monuments | Gladsome Lights

Earlier this month we were reminded of the popularity of St. Nicholas in the Orthodox Church around the world. If you took a vote for the favorite saint, he would win. Another, more modern saint, who lived in the 19th century, is also remembered in December: St. John of Kronstadt. I see that he had some of the same qualities as St. Nicholas. This article tells how generous he was to the poor. Here is a small excerpt:

He would shop for food, go to the pharmacy for prescriptions, to the doctor for help, many times giving the poor his last few coins. The inhabitants of Kronstadt would see him returning home barefoot and without his cassock. Often parishioners would bring shoes to his wife, saying to her, “Your husband has given away his shoes to someone, and will come home barefoot.”

He seems to have had the gift of exhortation; he truly loved people, whether the upper classes or the criminals who were exiled to Kronstadt at the time, and would spend hours at a time in the shacks of the latter, “talking, encouraging, comforting, crying, and rejoicing together with them.”

His popularity has not waned, judging from the fact that between 1990 and 2016, “more than 60 new churches or altars in Russia alone were dedicated to him,” his flat in Kronstadt became a registered museum, his biography was published in a highly respected series, and monuments to St. John have been placed in cities not only in Russia and gifted to Orthodox communities around the world, including in Washington, D.C., in 2019.

This monument to him was installed last year in his home village of Sura, Arkhangelsk Province, in northwestern Russia, which in 2010 had a population of 727:

Because of his zealous love and spirit of encouragment, one can find many helpful quotes from the saint, and I have posted a few in the past. Here I pass on an exhortation from St. John that is a good reminder to us in the current era, of ultimate reality:

“There is nothing impossible unto those who believe; lively and unshaken faith can accomplish great miracles in the twinkling of an eye. Besides, even without our sincere and firm faith, miracles are accomplished, such as the miracles of the sacraments; for God’s Mystery is always accomplished, even though we were incredulous or unbelieving at the time of its celebration. ‘Shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect?’ (Rom. 3:3). Our wickedness shall not overpower the unspeakable goodness and mercy of God; our dullness shall not overpower God’s wisdom, nor our infirmity God’s omnipotence.”

-St. John of Kronstadt

The time for summer vacations and traveling is upon us. I myself will be departing this week for the first of several outings short and long. So it was timely to discover words from G.K. Chesterton, my favorite philosopher, on the subject of sightseeing.

In an essay he wrote in 1931 he contrasted what he called the “age of monuments” with the “age of museums,” and found modern sightseeing problematic in that it is “not meant either for the wanderer to see by accident or for the pilgrim to see with awe. It is meant for the mere slave of a routine of self-education to stuff himself with every incongruous intellectual food in one indigestible meal.”

He hit that nail on the head as far as I am concerned. When Pippin and I were in England and Scotland I felt such an aversion to the museums, especially the ones with vast expanses of vertically-mounted text. Now GKC has explained what put me off: too much of the wrong food. I hunger for the monuments before which I can stand in awe, or the small discoveries, a few of which I wrote about and pictured here.

This photo shows one scene I expect to be enjoying very soon, not a monument, exactly, but evidence of and testimony to the Creator. I took the picture when on a solitary retreat two years ago, but it’s nice to know the spot will be essentially unchanged.