The Shepherd, April 2009
EVIDENCES OF THE SAINTLINESS OF ST PHILARET THE NEW CONFESSOR
OF NEW YORK
THE FOLLOWING EXCERPT from an interview with our correspondent, Xenia Endres-Nechin, is taken from a posting on the “Historical Studies of the Russian Church Abroad” website.
“I used to keep a journal of some of the stories. Here is another one: [Metropolitan Philaret related:] ‘I knew a boy once – we were at school together – who, when he was much smaller had been frightened in a thunderstorm in St. Petersburg and ran for shelter to the house of St. John of Kronstadt. While he was there, a woman came in with a sick daughter. She beseeched the saint to entreat God for her seriously ill daughter’s recovery. St. John took hold of the child, embraced her tightly, and prayed fervently to God for several minutes. The way he prayed was interesting, for he prayed boldly yet humbly, demanding from God her bodily health. And when he gave the child back to her mother, the girl was well. So you see that we must pray with faith, knowing that God will hear our prayers.’ The interesting thing was that he told me this story when I was feeling weak in faith, though I hadn’t said anything to him about my problem. He seemed to always know what I was thinking. He predicted that I would get married and did not recommend monasticism for me. About the ways of God, Metropolitan Philaret told me, ‘Be careful not to talk about God as if everything He does could be understood by us or as if He thinks as we think. Some things are a mystery to us and will remain so; therefore, do not put words into God’s mouth, for we do not know everything.’ (on the Sunday after Sretenie [The feast of Meeting of the Lord], 1983). Perhaps the most dire prediction for all of us, and the Mokhoffs would remember this too, was on his namesday in 1984 when he predicted that he would not live to see his next namesday. We wept. He also predicted that Fr. Nikita would not live long after his repose. Both predictions came true.”
THE COMING MONTH
THIS YEAR, according to the Orthodox Church Calendar, the month of April begins right in the middle of Holy or Passion Week, on Holy and Great Tuesday, and so we enter the month just as we celebrate the Saving Passion of the Lord and His Resurrection from the dead. As a consequence of this, all the Sundays in the month have, as it were, a double resurrectional emphasis. Ever Sunday in the year (with two exceptions) is a commemoration of the Lord’s Resurrection. Each is the Lord’s Day, the day when He triumphed over death, and as the eighth day of the week, a forefeast of our own resurrection. However, in the forty-day long festival of Pascha (Easter), each Sunday also brings to our attention some aspect of the Lord’s Resurrection.
The first, being on eighth day of the feast, commemorates the Holy Apostle Thomas (see article above), who on that day met the Risen Christ, and recognized Him not only as risen from the dead, a thing he had staunchly refused to believe before, but as his Lord and God. The second commemorates the Myrrh-Bearing Women, who became the first to declare the truth of the Saviour’s arising.
Thereafter, we have three Sundays during which the Gospel readings at the Divine Liturgy elucidate the significance of the Resurrection of Christ in our spiritual lives. After all, even given the historical truth of the Resurrection, if it is simply an event of the past and has no significance for us, then it is a dead letter. Many events happened in the past - Julius Caesar was stabbed to death, Henry VII gained the crown as Bosworth, Napoleon was exiled to St Helena, Queen Victoria first used the phone in 1878, Lloyd George was articled to a firm of solicitors in Porthmadog - they were all important people in history, but we do not celebrate these events week by week, because they have little or no significance for us. But the Resurrection of Christ, though it happened two thousand years ago, and in a far distant land, is the foundation of our Faith and of our Hope.
Not only do we place our hope for the future life on this truth, but more immediately we have it as the basis of our hope for resurrection in this life - resurrection from the spiritual paralysis of sin and the recovery from the malady of our passions. The three Sundays which follow the Myrrhbearers, that of the Paralytic, which falls in April this year, that of the Samaritan Woman and that of the Blind Man (which fall in the church month of May) speak to us of this resurrection within the span of our earthly life. That resurrection is our purpose in being Orthodox Christians. In becoming Orthodox we have come to a Hospital in order to receive treatment and healing. Just as, in the world, one would not go and stay in a hospital to study Danish, to enjoy the food, or appreciate the beauties of nature, any other reason for being within the Hospital that is the Orthodox Church would be nonsensical.
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