A sermon for the Sunday of All Saints of America, 7534/2026, from St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church in Winfield, PA, by Priest Paul Siewers.
Not too far south of here in the Susquehanna Valley in Pennsylvania, an American president 160-plus years ago began his famous speech about the bloodiest battle in the history of the Western Hemisphere in this way:
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
Today, we commemorate the fathers and mothers of the Orthodox Church, the pioneers who are helping to bring forth a deeper sense of America conceived in Liberty from the biblical principle that God created us according to His image, Jesus Christ.
Those spiritual forefathers and foremothers are All the Saints of America we commemorate today. Appropriately enough for this remembrance, it is Fathers Day also, and the start of the week in which our Church will be joining in the regional parade celebrating the 250th anniversary of that secular founding commemorated so famously by President Lincoln at Gettysburg. His original words according to historians included the prayer “that this nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom.”
That new birth, brothers and sisters, by the prayers of the saints, has come most fully in the Orthodox Christian mission to America of which we are a part. For the most important celebration of freedom of all time is happening right here and now today, and every Divine Liturgy, in the Eucharist, in which we give thanks and offer the gifts and ourselves to God, Who offers Himself to us.
Free today often has the commercial meaning of coming at no cost. But the real meaning behind that is that of a generous gift, a gift from God. God gives us the spiritual riches that underlie our blessings on earth. Chief among those blessings, exemplified by American saints from our St. John to St. Olga of Alaska, are the biblical virtues.
Those go by different names but most commonly the seven biblical virtues can be listed as wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, piety, and fear of God.
They are gifts from God that we can freely receive and freely give, in the essence of what it means to be free. For these seven virtues are also the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit described in Scripture. The last three from the Old Testament, knowledge, piety, and fear of God, take on the more familiar names in the New Testament of faith, hope, and love.
Part of the freedom God gives is the free will he gives us to open our hearts to these virtues, which as gifts of the Holy Spirit really are grace, the uncreated activity of God, in our hearts.
Every day we can make right choices, which in biblical terms are just choices, to find true freedom in our lives and for our country. This is freedom from sin, and freedom to make the voluntary choice to serve Truth, Who is Jesus Christ. And we and our families through those choices can be pioneers of Orthodoxy in America, through the prayers of the saints. This is not a game but a serious challenge, a joyful sorrow. Ultimately it is a life and death choice. And that is why we want to help bring our families and friends to Christ in the Orthodox Church.
About three decades ago a small group of nuns arrived from Greece amid winter snows in the western Poconos about an hour east of us. They began a small monastery in a farmstead, holding services in a house. Today their community has grown to be the largest Orthodox women’s monastery in North America. It draws pilgrims in large numbers from New York City and elsewhere regularly. Many of us have visited there, Holy Protection Monastery, whose name for the Mother of God indicates also how she, the greatest of saints, has become also rooted and planted in America, so to speak.
Those sisters, some still living and known to us, are pioneers of the new American freedom in Orthodoxy, and they were guided by their spiritual father, Elder Ephraim, a saintly monastic from Greece who ended up in America, where he founded 17 monasteries. Holy Protection even gave its name originally to our little mission. Later as we established the site of our temple we took St. John as our patron. He is a Russian saint who became an American saint in the same effort to found a new birth of freedom in America. St. John’s influence extends to many of our lives, including his mentorship of Blessed Seraphim Rose, an American priest-monk whose writings and translations of Orthodox works in English influenced many of us converts. This is all pioneer work in that new birth.
In Orthodoxy we find salvation in community, as a Church family, in the Body of Christ. Yet always there is the gift of God’s freedom.
The early Vikings and Anglo-Saxons adapted a pre-Christian term for this freedom, called wyrd, which is where we get our modern word weird from. It means the supernatural that is natural that is the source of our freedom, which is also kind of what even the secular Declaration of Independence means when it bases freedom in our Creation and gifts from God. Wyrd meant how each of us can exercise freedom in larger networks of spiritual life and salvation. An analogy for wyrd would be riding a surfboard. The wave carries us on, which can represent our right choices and the virtues of our forebears and community, but also in the Church all the pioneer work of the saints that backs up our life as an Orthodox Christian. We ride that wave. But we also can turn our surfboard to steer a bit on it. With God’s help, He guides us to turn wisely. When we fall, we fall into His arms.
The Gospel readings for today remind us not to be stressed, but to trust in God’s providence, to take each day step by step, little by little, to go with His flow. Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness or justice, and all needful things will be given unto us, our Lord reminds us. Worry not about our daily needs. Give us this day our daily bread, as our Lord’s prayer reminds us. That can be translated from Greek give us this day our essential bread, what we really need.
The saints of America remind us of this. Whether in frozen Alaskan landscapes or in the coal region of Pennsylvania, in often stark physical conditions and sometimes hostile martyrdom, they found their needs met in the freedom given by God through His graceful virtues. Those saintly virtues of uncreated energy buoy us up, they in effect float us through the trials and limits of our struggles. Like stars at night that sparkle also in our heart, let us nurture those virtues as the free gifts of God, follow them, and make them the guidestars of our choices, so that even if we fall or make a mistake, we can recalibrate our life with them again and go further, with God’s help.
Today the Gettysburg Address is less known than it once was, as times change.
But it still is more famous in the secular world than the nuns of Holy Protection or the Orthodox saints of America, such as St. Alexis Toth of Wilkes-Barre, Saint Olga of Alaska, and our Saint John.
Still, crowns and thrones perish, kingdoms rise and wine. The hidden history of the leaven of our Orthodox faith is the most important history at work in our land, and over time of the ages and ages it will endure and be the history fully revealed and made known at the Second Coming of our Lord. Brothers and sisters, this also is our true story, yours and mineOne of the meanings of Logos, the Greek name for Christ, is Story. In the beginning is the Story, and the Story was God… and the Story became flesh and dwelt among us, and we behld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
We live today in the Story Who is Jesus Christ with the saints of America. He is the true Story of our country and of every country on earth. May He give each day of our lives meaning and good energy in His uncreated grace, with the prayers of our fathers and mothers the Saints.
All Saints of America pray to God for us!
The Reading from the
Holy Gospel according to Matthew,
§18 [6:22-33]
The Lord said: ‘The light of the body is the eye. If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I say unto you, take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Therefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘Wherewith shall we be clothed?’ (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek.) For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.’
Holy Gospel according to Matthew,
§ 10 [4:25-5:12]
At that time, there followed Jesus great multitudes of people from Galilee and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem and from Judea, and from beyond the Jordan. And seeing the multitudes, He went up onto a mountain; and when He was set, His disciples came unto Him. And He opened His mouth and taught them, saying, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in Heaven; for so persecuted they the prophets who were before you.’