St. John Maximovitch
St. John (Maximovitch)
of Shanghai and San Francisco
A sermon in Varna
by Bishop Fotii of Triditsa
July 06 (June 23 O.S.) 2010
Delivered in the Church of “St. Xenia of Petersburg”, Varna
2014/02/03 RE-POST
Bishop Fotii [Photios]
In the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!
Today, beloved, you and I commemorate St. John Archbishop of Shanghai and San Francisco the Wonderworker. Many Orthodox outside the Russian local Church also venerate sacred the memory of the St. John and assiduously revere him. A sad fact is, however, that some dare to employ the saint’s name deviously! For ‘ecclesiastical and would-be-politician’ purposes – no matter how ridiculous this last phrase may sound. The year is 2005. Negotiations are underway between Commissions of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad with its then Primate – Archbishop Laurus, and the Moscow Patriarchate – an MP Commission, with the aim to achieve unification. Two ROCOR priests refer to places of texts by St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco the Wonderworker: one – [refers to] his decree [ukaz] of September 1945 and the other – to his address to the congregation of July 1946 – in order to prove that the Shanghai Saint participated in a unifying process of the ROCOR Diocese in China with the Moscow Patriarchate then – in the postwar years – a process similar to the modern one. I feel a particular sense of severity when someone or some [more] employ the authority or the memory of a God’s pleaser, of a holy man in order to defend their own ‘ecclesiastical and would-be-politician’ purposes.
Today, beloved, you and I commemorate St. John Archbishop of Shanghai and San Francisco the Wonderworker. Many Orthodox outside the Russian local Church also venerate sacred the memory of the St. John and assiduously revere him. A sad fact is, however, that some dare to employ the saint’s name deviously! For ‘ecclesiastical and would-be-politician’ purposes – no matter how ridiculous this last phrase may sound. The year is 2005. Negotiations are underway between Commissions of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad with its then Primate – Archbishop Laurus, and the Moscow Patriarchate – an MP Commission, with the aim to achieve unification. Two ROCOR priests refer to places of texts by St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco the Wonderworker: one – [refers to] his decree [ukaz] of September 1945 and the other – to his address to the congregation of July 1946 – in order to prove that the Shanghai Saint participated in a unifying process of the ROCOR Diocese in China with the Moscow Patriarchate then – in the postwar years – a process similar to the modern one. I feel a particular sense of severity when someone or some [more] employ the authority or the memory of a God’s pleaser, of a holy man in order to defend their own ‘ecclesiastical and would-be-politician’ purposes.
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