Ancient Church

I am in my hotel room in San Francisco, and as I write this, the icon of St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco is staring at me. Well, not so much staring as looking intently at me, as though he sees something that he thinks I should know about. St. John, you see, is why I am 3000 miles away from home, sitting above Union Square. I came here specifically to visit St. John, and his spiritual child, Father Seraphim. The fact that St. John has been dead for almost 40 years, and Father Seraphim for about 25, means nothing to me. In Orthodoxy, the veil between the living and those who are technically dead but alive in Christ is but paper thin.

I have been trying to prepare for this trip for a while now, which at least partially explains my lack of postings. Although I am the clumsiest of pilgrims, a trip like this is a pilgrimage and such a journey requires preparation. Some extra prayer, some additional reading of scripture and the Fathers — generally an effort to align one’s spirit with that of the Church to as great an extent as possible. I am not particularly good about that. The things of the world hold powerful sway over me, but I wanted to make as much of an effort as I could.

The genesis of this trip is unusual. About a year ago, I was bumped off of a flight and received a voucher for a free ticket. I tried to use it for my monthly trip for school, but United didn’t want to take me to Pittsburgh. Time was running out on claiming the ticket. Where should I go?

Because my wife had gone to England earlier this year, she was not going to go on this trip. It felt odd to think about going off on my own, so I had to think about what I hoped for out of the journey. There was no question in my mind that I wanted it to be primarily spiritual in nature. I considered going to St. Anthony’s monastery in Arizona, but was skittish because of the heat. Even though I’m a southerner, I don’t mix well with heat. I thought about going to New York, to visit the great number of churches in that part of the country.

In the end, though, it was no contest. San Francisco not only has a significant Orthodox heritage, it also has the relics of St. John, a man who was glorified only a little over ten years ago when his body was found to be incorrupt. For my non-Orthodox readers, that means that he had not decayed. While that is not the only mark of sanctity of a saint, it is a significant one, and all over the world one finds such relics kept in churches and monasteries. St. John is in his former Cathedral, Holy Virgin, on Geary Street. In addition, several hours north of San Francisco one finds St. Herman’s monastery, now under the Serbian Church. Father Seraphim Rose, an American convert to the Faith, labored there for many years. Father Seraphim has not officially been declared a saint, and to be honest, he is a controversial figure among Orthodox. Some of his writings were vehemently criticized by others, including Archbishop Lazar Puluho, who I wrote about a month or so ago. Still, whether he was right or wrong or some combination thereof is beside the point. He is still an extraordinary figure, and I wanted to pray at his grave.

So I arose at 4:00 a.m. Atlanta time on Saturday morning, hied myself to the airport and landed in San Francisco at about 9:30. A short BART ride into town and I was at the hotel. I’ll confess that my first impression was decidedly mixed. It seemed to me that every crazy person on the planet must be in the vicinity of the Powell Street BART station, carrying signs, panhandling, or simply yelling at the top of their lungs. My rural roots had not yet adjusted to urban realities.

Still, I knew I couldn’t hide in the hotel room all week, so I dashed back out through the crowd and took a muni train out to the Sunset district to an Orthodox bookstore I had heard of, Archangels Bookstore. We don’t have such things where I come from, except for the one at Ascension Monastery, and I knew I couldn’t miss it. It was both good and bad. The bad was that I did what I thought I would do and spent way too much money. The good is that I struck up a conversation with Alexandra, who was running the store yesterday.

Alexandra, put there by angels, has turned this trip into an extraordinary event. First, she got on the phone to find out when I could get into the Cathedral to venerate St. John’s relics. She discovered that at 5:30 Saturday evening, a molieben was being served to the saint. That was excellent information for a clueless pilgrim to have. I then mentioned that I wanted to visit the old cathedral on Fulton Street. She laughed. “That’s where I go!” she exclaimed. She then not only told me what time they started (9:00 a.m.), but also volunteered to contact the priest, Father James, and see if he would conduct a molieben for me.

All of this was like blessings dropping, one after another, from heaven. Stunned by the turn of events, I took the train back to the hotel, rested a bit, and then jumped on a bus going out Geary Avenue. There, I arrived in time to attend the molieben to the saint.

A molieben is a short service of prayer and supplication. It can be adapted to any number of purposes — for those who are traveling, for those just generally in need of prayer (and aren’t we all?) or for supplication to a saint, such as St. John Maximovitch. The Cathedral is beautiful — very lovely iconography, and at that time of day, the sun shone through a stained glass window directly onto Saint John.

For my non-Orthodox readers, a short word on relics. This is one of the difficult things for Protestants, in particular, to wrap themselves around. It is not that we worship the Saints or their relics, as some sort of substitute for Christ. Yet what saints show us is the way that God works in man (and woman), that the Holy Spirit can so fill a person that they become truly holy, truly righteous. By way of analogy, consider a person who stays in the sun for a very long time. They will become sunburned — the power and action of the sun has changed that person. In the same way, saints, being people who have strived for the Holy Spirit and put aside all other passions, all other desires, are able to enter the Uncreated Light, the presence of God. They are changed by that Light, and become sanctified. One sign of that is frequently found in their remains, which do not decompose.

St. John is in a glass case in the Cathedral. His hands are the most visible part of him. They are dark in color, but perfectly whole, as is the rest of him. He is far from the only example of this. A couple of years ago, at Simonos Petra on Mount Athos, I kissed the hand of Mary Magdalene. It was dark brown, soft and pliable and, after 2000 years, still warm to the touch. As we like to sing from the Psalms “God is wonderful in His Saints.”

So, I managed to venerate the relics of St. John and pray in the Cathedral. It was an amazing experience. As I left to return to my room, I thought that nothing after this would compare. I was, of course, wrong.

This morning I went to the old Cathedral, located on Fulton Street. It was originally an Episcopalian Church, built around 1870 out of redwood. It has a very high arched ceiling, and the walls are covered with icons. It is a beautiful church. As one of the parishioners, Barbara, pointed out to me, the church itself was a convert to Orthodoxy, just like so many of the rest of us. In a sense, the atmosphere there was at least as impressive as in the new Cathedral. St. John served there for many years, and it is the first Orthodox Church that Father Seraphim, then known as Eugene Rose, ever walked into. More than that, though, I found that I had stumbled into a building which housed a congregation as sweet, and a priest as wise, as any I have ever seen.

The Liturgy was beautiful, and afterwards I stayed for trapeza, the communal meal after the service. The priest, Father James, talked to us about monasticism (he is a priest-monk), and the meal was delightful. I cannot say enough about the people: Father, Alexandra, Barbara, Samantha and many others were warm and welcoming to this stranger.

Afterwards, we went back into the church, and Father served a molieben. Afterwards, I stayed and talked to him for a while. It was a long and very wonderful day. Let’s just say that if I actually lived in San Francisco, I would make the old Cathedral my parish home.

It is hard to imagine that this trip can continue at the same high level. We’ll see. A day at a time is the watchword for the trip. On Tuesday, I will drive north to Platina. I’ll return here on Thursday, and fly out on Friday. For now, I sit in my room, and look back at St. John. If nothing else at all happens on this pilgrimage, I am content and happy.