Category Archives: saints

Passion-bearer Alexander

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It was from watching a movie about Sophie Scholl (I think it must have been “Sophie Scholl: The Final Days”) that I first heard of The White Rose, a non-violent youth resistance group formed in Munich in 1942. Britannica says of its members:

Coupling youthful idealism with an impressive knowledge of German literature and Christian religious teachings, the students published their beliefs in a series of leaflets under the name “the White Rose” (and later as “Leaflets of the Resistance”).

In the movie we meet not only Sophie and her brother Hans, but also friends and other members of The White Rose, one of whom is named “Alex.” A couple of years ago I learned that this was Alexander Schmorell, an Orthodox Christian and co-founder of the group.

Hans and Alexander

There is a very memorable scene — one of only two that I can bring to mind from that film — in which Hans and Sophie are throwing leaflets from the upper story of a university building. They were seen by a Nazi Party member and arrested, on February 18, 1943.

The leaflets were like nothing the Gestapo had ever seen—not rigid ideological tracts aimed at the working classes, but passionate, erudite manifestos that quoted Friedrich Schiller, Plato and Laozi. “The guilt of Hitler and his accomplices goes beyond all measure,” read the group’s fifth leaflet. “Tear up the cloak of indifference you have wrapped around your hearts. Make your decision before it is too late!” –Smithsonian

Hans and Sophie were beheaded four days later, along with medical student Christoph Probst. In succeeding months, many other people were arrested in relation to The White Rose, and among them was Alexander Schmorell, who was executed on July 13, 1943. In 2012 he was glorified in the Orthodox Church as a saint and passion-bearer.

Memory eternal!

An anniversary for St. John of San Francisco.

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It is the 30th anniversary of the canonization of St. John (Maximovitch), Archbishop of Shanghai and San Francisco. At Holy Virgin Cathedral, “Joy of All Who Sorrow,” the celebration of the feast will spread over three days this week, and members of my parish expect to travel there to participate.

You can read the life of St. John and why he is called “The Wonderworker” – here.

On this joyous occasion I want to share this exhortation from the saint:

Though a man may be found in a weak state, that does not at all mean that he has been abandoned by God. On the cross, the Lord Jesus Christ was in trouble, as the world sees things. But when the sinful world considered Him to be completely destroyed, in fact He was victorious over death and hades. The Lord did not promise us positions as victors as a reward for righteousness, but told us, “In the world you will have tribulation – but be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world”.

-St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco

 

To the edge at last, in Donegal.

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Yesterday we commemorated St. Columba. It was the Sunday of the Blind Man in the Orthodox Church, and I was getting ready to chant-read the prayers of the 3rd and 6th Hours before Liturgy. Usually on Sundays there are two changeable parts of those readings called troparia, always one for the Resurrection, and often another for the feast or saint of the day. There was another sort of hymn, a kontakion, for the Blind Man, but there was not a troparian hymn in the lectionary for that event.

So our rector said I might read the troparion to St. Columba, which I did. I can’t find the text of it anywhere online now; I read it in the Horologion, or Book of the Hours, which is a big book of texts used, mostly by the reader or cantor, in liturgical services of the Orthodox Church, both the fixed and movable parts.

He also suggested that I take home a copy of that tome, to spend a while familiarizing myself with it. Occasionally over the years someone instructs me, in a very hit-and-miss fashion, on how to find what I need in the Horologion, but I seem to be dense when it comes to learning anything that I have to read standing, at a lectern, for example. So I’ll be glad to bring the book home and read at my leisure through the church calendar, with its treasures of saints and feasts.

Fr. Malcolm Guite was remembering St. Columba yesterday, too, and tells the story of how his mystical connection to the saint was renewed in his youth, “Columba and My Calling,” on his blog. An excerpt:

“One evening, St. John’s Eve it was, right at the end of my journey, I came round a headland at sunset into a beautiful little bay and inlet on the west coast in Donegal, just as the fires were being lit around the headlands for St. John’s Eve, and there was drinking and fiddle playing and dancing round the fires that evening. And I asked where I was, and they said Glencolmcille, and I felt a sudden quickening and sense of connection, as though a memory stirred. And they asked me my name and I said ‘Malcolm’, and they said, ‘Ah that is why you have come, because he has called you’, and I said ‘who?’ and they said ‘Colm has called you, Malcolm, for this is the place he fought his battle and gathered his disciples and from here he left for the white martyrdom and Scotland.” 

St Columba’s Church, Gartan, Donegal.

He has written a touching sonnet in honor of his saint and that “small epiphany,” from which I took the title of this blog post.  You can read “Columba,” and/or listen to him read it: here. It’s one of the poems in his book, The Singing Bowl.