under such circumstances? There was Father Herman. His spiritual son, Simeon Yanovsky, wrote this about what he witnessed in this time:
Here, some have already died and become cold. They lay beside the living. We and they saw others dying before our eyes. Their moans and cries were tearing the soul! Only the monk Herman tirelessly visited the sick, persuaded them to endure, to pray, to offer their repentance. Thus, he prepared the dying for death. The surviving Kodiak Aleuts became even more fond of their Father Herman, who, risking himself, proved his love during the disaster that befell them.
Unlike the times we are in now, this particular epidemic took so very many that it “burned itself out” within a month, gradually disappearing at the end. Throughout that time, Saint Herman’s efforts never waned. He visited the sick. He admonished them in their fear. He prayed with them. He brought them to repentance. He prepared them for death. He never had concern for his own health or well-being. It is said that St. Herman was the only Russian to visit the natives, the only one to care for them, the only source of consolation as they were dying.
All of this St. Herman did without concern for the perceived great personal risk he was placing himself into. As in all things in his life, he trusted in the Lord, Who blessed his efforts and sustained him as he brought peace and salvation to the many.
We have a calling here in Hudson that is not so very different from the one that our beloved Patron fulfilled so valiantly and faithfully in Alaska. We, like Saint Herman, are surrounded by a people who are thirsting to find the Lord. We, like Saint Herman, have been placed here by God to serve His divine will and His divine plan. In our own time, there are so very many who are living in fear of death at the prospect of contracting a disease that has been marketed to our society as the contemporary plague. Yes, it is true that in our country we’re approaching 300,000 dead from the disease. But it has not wiped out entire villages or cities. It is not responsible for decimating entire families. It is not fatal to people over the full spectrum of ages. By comparison, Covid is nothing in comparison to the epidemic of Kodiak 200 years ago.
Note carefully how our beloved Patron did not allow all of the horrors of the disease to prevent him from doing what our Lord had placed him there to do – to serve the Lord’s people. To do this requires only a few things: 1) faith in God’s providence to care for those who love Him; 2) faith sufficient to carry us into places too difficult for many to tolerate, but going there with the recognition that His will is to be done; 3) love of God sufficient to seek His will before my own.
And so, from this day forth, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all and fulfill His holy will.
Saint Herman, pray to God for us!
No comments:
Post a Comment