All Saints of North America

On the Second Sunday after Pentecost the Orthodox Church remembers the saints of North America. Orthodoxy here is still young, and still small — barely half of one percent of the population. And yet, in a little over two centuries, this soil has already borne remarkable fruit: missionaries, bishops, and martyrs whom the Church now numbers among her saints.

The Church's mission has always reached toward the ends of the earth. For two thousand years the Gospel has crossed seas and borders, taken root in new languages, and raised up saints in every land it has touched. North America is one of the most recent of those lands.

Saint Herman of Alaska Saint Innocent of Alaska Hieromartyr Juvenal of Alaska Saint Peter the Aleut Saint Raphael of Brooklyn Saint Tikhon of Moscow Saint John (Maximovitch) of Shanghai and San Francisco Saint Mardarije of Libertyville Saint Sebastian (Dabovich) of Jackson

Alaska: where it began

Orthodoxy first came to North America not from the east but from the west — across the Pacific, with Russian monks who reached Alaska in 1794. Chief among them was Saint Herman of Alaska (†1836), who settled on Spruce Island near Kodiak. He had no rank and sought none; the native Aleut people simply called him apa — "grandfather." He defended them against exploitation, cared for orphans, and lived a life of such gentleness and prayer that he became the beloved father of a whole people.

A generation later Saint Innocent (Veniaminov) served as the first bishop of Alaska. A scholar as well as a pastor, he learned the native tongues and translated the Scriptures and services into Aleut, so that the people could pray in their own language. He was later made Metropolitan of Moscow, and the Church remembers him as "Enlightener of the Aleuts and Apostle to America."

Alaska also gave the Church her first martyrs on this continent: the monk Juvenal, killed while preaching in 1796, and Peter the Aleut, a young layman tortured to death in Spanish California in 1815 for refusing to abandon the Orthodox faith.

From the far north to the whole continent

As Orthodox Christians spread across the United States, so did the Church's witness. Saint Raphael of Brooklyn (1860–1915), the first Orthodox bishop consecrated on American soil, traveled tirelessly to gather scattered faithful, founding nearly thirty parishes and shepherding immigrants who had no church to call home.

Saint Tikhon, who served the American mission before returning to Russia and being elected Patriarch of Moscow in 1917, would go on to confess Christ under Soviet persecution. And in our own time the Church glorified Saint John (Maximovitch) of Shanghai and San Francisco (†1966), a bishop famous for his ceaseless prayer, his care for orphans and the poor, and the wonders worked through him; his relics rest incorrupt in San Francisco. Among the most recently glorified are the Serbian missionaries Bishop Mardarije and Archimandrite Sebastian, canonized in 2015.

What their lives teach us

Two things stand out in these saints. The first is the way they brought the faith: not by imposing a foreign culture, but by learning the language and the life of the people among whom they lived, so that Orthodoxy could become truly their own. The second is that the measure of the Church is never its size. These holy men and women remind us that what matters is not numbers but holiness — faithfulness to Christ, whether one is a grandfather on a remote island or a bishop in a great city.

The Orthodox Church in North America has grown both through immigration and, increasingly, through those who come seeking the ancient, unchanging faith. However it grows, its future rests where it always has: in the saints, who show us that this continent, too, can be a place of sanctity.

The feast we keep

The Church does not number her saints only one by one. On the First Sunday after Pentecost she keeps the feast of All Saints — for the Spirit who descended on the Apostles has gone on bearing the same fruit of holiness in every age. And on the very next Sunday, the Second after Pentecost, many local Churches honor their own: the saints of a particular land. So it is that the Orthodox Church in America keeps this day for the Saints of North America, just as the Church of Russia, of Greece, of Serbia, and of Georgia each honor theirs.

To keep such a feast is to confess something hopeful: that holiness is not confined to far-off centuries or distant countries, but has taken root here, in our own soil and our own time. These were not legendary figures of a golden age. Some of them died within living memory; their photographs survive; their relics can be venerated in Kodiak, in San Francisco, in Pennsylvania, and in Illinois. They walked the same continent we walk, and they show that the path to God is open from exactly where we stand.

And so we do not merely admire them — we ask their prayers. The saints of this land are our elder brothers and sisters and our intercessors before God, and the feast is the Church's invitation to make their faith our own.

"Let us love God as these saints loved Him."

Written for Saint Nina Orthodox Mission. Adapted from, and with thanks to, Fr. Bill Olnhausen's reflection "All Saints of North America" on Fr. Bill's Orthodox Blog.