Saint John of the Russian Abroad, Ecumenical Wonderworker

The collection is dedicated to the modern Russian saint John of Shanghai and San Francisco. His glorification took place recently, but his veneration has long since acquired a universal character. In America, Russia, France, Serbia, Greece, Australia, Holland and many other countries, prayers are offered to the Holy Master. In addition to the sermons and decrees of Archbishop John, the collection includes his theological and historical works. The Life of the Saint, compiled by Vladimir Shokhin, and a number of materials on glorification are published for the first time. While the collection that you are holding in your hands was slowly taking shape (it was based on a biography compiled in 1993), the name of St. John, Archbishop of Shanghai and San Francisco, became well known to believers in Russia thanks to publications in recent years. In the Saint’s homeland, many of his admirers appeared and, judging by many testimonies, his admirers were not in vain. But even in previous decades, Saint John was known and revered among us, albeit in a rather narrow circle of church people. Thus, in the papers of the spiritual daughter of Father Sergius Mechev, and then Archimandrite Boris Kholchev, Elizaveta Aleksandrovna Bulgakova († 1995), the sister of the Diveyevo nun - confessor Seraphima († 1991), we found typewritten copies of two articles from foreign church periodicals of 1966, dedicated to the blessed death of the bishop John. In the circumstances at that time, little was known about this amazing bishop, but it was just as difficult (if not more) to find out anything about his contemporary ascetics in Russia itself. The Karlovians were completely our own back then. It was very important to realize that somewhere Orthodox Russian people fully preserve our Church Tradition, worship, and continue Russian theology. We fed our souls with books published by “foreigners” and miraculously ending up in the Union; we retyped them on typewriters for ourselves and for reliable friends. Samizdat editions were printed from these books. In maintaining the bookish church tradition in Soviet Russia, the living participation of the Church Abroad is beyond doubt. Before the name of Bishop John, many learned the name of his spiritual son, Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose). In the works of the ever-memorable Father Seraphim, which appeared in Russian translation in the Union in the early eighties and had special significance not so much for the Church Abroad as for Soviet people converting to the Fatherly Faith, one must see the active participation of St. John, who blessed the beginning of the works of the young American Eugene Rose. Hieromonk Seraphim (whose small work on the theology of Archbishop John we included in the collection) in his biography, compiled shortly after the blessed death of the Bishop, noted the three highest manifestations of his activity, usually rarely combined: “as a brave and recognized hierarch of the Church; as an ascetic who continues the tradition of pillarism, having taken upon himself the most severe asceticism; finally, as Christ for the sake of the holy fool, instructing people with that “simplicity” that is beyond the wisdom of this world” 1 . The problem of jurisdictional affiliation here in Russia, until recently, had no practical significance for the majority of believers, and therefore the more clearly the image of Bishop John (Maximovich) appeared, the more organically he stood among the remarkable Russian bishops and confessors belonging to his generation. You can clarify - from those who survived, since many of their peers in Russia long ago served Christ with their blood. Looking now at Russian church history, contemporary with Saint John of Shanghai and San Francisco, there is a desire to place next to his name the names of Archbishop Luke (Voino-Yasenetsky), the locally revered Crimean saint, the famous surgeon, bishop Athanasius (Sakharov), the author of the service to the Russian saints, who blessed the priests who commemorated him at the Catacomb Liturgies to go out for open service to the Patriarchate after the conciliar election of His Holiness Patriarch Alexy (Simansky), Metropolitan Gury (Egorov), who restored the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, and then gathered around him a host of amazing ascetics in Tashkent, Archbishop Hermogenes (Golubev), whom the Lord vouchsafed to confess his unshakable faith before the godless Khrushchev, the persecutor of the Church, Metropolitan Nicholas (Mogilevsky), the miracle worker of Alma-Ata, and his successor, Metropolitan Joseph (Chernov), Bishop Stefan (Nikitin), who inherited the spirit of the Optina eldership and blessedly rested at the Royal Doors after Holy Communion... Speaking about the bishops of that time, as part of a brief introduction, I would not like to raise the issue of mutual relations between jurisdictions, primarily because of its extreme complexity, and in addition, I do not want to affect the beliefs of those who helped us in working on the book. After all, these people, belonging to different jurisdictions, were united by love for the holy Lord. Saint John returned to his homeland visibly - in the ever-expanding veneration of him in today's Russia, and even materially - in the shrines associated with him, which are carried and sent to Russia today, in his icon images that have decorated both Orthodox homes and churches. But invisibly he continued to remain in Russia forever. This is how the holy Lord himself, with faith, hope and love, revealed his hope for the Motherland: “The Russian Church Abroad is a part of the Russian Church located outside the borders of the Russian state... The Russian Church Abroad is not spiritually separated from the suffering Mother. She offers prayers for her, preserves her spiritual and material wealth, and in due time will unite with her, when the reasons that separated them disappear. There is no doubt that within Russia many hierarchs, clergy and laity are with us and would themselves be glad to do as we do if they could... We believe and know that the Orthodox faith is strong in Russia. The Lord God, who preserved seven thousand men who did not bend the knee to Baal in the days of Elijah, and now has many of His servants, secretly serving and praying to Him throughout the entire expanse of the Russian land. And among the bishops, outwardly submissive to Soviet power, many are tormented internally and, when the opportunity arises, will follow the example of those who at the Council of Chalcedon with tears declared that they were forced to give their signatures at the Robber Council, following the example of St. Patriarch Paul, oppressed by his conscience and accepted the schema in the consciousness of his weakness under the iconoclasts. This is evidenced by the many who left their homeland during the Second World War. The Soviets also know this and keep everyone, especially those temporarily released abroad, under open and secret supervision... Russian refugees, scattered all over the world, often in difficult conditions, are waiting for that bright day when the Fatherland will be freed from the power of the atheists who torment the soul and body of their brothers, and they will be able to unite with it. The Russian Church Abroad bears with them the heavy cross of exile. Without betraying Orthodoxy in any way, preserving the traditions and customs of the Russian Church and its material wealth located abroad, she, according to her strength, nourishes her flock, keeps them in Orthodoxy and educates new generations in them and spreads Orthodoxy among the peoples among whom she is located. In foreign churches, prayers are always proclaimed for the suffering Fatherland, for the persecuted Church, for the tortured and killed, for whom they do not dare to openly pray there, for the salvation of the Fatherland and deliverance from the cruel government, for the restoration of orthodoxy and piety...” 2 Now these petitions sound like a litany, proclaimed by a great saint before the Throne of God of the heavenly Church. May the Lord work according to the saint’s prayer. The compilers express their heartfelt gratitude to schema-abbot Elijah (Optics of the Deserts), abbot Herman Podmoshensky (Brotherhood of St. Herman of Alaska), priest Leonid Kalinin (Church of the Savior Not Made by Hands of the Spaso-Andronikov Monastery), deacon Pavel Ivanov (Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville), nun Euphrosyne Molchanova (Lesninsky Monastery, France), icon painter Dmitry Alexandrovich Shkolnik (New York), Svyatoslav Nikolaevich Zabelin (San Francisco), Alexander Nikolaevich Strizhev, Lyudmila Pavlovna Medvedeva, headman of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ in Meudon (France) Rostislav Nikolaevich Pervyshin, Vladimir Georgievich Kirillov (Saint-Cloud, France), Nikolai Aleksandrovich Obolensky, Yuri Vasilievich Robinov, Tatyana Igorevna Nikitina, Maria Grigorievna Peide, Svetlana Georgievna Zvereva and everyone who assisted in the preparation of the proposed collection. Sermons, reports, articles, instructions, decrees and orders of St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco are drawn from the following sources: “Archbishop John (Maksimovich). Archpastor, prayer book, ascetic”, San Francisco, 1991; “Words of Our Father John, Archbishop of Shanghai and San Francisco,” San Francisco, 1994; Magazines: “Orthodox Rus'” for 1991–1994; "Bee", 1990, No. 6; “Russian Pilgrim”, 1994, No. 9. “Preliminary Study of the Tomb of Archbishop John” and “Discovery of the Venerable Relics of Saint and Wonderworker John, Archbishop of Shanghai and San Francisco” are published based on manuscripts provided by the author. “Act of the commission for the examination of the remains of St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco” - “Orthodox Russia”, 1993, No. 21. “Feast of Faith. The triumph of holiness through the eyes of a pilgrim” - “Orthodox Russia”, 1994, No. 16. Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose), Hegumen Herman (Podmoshensky). Blessed John the Wonderworker.M.1993.P.27 John, Archbishop of Brussels and Western Europe. Russian Church Abroad. Publication of the Orthodox Cause Society, 1960. pp. 1, 13, 14, 15.