An homily for the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost at St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco Russian Orthodox Mission Church in Winfield, PA, by Priest Paul Siewers.
St. John of Kronstadt whom we commemorate today was a modern Russian saint who brought traditional Orthodox Christian holiness into contact with an economically challenged urban population and shaped a vibrant parish community that transformed many lives by the grace of God. His example stands as an alternative reality to the Russian Revolution that erupted 9 years after his repose in 1908. Today he is an example and intercessor for those of us Orthodox Christians who find ourselves amid new forms of anti-Christian trends. It is appropriate that his feast is also today on the 40thanniversary of the glorification of the new martyrs and confessors of Russia who suffered under communism, a recognition of the huge suffering that followed the establishment of an atheistic system contrary to St. John’s life. Our patron, St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco, recognized the importance of St. John of Kronstadt’s life and example, and worked tirelessly for this other St. John’s glorification. For St. John of Kronstadt also prophesied the coming Russian Revolution as evidencing the spirit of anti-Christ.
But he did much more than that. Crowds flocked to worship services at his Church because of his holiness. His prayers healed many. So many attended that he had to perform public confessions in which the crowd of worshipers would call out confession of their sins, because there were too many to do individual confessions. This is what early Christians did. Yet his ministries also reached out through providing lodging for the homeless, a school, and workshops to help employ the poor and train them in work. He exemplified an Orthodox Christian economy so to speak, of the Church family as a larger community household. We would do well to attend today in our own troubled times. Let us hear what he had to say about putting spiritual life first, in his wonderful book My Life in Christ.
He writes: “Brothers! What is the purpose of our earthly life? It is this: after the trial of earthly sorrows and misfortunes, after our gradual advancement in virtue through the divine gifts of grace given to us in the sacraments, we may rest after our death in the Lord, Who is the peace of our souls. That is why we pray for the dead in the following words: ‘Give rest, O Lord, to the soul of Thy departed servant.’ We wish him to rest in peace…. Is it not, then, unwise to grieve too much for the departed? ‘Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest’ (Matt 11:28), says the Lord. Our departed ones, who have fallen asleep in a Christian death, hear these words of God and come to him and obtain rest. Why then do we grieve? Those who are trying to lead a spiritual life have to wage a most subtle and difficult warfare in their thoughts every moment of their life. This is spiritual warfare. They must be entirely awake, every moment, ready to notice every evil thought entering their souls from the evil one and to repel them. Such people must have hearts always burning with faith, humility, and love; otherwise, the cunning devil will quickly invade them, leading to lessening of faith or complete loss of faith…. Do not, therefore, allow your heart to become cold, especially during prayer, and avoid stony insensibility in every way possible. Very often a person prays only with the lips, but his heart is wounded by weak faith or complete lack of faith…. During our prayers, the evil one uses every weapon he has to make our hearts cold and incline them to evil in ways we do not even notice. Pray and strengthen yourself; guard your heart.
“If you wish to ask God to grant you any good thing in prayer, then before praying prepare yourself with undoubting and firm faith, and guard yourself in advance against any doubt or unbelief. It will go ill with you if, during the prayer itself, your heart wavers in its faith and does not stand firm in it. In that case, do not expect God to honor your petition, offered with a doubting heart, for you have offended the Lord, and God does not give His gifts to a nonbeliever. ‘And whatever things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive’ (Matt 21:22), said the Lord. Therefore, if you ask with doubt or unbelief, you shall not receive. ‘If you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “Move from here to there,” and it will move’ (Matt 17:20). Therefore, if you doubt and do not believe, you will not be able to do this. ‘But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind,’ says the Apostle James, ‘for let not that man suppose that he will receive anything of the Lord. He is a double-minded man, is unstable in all his ways’ (James 1:6–8). The heart that doubts that God can grant its petitions will be punished for its lack of faith: it will be painfully tormented and constricted by doubt. Do not anger Almighty God even by a shade of doubt, especially if you have already experienced God’s omnipotence many, many times. Doubt is blasphemy against God, an insolent lie of the heart, a falsehood of the lying demon, concealed in the heart, against the Spirit of truth. Fear it as you would fear a venomous serpent—or no, what am I saying? Ignore it; do not pay the slightest attention to it. Remember that God, during your petition, is waiting for your affirmative answer to the question He inwardly asks you: ‘Do you believe that I am able to do this?’ To which question you must from the depth of your heart reply, ‘Yes, Lord’ (Matt 9:28)….. Let the following considerations also help you in your doubt or unbelief: (1) The good things that I ask of God must be real, not imaginary or fanciful, since everything that exists receives its being from God, for ‘without Him nothing was made that was made’ (John 1:3). This means that nothing happens without Him, and everything has either received its being from Him, or comes about by His will or His permission, by means of powers and faculties given by Him to His creatures. God is the all-powerful Master over everything that exists or occurs. Moreover, ‘God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did’ (Rom 4:17). Therefore, had I even asked for that which does not exist, He could give it to me by creating it. (2) I ask of God what is possible, because what is impossible for us is possible for God. This means that there cannot be any difficulty even in this respect, for God can do for me even that which I consider to be impossible. It is our misfortune that our faith is hindered by the nearsightedness of our reason—a spider that catches the truth in a web of assessments, logical arguments, and imprecise analogies. Faith embraces and understands in a moment, while reason arrives at the truth by tortuous ways. Faith is the communication of one spirit with another, while reason is the communication of carnal mind-sets. The first is spirit; the second is flesh. All the blessings of the soul, that is, all that constitutes true life, peace, and the joy in the soul, come from God! This is my experience. This is what my heart tells me. You, O Holy Spirit, are a treasury of blessings!”
Such hope, faith, and love evident in St. John of Kronstadt’s life and his many ways of ministering to suffering people, first of all came from his Orthodox Christian faith. His virtues were uncreated energies of God flowing to those who came to him faithfully seeking Christ. The new life he showed people through the Gospel was a kind of Orthodox Christian school of economics, combining messages from our Gospel Readings today, of the Golden Rule and the Parable of the Sower. The Sower is Christ, and when his seeds fall on good ground, they spring up and bear fruit a hundredfold. Our Lord said, the seed ‘on the good ground are they that, in an honest and good heart, having heard the Word, keep it and bring forth fruit with patience.’ Brothers and sisters, let us be that good ground in our hearts. A century before St. John of Kronstadt another prophetic saint warned by contrast of the terror ahead from worldly economics. St. Athanasios of Paros, aroused by the specter of the French Revolution and Napoleon’s spread of its worldly religion, cautioned that “To you who are within the ark of God, our Holy Church, to you the children of God, I cry and say: Brothers, if you want to be saved from the flood of impiety, stay inside the ark.” Like St. John of Kronstadt, St. Athanasios warned of the French Revolution’s aftermath that “in great and terrifying armies, they marched out form their borders, and like apostles of Hades they traverse the length and breadth of the earth, intent and determined to spread spiritual death, impiety, and atheism everywhere.” The Communists in their day, while slaughtering the saints, studied and sought to emulate the French Revolution. Today some study the Communists for inspiration. But instead of campaigns of Napoleon or the Cominterm or Lenin or Trostsky, today we have the avenues of digital influence and surveillance going directly into our minds. Let us ask St. John of Kronstadt’s intercession for us and our mission, that we may nurture in the good ground of Orthodoxy real personal ways of helping ourselves and our neighbors grow and prosper in the Body of Christ. Glory to God for all things!