Celebrating the Saints of North America

by Fr Gregory Scratch

The witness of Orthodoxy in North America is relatively young, especially compared to the witness of Orthodoxy for thousands of years in places like Greece, Romania, Ukraine and Russia. Indeed, the list of formally glorified saints in North America is truly pitiful when compared with the tens of thousands of saints in Russia, Ukraine or Greece! As such, the celebration of all Saints of North America, might seem, like a big deal about nothing. 

Yet a saint is a saint, regardless of whether it was “here (the new world) as it was there (the old world)“. Their witness to the universal reality of God’s saving love is ultimately measured in terms of quality, not quantity – each one coming to the “unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13). 

Instead of being isolated and unique, every saint imparts something universal – an encounter with sanctity – and as our Metropolitan Tikhon (Mollard) noted in a sermon on this feast, “by encountering sanctity, we encounter Christ”. This has been the witness of Orthodoxy in North America for the last two-hundred years (126 in Canada)  that has one way or another, brought us to this humble commemoration of what is essentially only a handful of Saints. 

Each and every saint embodies the wholeness of the Lord’s saving dispensation, and bears witness to the same. This is a wonder! Even if our continent only had one saint, that solitary saint’s witness and sanctifying presence would lack nothing in importance or relevance when compared to the witness of tens of thousands of saints who for centuries served both God and neighbour, regardless of whether they were in Greece, Romania, Ukraine and Russia or even on an Alaskan shoreline, “for there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5). Yet more importantly, even a solitary saint, would have heard the very same words of the Lord, that each and every other saint heard, “Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.” (Mt. 25:34-36)

This is something profound to consider, especially as we are in these beautiful “green days” following the life-bearing outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. It is in this Pentecostal context that we offer our thanksgiving to God for not one, but twenty-two North American saints. Although this number of saints is still a drop in the bucket in comparison to how many saints exist in the world, it is a start – but if we are being honest, the witness of the Lord’s saving love in places like Greece, Romania, Ukraine and Russia had to start with someone. 

It is in these North American saints that we see the fullness of the faith as lived out in every element and aspect of their lives, as demonstrated in circumstances and situations that might seem totally alien to us, save for the fact we live on the same lands that they lived in. They served people around them in Alaska, the Midwest states and prairie provinces, and cultivated their faith through prayer and a Godly life. The blessing of our faith is that we believe they continue to serve us, and cultivate our faith – the fact that we serve in a Church that is almost as old as the witness of Orthodoxy in Canada, bears witness to this. 

The challenge is for us, is to follow their examples and patterns of holiness, and become a new generation of saints, sanctifying Narol, Winnipeg, Winkler, Morden, Manitoba, Canada and all of North America. By the grace of the Holy Spirit, and their many prayers, may we encounter the sanctity they encountered, and like them, encounter Christ. May we be inspired and strengthened in our witness of the wholeness of the Kingdom of Heaven, manifested “here as it was there” throughout the ages.

All Saints of North America, pray for us.