Metropolitan visits 39th St. Herman Pilgrimage
MONK’S LAGOON, Spruce Island — The sounds of ringing bells infused the misty Saturday morning air during the arrival of the skiff transporting His Beatitude, Metropolitan Jonah to the tiny corner of Spruce Island.
For Metropolitan Jonah and about 250 other attendees from throughout the world, the annual pilgrimage to the small corner of Alaska is made to honor and remember St. Herman, the canonized saint who was instrumental in establishing Orthodoxy in North America. St. Herman, who first arrived in Alaska in 1794, lived a monastic life on Spruce Island in the early 1800s. He often is considered the patron saint of the Americas.
St. Herman was canonized in 1970 and is now buried in Kodiak.
Saturday was the 39th anniversary of the pilgrimage and the first one for Metropolitan Jonah, who was elected metropolitan of all American and Canadian Russian Orthodox churches in 2008. The pilgrimage was only one event of the three-day schedule, which began Friday and ended Sunday.
Metropolitan Jonah was warmly greeted as he arrived on the shore of Spruce Island, where bells continued to ring until he led the procession inland toward the chapel where the Divine Liturgy is concelebrated.
The small chapel has a deck built outside its entrance to accommodate the modern-day crowds who come for the pilgrimage. The Divine Liturgy — which dates back to the fifth century — lasted about two hours and included chanting of Psalm verses, prayer petitions, the asking of peace for the world, reading of Scriptures, venerations, and a sermon by Metropolitan Jonah and communion.
“Coming to this place, I think we all feel the grace,” said Metropolitan Jonah during the sermon. “You feel the sanctity. This place was permeated by the prayers of St. Herman. This place was permeated by grace, by the very activity of the presence of God.”
The metropolitan reflected on the significance of St. Herman.
“St. Herman is the foundation of Orthodoxy in America because he heard the Gospel and he lived it,” he said. “The sanctity that dwells up in his relics, the sanctity of this place, it came through his prayer. It must be for us that wellspring of inspiration and hope where we, too, can fulfill the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
He offered advice to congre-gants.
“We have to come to that place where we can let go of all of the darkness that holds us down, all the darkness that keeps us imprisoned in our egos, all of the darkness that fuels our anger and our passions and our rage and our lust … this is just not the way of the monk. It certainly is the way for the monk and the nuns, but it’s the way for every Christian.”
After the Divine Liturgy, some attendees paid tribute to St. Herman by visiting his original gravesite underneath the chapel.
“Sometimes people take a small amount of dirt from the ground in there,” said the Very Rev. Gregory Safchuk. “They keep it in remembrance of St. Herman. In some cases, they believe that both the oil from the lamp over his grave or his relics and the dirt, coupled with prayer and faith, can even help a person who is sick to recover.”
The day also had a short me-morial prayer service at the gravesites of the Very Rev. Ar-chimandrite Gerasim Schmaltz and Father Peter Kreta. The two are buried on Spruce Island. Schmaltz is a disciple of St. Herman and lived as a monk for a time around Monk’s Lagoon.
After the services, attendees had a picnic on the beach before heading back to Kodiak. For many, it was their first time eat-ing for about 12 hours because they began fasting Friday night, waiting to eat only after receiv-ing communion.
Saturday was the sixth pilgrimage for Safchuk, who taught in Kodiak from 1982 to 1985 at St. Herman Theological Seminary. He now works in Bethesda, Md.
Safchuk said he was espe-cially honored to help distribute the communion during the Di-vine Liturgy.
“I got to literally distribute it, as the metropolitan said (Friday) night, to the descendants of those Native peoples whom St. Her-man ministered to,” he said. “For me, that was a tremendously significant, moving experience.”
He said the addition of the deck in recent years to the small chapel has been a big improvement for the service. It has added more of a sense of connectivity for attendees. Before, congregants had to stand around the chapel on the grass while the Divine Liturgy took place with only a handful of people inside.
Safchuk said throughout all the pilgrimages, he has been grateful for the help from the community.
“What’s always struck me, back even when I was here in the ’80s, was the tremendous cooperation of people in town — whether they be Orthodox Christians or not — who lend their boats and time to bring people over there,” Safchuk said. “I’ve always been tremendously impressed with that, especially when the price of boat fuel has been extremely high at times and it’s a tremendous sacrifice for them to fire up those big boats and take us over there.”
Filming Saturday’s pilgrim-age was filmmaker Dave Kaplan, who also serves on the Kodiak Island Borough Assembly. Serving as producer was Alexander Safchuk, a student at Ohio State University who came to Kodiak from Bethesda with his church.
Alexander and his church colleagues raised money for the expensive flight to the Emerald Isle. They came for the pilgrim-age and have also been helping with local church projects.
Saturday’s footage is for the North American Saints Project, through the Orthodox Church of America.
“It’s outlining a lot of lec-tures, but they’re all talking about the saints of North America and the Orthodox Church,” Alexander said. “It’s going to be more of an educational series … we wanted to get the perspective on St. Herman, especially, because of the pilgrimage up here. It was also an historical occasion having Metropolitan Jonah here on his first time on the pilgrimage.”
Alexander interviewed Met-ropolitan Jonah on the Sea Breeze, owned by Kodiak Har-bormaster Marty Owen. Owen offered his vessel to transport the metropolitan and others to Spruce Island. The metropolitan answered questions about the significance of Spruce Island, the Alaskan saints, of venerating the saints and how they have im-pacted his life.
The Rev. Safchuk said St. Herman holds special significance because he is a saint more recent and closer to home for North Americans.
“He really resonates with people who live here now,” Saf-chuk said. “He’s not exactly contemporary, but he was canonized in 1970 … people feel a certain kinship over the fact that he was canonized in their lifetime and he worked here in North America. We’re not talking about someone who lived in the fourth century.”
Mirror writer Bradley Zint can be reached via e-mail at bzint@kodiakdailymirror.com.
