Tag Archives: Fr. Alexander Schmemann

Brave and faithful servants.

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Over the years I’ve often written about St. Herman of Alaska and Father Alexander Schmemann, two important people in my life whom we remember on this day. This year I want to add St. Lucia of Syracuse, whose day it also is; we are blessed to have four Lucys in our parish, one of whom is my dear goddaughter.

This morning we had a glorious Divine Liturgy in honor of the saints, with our rector testifying to the power of Fr. Alexander as well, saying that if it weren’t for his influence, teaching and prayers, he would not be our priest today. We sang “Memory Eternal” for Fr. Alexander and for Leonid Ouspensky, whose legacy as an iconographer continues to enrich our parish year after year.

St. Herman and Fr. Alexander have both contributed hugely to the presence of true and living Orthodox faith in America, that Church in which I’ve found the fullness of Him Who fills all in all. Every year that we come to this date finds me more thankful.

Saint Herman of Alaska arrived in Alaska in 1794 and died there in 1837. On the occasion of his canonization in 1969 Bishop Dimitri spoke:

The Church on earth lives in a loving fellowship with the saints who have already run their race, who have fought the good fight, and have received their crowns (2 Timothy 4:7) (James 1:12). This is what the Apostle means when he says that we are compassed about or surrounded by the witness-martyrs or saints. We are assured both of their presence and their interest in us. In fact, they are concerned about the whole world and its salvation, for “there is joy in heaven over the repentance of one sinner” (Luke 15:7).

Father Schmemann was born in 1921 into a family of Russian emigres, and came to the United States in 1951 to join the faculty of St. Vladimir’s Seminary, where two of my own parish priests sat under his teaching. He reposed in the Lord in 1983. Not only has my life been enriched broadly by his contributions to the whole of Orthodoxy in America, but by my reading directly what he wrote, especially For the Life of the World, and his journals. Most recently I read his The Eucharist, which was a treasury of living truth, so vast, I haven’t known how to begin to say anything about it here.

It seems fitting that we commemorate St. Herman of Alaska on this date, when winter is making itself felt. I’ve written before (and yes, before that) about how he spurned the cold, befriended the animals, and interceded between the Aleuts and the powerful people who would exploit them. His is a good example in the Advent season, of how to keep our hearts and activities focused on the Kingdom of God in the face of distractions. 

Santa Lucia buns from a previous year.

The mother of the youngest Lucia in the parish brought darling Santa Lucia buns as she always does, and a few of us stayed to drink coffee in the parish hall. But now I am home, with hospitality on my mind and heart: I have been welcomed into the household of God and fed at His table, and will go in that strength throughout the day and on to the Feast of the Nativity of Christ.

May we all prepare ourselves for the celebration by entering into the spirit of St. Herman, who advised us:

“…let us make a vow to ourselves, that from this day, from this hour, from this very moment, we shall strive above all else to love God and to fulfill His Holy Will.”

Missionary humility and splendor.

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In December we Orthodox commemorate the repose in 1837 of Saint Herman of Alaska, who came as an Orthodox Christian missionary to America in 1793. When he was glorified as a saint in 1970, Fr. Alexander Schmemann was present for the ceremonies. He wrote a non-official account of the event, seemingly from an overflow of joy that compelled his “weak attempt to express to those who were not there that which I cannot call anything other than a miracle of the mercy of God.” You can read it here: Days of Light and Joy.

Of the last of the three days of services and celebrations, Fr. Alexander writes:

“… very early in the morning, five priests with Archbishop Kiprian go to Spruce Island where for almost thirty years the Elder Herman lived as a hermit. And I know that we have never in our lives experienced anything better, purer, more joyful than what we’ve experienced there that morning: the walk through the wooded paths along the towering evergreens keeping their eternal vigil before their Creator, to the little chapel over the cave of the elder, and the liturgy in that chapel. I served the liturgy; but to say this is totally inaccurate. The liturgy served itself. It was only necessary for us to give ourselves to it completely, to immerse ourselves in it, to enter into the thanksgiving without reservation. I know as well that we did not deserve this at all but that it was given to us as a gift. I can only pray that it will also be given to us to preserve but the smallest portion of this gift of grace.”

At Herman’s Spring, Kodiak

This was in August of 1970, and since then a steady stream of pilgrims from across the globe has visited St. Herman’s grave, including descendants of the Aleuts who knew and loved him before his repose. In 2020 for the 50th anniversary of his glorification there were many festivities and pilgrims there in Kodiak and on Spruce Island.

Father Herman’s repose was in December, so we commemorate him at this time of year as well. I leave you with the closing paragraph of Fr. Alexander’s report:

“In this light and in this joy, all of our human disagreements, accusations and condemnations become so petty, so human, so sinful. The whole time it seemed: If only we could give ourselves humbly to this joy we would understand without words in what and for what the Church exists, and the scales of our wickedness and suspicions and divisions would fall from us. There, at the tomb of Saint Herman, in the splendor of his humility, it was given to us to see that reality which alone gives authentic life to the Church, that reality which is indeed the only thing which the Church has to reveal to this world, that reality by which alone the Church will be able to overcome every power of evil in this world.

“Holy Father Herman, pray to God for us!”

The true vocation of man.

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Fasting is the only means by which man recovers his true spiritual nature. It is not a theoretical but truly a practical challenge to the great Liar who managed to convince us that we depend on bread alone and built all human knowledge, science, and existence on that lie. Fasting is a denunciation of that lie and also proof that it is a lie.
….
Let us understand …that what the Church wants us to do during Lent is to seek the enrichment of our spiritual and intellectual inner world, to read and to meditate upon those things which are most likely to help us recover that inner world and its joy. Of that joy, of the true vocation of man, the one that is fulfilled inside and not outside, the ‘modern world’ gives us no taste today; yet without it, without the understanding of Lent as a journey into the depth of our humanity, Lent loses its meaning.

-Father Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent

Suspenseful, but not impossible.

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Wholeness was the plan, when God created the cosmos. Then, humans distanced themselves from their maker, the one with whom they had walked in the garden. Harmony between the man and the woman was broken, and they both lost connection with their true selves, which had been grounded in the Giver of Life.

C.S. Lewis imagines how an unfallen world might have looked, in his novel Perelandra, which I recently re-read. A scientist with a utopian vision comes from Earth to a strange planet — of course, we have plenty of this stuff to export! — to be the tempter of the Eve figure, the Green Lady. She struggles to maintain her natural and primal, essential oneness with her god, and the drama that ensues is full of suspense.

I suppose it is because of my non-fiction fallen-world perspective that I despaired of the Green Lady being able to withstand the arguments of the oily Weston, even while descriptions of the grace-full divine dance with humans lifted my hopes. I don’t think it’s in my power to say more about this book or the whole trilogy, and what I have just written probably makes little sense, but the story came to mind when I read the poem below. Because the Green Lady won’t remain firm unless the strength comes from knowing who she is.

In this in-between world, the time of waiting for the fullness of the Kingdom, we get moments and glimpses of unity and wholeness, an intuition of how it might feel to be in full communion with one’s own being and one’s Maker, and from there, with other people. But our parts are mostly disjointed and disconnected.

IMPOSSIBLE FRIENDSHIPS

For example, with someone who no longer is,
who exists only in yellowed letters.
Or long walks beside a stream,
whose depths hold hidden
porcelain cups — and the talks about philosophy
with a timid student or the postman.
A passerby with proud eyes
whom you’ll never know.
Friendship with this world, ever more perfect
(if not for the salty smell of blood).
The old man sipping coffee
in St.-Lazare, who reminds you of someone.
Faces flashing by
in local trains—
the happy faces of travelers headed perhaps
for a splendid ball, or a beheading.
And friendship with yourself
—since after all you don’t know who you are.

-Adam Zagajewski

Father Alexander Schmemann writes about this in The Eucharist:

“… nowhere is the darkness of ignorance into which we were immersed with our fall from God more obvious than in man’s staggering ignorance of himself, and this in spite of the insatiable interest with which, having lost God, man studies himself and endeavors in his ‘sciences humaines’ to penetrate the mystery of man’s being. We live in an era of unrestrained narcissism, universal ‘turning into one’s self.’ But, as strange and even terrible as this may seem, the more elemental is this interest, the more obvious it is that it is nourished by some dark desire to dehumanize man.

“The thanksgiving offered by the Church [in the Eucharist] each time answers and destroys precisely this not only contemporary but age-old lie about the world and man. Each time it is a manifestation of man to himself, a manifestation of his essence, his place and calling in the light of the divine countenance, and therefore an act that renews and recreates man. In thanksgiving we recognize and confess above all the divine source and the divine calling of our life. The prayer of thanksgiving affirms that God brought us from nonexistence into being, which means that he created us as partakers of Being, i.e., not just something that comes from him, but something permeated by his presence, light, wisdom, [and] love….”

-Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist