The Making of A Saint

The history of the Church is replete with stories of saints who spent some point in their “formation” on Mt Athos. During the long nights of services on my trip to Mt Athos I couldn’t help but look around at the young monks (good news, there were many monks in their 20s and 30s) wondering how they made it to this incredible place.  What brings someone to leave the world behind and devote themselves to the “angelic life” of prayer, fasting, obedience and labors?  As history has shown, the regime and structure of the monastic life can transform the soul to the degree that one is sanctified and immersed in the light of God. 

We had the occasion to meet a young American monk at Xeropotamou Monastery, Fr Theodocius.  He is the brother of Fr Luke, a priest in Dalles, WA where my traveling companion Patrick will soon be a parishioner.  Now 24 years old, Fr Theodocius apparently showed up at the monastery four years earlier after the gate was closed and pounded on the gate until the monks let him in; he has been there ever since.  To leave the relative comfort of American life to journey to Mt Athos is a huge leap of faith even for the most devout Orthodox Christian. With such zeal and devotion perhaps he, like others before him, will be transformed in the crucible of monastic life on Mt Athos to one day be numbered among the saints.

This Is What It Is

A few years back while visiting my folks I was able to acquire a large flat-bottom enameled mixing bowl that had been my grandmother Serko’s . I’m not sure of the age but it is at least 60 years old. She used it to make bread for Easter among other things. She was not much of a baker, although her “Pascha”, the name the Carpatho-Rus people (part of my heritage) give to bread made especially for Easter, was not bad. We have a running joke in our family about her pies; she use to make pies with the toughest crusts, so tough that she would lift up the crust to see if the pie was done! My pies are more in her style, so they are always an occasion to bring up her “doness test” for a good laugh. 

I am reminded of her every-time I use the bowl to make bagels, something I actually do quite well I’m not ashamed to admit. The large size and flat bottom is perfect for making 5-6 dozen batches. The flat bottom is key… it doesn’t flop around on the counter when mixing the dough into a knead-able mass.  I always think of her when I use it.  I can picture her in the kitchen working at her classic 50s gas stove.

Baba, as we called her, was born in the US but her parents were just barely in the country at the time. My grandmother worked hard her entire life. With two children she was a working mother, working at the Endicott Johnson shoe factory as a sole stitcher, attaching the sole to the upper on the shoe. My grandfather worked in the cutting room but I also think he spent some time in other equally difficult areas. I can remember seeing them on many occasion counting their piece-work tags at the kitchen table, bundling them together in orderly stacks with rubber bands. I’m assumming their entire pay was based on what they produced, piece by piece. They never made much money but were always generous. When I was home from college visiting her she would always slip me a 20 as I left. Christmas cards would always have a little money with her classic “God Bless Yous!” written in her uneven handwriting.

My grandmother was a wonderful easygoing woman, loved by all. She was not big on gossip but would always know what was going in the neighborhood and our church community (everyone she knew lived within walking distance of the church). On occasion she would let something slip about something or someone. When asked where she got her information, she’d say: “somebody told me… or “I got a whiff of it”. Never malicious in her sharing of such info she rarely would offer a judgmental view of something she’d heard.

Because she never had a car one of us in the family would take her to the grocery store.  When time came to make “holupki” (stuffed cabbage rolls), nobody wanted to take her. She would spend hours in the store picking through the cabbage, asking the produce man to bring out more, making him slice a few open and summarily rejecting them all then march out to go to another store in search of the perfect cabbage! As kids we were embarrassed by this but to her it was critical that she get the best. 

I don’t think she went to school past the eighth grade. She believed everything she read in the “Inquirer” or other gossip rags my aunt would leave her as the truth and would mention itmuch like she did other things she’d heard locally. Yet, she watched CNN all day long and knew about all the important issues of the day and politics. She loved to stay up late every night preferring to watch the edgy David Letterman to Jay Leno. Never wanting to part with something as expensive or extravagant as a TV she had multiple console TVs (tvs that looked like furniture) around the house she used as furniture, not viewing TVs. A TV served as a table for the phone and I recall that at one point her new TV (the plastic case kind) was placed on the old console one in the living room. Maybe it is the same one getting moved around but she even had one in the enclosed back porch with a few things stacked on top. Living through the Depression and other lean times makes for an entirely different mindset from our current “throw away” mentality.

I had the good fortune between college and grad school to work at IBM in a factory about four blocks from her house. My grandfather was still alive then and I would walk to their house everyday for lunch. What a joy it was to sit in their kitchen and eat with them.Baba was no gourmet but what she made was uniquely hers and had a taste that can’t be duplicated; isn’t that a trait of every grandmother?

Baba died a few years back at age 97.  Up until her early 90s she lived on her own. In her 97 years she had seen many things both good and bad. She lived through both world wars, the depression, life threatening illness of my grandfather, and a host of family difficulties. She had a sister, Mary, who got married around 1917 and went back to the old country with her husband (now Slovakia) to visit his family (against her mother’s wishes). He was immediatedly conscripted into the army and they were trapped there by WWI, later WWII and then the subsequent communist rule. They never saw each other again. For almost 70 years they corresponded by letter, unfortunately she didn’t keep a one (not surprising as you will see)! I would have loved to have a few of them, what a treasure they would be!

She had many cute sayings, some quite profound in their underlying meaning. One such saying was: “This is what it is” . She would use this expression in reference to many things. Sue and I always saw this as a very wise expression reflecting her attitude toward life. She took both the good and the bad and dealt with it, not bothering to worry about inconsequential matters. A few years ago Sue bought a teak “glider” bench for our front porch with a brass plate mounted on the backrest with “This Is What It Is”, her name with birth and death dates inscribed. Following in my grandmother’s footsteps I have a few sayings of my own (more on these another time) engraved on several outdoor chairs given to me as gifts. Unfortunately the wisdom and world view engendered in her “This Is What It Is” is not part of my makeup, I’m more of a “the glass is half empty” kind of guy… “why do I try?” ... that’s one of mine! Do you suppose my grandkids will mount that one someplace as a tribute to me someday? “Daddy… what was grandpa trying to do anyway?”.

St John Chrysostom

The second Sunday of Great Lent is known as the Sunday of the Paralytic. On this day the Gospel reading is from St Mark (2:1-12) telling of Jesus’ healing of the paralyzed man. This particular Sunday our parish held a “Reader Service” since our priest was out of town.  Monk Paul read the Gospel and followed it with a homily by St John Chrysostom on this particular passage. Several times in the homily he refers to the words of St Paul.  This made me think of something I heard and saw on Mt Athos concerning St John.  While at Vatopedi Monastery we were able to venerate a relic of St John, his skull with his left ear intact and incorrupt.  The relic was in a ornate silver box that had a door on the side that opened revealing the ear.  Having already seen the incorrupt hand of St John elsewhere this was an added “mind-blower”! 

Fr Mathew, the monk that showed us around Vatopedi, told us the story behind the “incorrupt ear”. 
The story goes:

St. Proculus (the spirtual son of the saint and eventually Patriarch of Constantinople) was going to visit St John and entered the room where the saint was working and saw a man standing close at his side appearing to be talking in his ear.  Not wanting to interrupt, St Proculus left and returned sometime later and mentioned to St John that he had come by earlier and found him busy with a visitor.  St John exclaimed that he had no visitors that day and that he had been occupied in writing the entire time.

Incorrupt Hand of St John Fr Mathew told us that legend has it that St Paul would whisper in the saint’s ear as he was composing his many homilies.  What in effect St Proculus had seen in this tale is St Paul himself whispering in the ear of St John! The incorrupt ear is due to it being the ear St John would listen to the God inspired wisdom of the great saint with. 

God Is Glorious In His Saints!

More about St John Chrysostom
Read about the Orthodox view of saints
St John’s Marvelous Paschal Homily read every Pascha (Easter)