28th Sunday after Pentecost; Sunday of the Forefathers

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen. So, here we are two weeks away from our Nativity and hearing the Gospel which is essentially preparing us and guiding our hearts and minds to the feast. And I think one of the themes in the Gospel was: are we going to follow, or are we going to first hear and then follow the call of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ so that we can participate fully in the feast? It also happens that this day is the feast day of Saint Spyridon and Saint Herman of Alaska. So here we are—Father Herman and Father Spyridon—have been laboring together for 16 or 17 years. I think I’ve been here for 45 years, but we’ve been laboring together, and Father Herman has been absolutely devoted to building up our parish and making it possible and doing all the things that you don’t notice and many things that you do notice, but most of them go unnoticed. And therefore the thanks that he has comes from heaven on high, and may God bless and sanctify Father Herman in his struggle for salvation. And we have of course a Saint Spyridon, and you know me pretty well, and I have many facets to my personality—some good and some a little bit, you know, maybe not so good. But so I just wanted to say something about a little bit about Saint Spyridon and Saint Herman.

So Saint Spyridon was very early. The dates are basically from 250. He was born in AD 250 and lived perhaps to 336, and he was a shepherd, and so he tended his flocks. And shepherding was—as we also know about the shepherds who were attending their flocks waiting for the Nativity—shepherding was a night job, actually, because the dangers for your flocks came at night to snatch away your sheep. And so this is an amazing thing. So the shepherd had to be attentive and alert during the night and in order to see whether these wolves or other enemies would come and steal away the sheep. And it’s a wonderful analogy, is it not, of the shepherding of the flock of the Holy Church? Namely, that we should in times of darkness pray intensely and ask for God’s help and guidance because we know that in times of darkness we can lose our path.

So Saint Spyridon, the way he managed to stay awake and alert was he prayed. He prayed unceasingly and continuously, and the grace of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ lifted him up, and he became—he was always very pious, but he became very, very pious and became a wonder-working saint who healed and helped people. He was also an almsgiver. He was married and he had children, and he was an almsgiver, and so there are so many examples of this. I mean, one example which I always like very much—it’s very dramatic—is that a person came to him. There had been heavy rains and the seed had been washed out of the ground, and he needed to buy more seed. And there was a wealthy man in the area who had seed that he could buy, but the man was very, very stern and unforgiving, and he wouldn’t allow him to borrow the seed under the promise that the man would return it after that season, that growing season, when he gathered in his harvest. And so this man came to Saint Spyridon and he begged him, “Saint Spyridon, help me, help me, please help me.” And Saint Spyridon had a good thought, and he went with the man into his garden, and there was a little garden snake slithering along in the garden. And Saint Spyridon reached down and he took this little snake by the tail and lifted it up, and it became solid gold. And so he gave it to the man, and he said, “Take this to the fellow who has the grain and use it as a deposit, as a surety for your pledge to return it.” And so he did, and the man got his seed and he had a plentiful crop, and he went and then paid the man with the wheat and got the golden snake back, and he brought it up to Saint Spyridon—and Saint Spyridon took him into the garden and put the snake back in the garden, and the golden snake turned to a living snake just like it had been before he had picked it up and slithered off into the garden.

So we have these wonderful—even raising a person from the dead and miraculous healings—but he was a very simple man. So the first Ecumenical Council came, and it was in 325, I think it was—right?—325, First Ecumenical Council. And all the bishops were called to the Council. Here, Saint Spyridon, who is an extremely simple man and dressed—he didn’t have fancy vestments and robes to wear and so on—but nevertheless, he got a horse and he went to the Council. And there’s really great—he went with another person. One of the people had a white horse, the other had a black horse. And, you know, even though wonderful things happened to the Church, human beings being human beings had a great deal of pride, you know, and so on. So when Saint Spyridon was on the way, he and his attendant stopped in an inn. They tied up their horses in the stable and they slept. And when he came back in the morning, the horses were decapitated. And the reason for this is that basically there were those who felt that Saint Spyridon, being so simple, was an embarrassment to the grandeur of the Council of these famous and wonderful, you know, elevated bishops, and so they were trying to stop him from coming.

Well, Saint Spyridon saw this terrible thing, and he took the head of the black horse and pushed it up against the trunk of the white horse and prayed, and it was healed. And they took the head of the white horse and put it against the black horse—I think I’ve got that right—anyway, he switched them and the horses healed. So they, you know, they girded up their horses and got going and went to the Council. And of course this left many people spellbound: how was this possible? And of course we know anything with God and with His power and His strength is possible.

So fast forward to the Council’s meeting, and they’re dealing with the heresy of Arius. And the heresy of Arius was essentially a denial of the Incarnation. And there was a great debate, and many very important people spoke. And here’s little Saint Spyridon, very humbly arrayed in his various vestments and so on, listening to the speeches and the philosophy and the theory and this and that. And he became impatient, and he picked up a brick, and he went and stood in front of them. And he said—and as he held the brick, out of it came fire and then water, and dust was in his hands. He said, “Even as this brick is made up of three substances, so then so our Holy Trinity is three in one.” And of course people were spellbound, as you can well imagine. Can you imagine this elderly saint holding up a brick and fire comes out of it, and then water comes, and he holds his hand and it’s dust? And so he was a very—he was an amazing person.

And this is very personal, too, you know, for me, because when Matushka and I were—you know, we were at this point at the University of Hampshire—we were—I had—we both finished our degrees, and we were headed for seminary. It was Holy Cross at the time. And two things happened actually on our way to going to seminary. Already at that point, I hadn’t really—I knew almost nothing about the Orthodox Church, but I was very serious—as both of us were very serious about our faith and our prayer—and we had many questions. So the seminary was in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and they had housing right on the campus for married students without children. And so we borrowed a van and got it all packed up at the end of August and went down to take possession of our apartment. And a man came down from one of the—from the third floor—and helped us unload the van and then invited us for tea. And we went into his apartment, and there was an icon corner with three lamps burning—I mean, it was an amazing icon corner. And there was my first encounter with Orthodoxy. Well, that’s the prelude to what really—the next thing.

So then, can you imagine, just by chance, right? We were assigned an apartment downstairs from this Oneida Trail—it was actually a Swindon, Martin Broken Leg—and here he had already—was a third-year student, had already decided to become Orthodox and had icons and so on. Anyway, he took us to a monastery in Brookline. It took me—monastery in Brookline—and they had, you know, a room with icons in it. They mounted icons and so on. And then I was looking at all the different icons and, you know, all kinds of saints, the Mother of God in many, many different poses, and our Savior and feast days and so on. And my eyes fell upon the icon of Saint Spyridon. I think this is amazing. In fact, I don’t know what it was. I just loved the icon of Saint Spyridon. And I thought, “Well, I’m going to get the icon of Saint Spyridon.” Very simple. It’s—this is not the same icon, but it was a very simple icon when all these others are so elaborate and beautiful. And the monk who was attending to me, he said, “Well, you know, is that your first icon?” I said, “Well, yes, it is.” He says, “Well, I think you should get the Mother of God, because in the Mother of God you get our Savior and the Mother of God. That’s two for one.” And he said, “Then you can get Saint Spyridon later.” And I thought, “Well, that’s an interesting argument, but I really like Saint Spyridon, so I’m going to purchase Saint Spyridon.”

So anyway, we got back to—Father Martin and I got back to the seminary grounds, and we went into the same entry. He went up to the third floor, and I went into the second-floor apartment, and I put the icon on a shelf which is like a mantle. And the room filled with the odor of sanctity—the most pure, beautiful incense odor that you can imagine—and no smoke. And I was just—as you can well imagine, I couldn’t believe it. I kind of knew that something was going on. So I sat in a chair for maybe five or ten minutes, and the air was sparkling. I thought, “I just got to go upstairs and tell Martin about this.” So I left the door ajar—I must have gotten up three or four steps—I thought, “Maybe this isn’t for him.” So I went back into the apartment, and it was gone.

And so I’ll give you one more. So what happened? My dear wife was teaching in Arlington at that time. Were you teaching? Lexington, that’s right, excuse me. She’s teaching in Lexington, and there was a fellow staff member there, James Thomas Angelsley, who was Greek actually. And so, you know, here we are, we started the summer and the fall, and then Christmas comes. And the principal of the school where Matushka taught had a Christmas party, and I was invited to go along, and I met James Thomas. And, you know, he was very interested in me because I was at seminary, and he was obviously very pious, a Greek Orthodox Christian. And so in the conversation I sort of said to him, “James, do you know anything about Saint Spyridon?” And he said, “Saint Spyridon?” I said, “Well, what do you know?” He says, “I went to his feast day in Corfu some years ago, and it was just amazing. I got to the church quite early, and I was very upfront and very near the center. And at the end of the Divine Liturgy they processed his incorrupt relics out of the church. And when the relics went by me, it changed my entire life. I suddenly became very aware of my responsibilities in prayer and love of God. And from that time on I’ve tried to be as faithful as I can.”

So these are my Saint Spyridon stories. And of course the Ecumenical Council, but that’s the best. And he has a lot of—and so today we also celebrate Saint Herman of Alaska. And I don’t know if Father Herman’s ever thought of it the same way, but so what happened? So Saint Herman of Alaska is from the 1700s, actually, and lived into the 1800s. And here he was at the Valaam Monastery in Russia, and then he went to another monastery, and then finally he was sent to America as part of a mission. And what had happened is those traders, people who were trading in furs, discovered Alaska—I mean, obviously it was right there, right across the Bering Strait—but they discovered Alaska, and they discovered that it was tremendously fruitful ground for harvesting of beavers and seals and mink and all kinds of other animals. And a very big trade opened, and then a mission started there in the area of Kodiak, Alaska. And it turns out that with the mission, more and more Russians went in, and there was a tremendous commerce going on. And unfortunately, as we know, there are different types of people in the world. And many, if not most, of the traders and so on were really tough people, and they were often very cruel to the Aleut Indians and basically enslaved them and forced them to labor on their behalf with very, very little to support them.

And so Saint Herman and others—but Saint Herman—were sent to establish a mission in Kodiak, and he was there. And it turns out that he had been prepared, and once again there’s a serious similarity to Saint Spyridon. Saint Herman, I think, in their beginnings, because Saint Herman was a simple man in many ways, but a man of devout faith and tremendous prayer. And so he was part of this mission, and he was profoundly loved by the native people, and he did everything he could to protect them from the cruelty of the traders and to give them education and bring them into the Church. And he wasn’t the only one, though. Saint Innocent was there at the same time. But nevertheless, the Aleuts converted in the thousands—I mean, one number at one point was over 7,000 that are already converted. And Saint Innocent had translated the Divine Services into whatever the Aleut languages were, and so they had the services. And Saint Herman was very much a part of this.

And here’s an amazing thing, because here’s this holy monk who loves the silence of prayer, and yet he would go into the places where people ate and where they gathered and so on. He would even play chess with people in order to have an opportunity to engage them in conversation and to develop a relationship of kindness and gentleness and love in order to draw them into the circle of those who are trying to promote the holy faith. And so, and then finally, and later on, he withdrew to Spruce Island, which is about a mile off the shore of Kodiak, and then had a monastery. So what he had done—so his missionary work, which was really very personal in the flesh, became deeply and profoundly spiritual.

And I have never been to Kodiak, but I’ve heard that it’s out there on the ocean, and it’s a difficult place to live. The winters are fierce and violent, and here he lived. And nevertheless, in spite of all of the separation from the land, many, many people would come on pilgrimage. They would take the chances to cross the one mile of water that often was very agitated with the winds and cold, and they would come to Saint Herman. And there they would hear his voice, and they would hear his instructions and receive his blessings and return to the mainland as different people.

So today we venerate Saint Spyridon and Saint Herman, and may God bless Father Herman, and may He bless this holy parish, and may He be with us throughout the Feast of the Nativity, which is coming up in 13 days. And I hope that all of you will be able to arrange everything so you can be here for the feast. And then the celebration on the feast will be at midnight on Friday night, and the celebration will have—at three o’clock in the afternoon we have Festal Vespers, and we have a telling of the Christmas story to the children. And then we do Christmas carols, and we have a nice day. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.