From Heaven through Russia
Our common, everyday experiences of time -sunrise and sunset, and the recurring cycle of the weeks, months and seasons -have been integrated into liturgical time, in order to express and signify God’s life in us and our life in Him.
(Rev. Alciviadis C. Calivas, Th.D.)
Indeed! And God’s providential “integration” of time with the signs of His loving and eternal Presence often come in unexpected ways and from unexpected places. Here is how it happened with our building project.
Shortly after a church member donated the undeveloped land on which we later built our church, Fr. Lawrence began searching through books for a picture of a small, Russian orthodox church after which to model our proposed temple. He settled on a temple in the complex of the Trinity-St. Gerasim Boldino Monastery, located in the Smolensk region of Russia. Later that same year, Father Lawrence visited his spiritual father at the Monastery of St. John the Theologian in Hiram, Ohio. He wanted to ask his counsel about the project and show him the photo of the proposed church. Before he had the chance to do so, Archimandrite Alexander (+ January 26, 2021) began to speak of a small monastery at which he stays when going to Russia to purchase items for resale in their monastery’s church-goods store. He excused himself to go to his cell and bring a book to show Fr. Lawrence a picture of the monastery. When he returned, he had in hand the very book Fr. Lawrence had used to find the church, and -you guessed it- turned to very same picture! Talk about the integration of earthly time with God’s presence in our lives! You could have knocked Fr. Lawrence over with the proverbial feather.
But the story does not end there. The following year, in the summer of 1999, a friend of St. Barbara Monastery, Santa Paula, California, inquired of Abbess Victoria as to whether she knew of someone to whom she might give the two tickets to Russia that she had recently won in a church raffle. Mother suggested Father Lawrence and a couple of months later father stood on a blanket of fresh snow in front of the church itself. When he asked the monk showing him the church if it might be possible to venerate the relics of St. Gerasim, he was told that the place of the relics is currently unknown.
Glory to God, the place where the relics of the Saint were hidden was discovered in 2001 and the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church added the date of their discovery, July 20th, as a second day of commemoration to the Saint’s principal feast day of May 1st. When Archimandrite Alexander next visited Russia he was given the unexpected and wonderful news that a portion of the relics of the saint had been promised to Annunciation Church by Archimandrite Anthony, the Abbot of Trinity -Gerasim Monastery. Fr. Anthony had remembered Fr. Lawrence’s visit in 1999 and his having informed him of Annunciation Church’s intent to use the Monastery church as a model for a new temple.
What a great joy! Fr. Lawrence was asked to come to the Monastery of St. John the Theologian and to receive the relics from a visiting Russian cleric who was to transport them from Russia to America. As it happened – again, according to ‘liturgical time’ – the relics arrived at their final destination in Santa Maria, California, on the eve of the principal feast of the Saint, May 1st (May 14th Old Style). Talk about occurrence becoming concurrence, earth’s time serving Heaven’s eternity…bring out that feather again!
And, still, there is one bit more of this story of synchronicity, of everyday time being integrated into liturgical time. After the arrival of the relic, the parish commissioned a Russian iconographer known to the Trinity-St. Gerasim Monastery to paint a panel-icon of Saint Gerasim for our new temple. The icon arrived, two years later, by airmail, on July 20th, the second day dedicated to St. Gerasim in our church calendars! In the icon, the saint is holding an icon of the Smolensk Mother of God and Christ child. Not only is it a sign pointing to the miracle working icon cherished in the Smolensk region of Russia from the 11th century, but it is an exact replica of the principal icon of the Theotokos painted for our iconostasis more than 30 years prior. God had foreseen the spiritual connection that would come about decades before it originated in earthly time.
Who could have predicted or even imagined that Annunciation Church would go from looking through books of Russian churches to venerating the relics of our now much-loved intercessor, St. Gerasim. Truly, the Lord has turned the mundane, tick-tock moments of ordinary time, into a marvelous testimony to “sacred time.” Truly, a blessing has come from Heaven through Russia.
