Before St. Hermans Canonization

Before his canonization a Saint usually manifests himself as especially close to earth, more attentive than ever in his heavenly intercessions for those who have reverence toward him. The following, received shortly before the canonization, only confirm the faithful in St. Herman's closeness to those on earth.

I. ST. HERMAN'S VISITATION OF GRATITUDE

The Spirit breatheth where He will.
St. John 3:8

IN HOLY TRINITY MONASTERY near Jordanville there labored in asceticism a monk who bore the name of St. Nikodim the holy prosphora-baker of the Kiev-Caves Monastery. In his youth he came to love monasticism, made a pilgrimage to Valaam, stayed for some time in the Pskov-Caves Monastery, and for many years served and was the cell-attendant of the New Martyr John, Bishop of Riga (d. 1934). When Nikodim was ordained and sent on a new obedience to the monastery of St. Job of Pochaev in Munich, his abbot, in sending him on his way, gave him a secret commission: to go to New Valaam in Finland and give Communion there to several old monks who had been without Communion for many years because of their faithfulness to the Church Calendar; for on Valaam the uncanonical New Calendar had been forcibly introduced, and many monks – led by the later Schema-monk Michael of holy life – had not acknowledged it, even though they remained in the Valaam brotherhood. Fr. Nikodim gave the Holy Mysteries of Christ to these confessors, and to one of them who, having awaited this moment, immediately reposed in the Lord – he also gave the last rites. Having fulfilled his obedience, he returned to his own Holy Trinity Monastery, and in several years the Lord called him also. He died while at his obedience of monastery baker, and he was buried thus, according to the monastic custom, with dough on his hands. His mother, overwhelmed with grief, came to live out her own days near the monastery, so as to be near the grave of her son. There she lives to the present day.

But in the Lord all are alive. And the grateful about-to-be-canonized St. Herman, accepting Fr. Nikodim's labor for his own Valaam brethren who had acquired crowns of glory for themselves by their labor of confession, did not leave without consolation the sorrowing mother of Nikodim and secretly visited her and comforted her with heavenly joy on the eve of his canonization. "Yesterday I was reading the Life of St. Herman," she writes, "and I came to love his splendid face and kissed his image. And suddenly I felt a certain fragrance. I began to smell the page, the book, to look and see if there weren't some flowers nearby. But they gave little aroma, since lately it had been raining every day. But I, to be sure, am unworthy of this." Later she added, "Sometimes, when I am alone, this happens again." (Signature: Raissa Gavrilovna Zemmering, July 3/16, 1970.)

Translated from RUSSIAN LIFE Daily, San Francisco, No. 7075, 1970.)


Archimandrite Gerasim before the sarcophagus with the relics of St. Herman in the Spruce Island chapel of Sts. Sergius and Herman, whose icon (with St. Nicholas, in the Valaam tradition) is above the reliquary.

II. THE SAINT'S LESSON THROUGH HIS SPRING

IN THE CITY of Kodiak up to the present time there has lived a certain V. K., a Protestant by faith, who is married to one of the granddaughters of the ever-memorable Archpriest Nicholas Kashevarov, a very zealous daughter of the holy Orthodox Church. Mr. V. K. likes to have a drink; however, he never gets seriously drunk. By nature he likes fishing and hunting. Every year, whether the fishing were good or bad, he would unfailingly go to Spruce Island to go visiting, as he said, with Blessed Herman and Archimandrite Gerasim, who was living at that time on the island and was the guardian of the relics and objects relating to Father Herman. Unfailingly V. K. would visit the chapel built on the site of Father Herman's cell, and would admire and marvel at the Elder's chains that were kept there, his preserved kamilavka and other objects connected with the Elder's life; he would ascend to the church, in which the Saint's remains were found, and, although not Orthodox, would bow down before the Saint's tomb with the Saint's image covering it, and place a candle. Then he would go to visit Fr. Gerasim, and before leaving would go to the spring to drink the cold, pure water, take this water home at his wife's instruction, and set out on the return trip.

This time V. K. was not alone, but with other residents of Kodiak. On the way to the spring V. K. remembered his wife's request to bring St. Herman's water. But he had no bottle, except for a bottle with wine which was being saved for the return trip. Without thinking long about it V. K. drank the contents, proposing to rinse the bottle and fill it with Father Herman's water...

Coming to the spring, however, V. K. saw that the water was as if boiling, raising to the surface various kinds of filth, and for as long as V. K. waited the water continued to be turbulent, becoming muddy and unsuitable for drinking. And so he left for Kodiak, without drinking the water or bringing any home.

"For a long time," V. K. told me, "I told no one of this, but I didn't stop thinking of what had happened until I went again to Spruce Island." This time he took with him no "provisions." After landing on Spruce Island, he went immediately to the spring. The water was transparent, as pure as tears! "I drank the water for a long time and came to believe that the Elder, showing me such a sign, was really a man of holy life," he told me. Having returned home, he related what had happened to him. And from that time no one again would dare to go to Spruce Island without proper reverence, but would go there to venerate the Saint and be refreshed by his holy water.

This incident, so similar to the incident of St. Seraphim of Sarov and the Decembrist at the spring-whose suddenly muddy waters, the Saint related, were a sign of the evil nature of this revolutionary's schemes – has never appeared in print before. Wondrous is God in His saints!

Archpriest Alexander Popov

III. POSTHUMOUS VOICE OF ST. HERMAN'S GUARDIAN

In the papers of the late Dr. N. N. Alexander, Dean of Holy Trinity Seminary at Jordanville, N.Y., his collection of material on Fr. Gerasim of Alaska was discovered. It was forwarded to the Brotherhood of St. Herman and received on the eve of the Saint's canonization. The contents of one of the documents are strikingly timely: a cry resounding from a man who more than anyone else served the Saint, and who felt the whole sorrow of the betrayal of the unity of the Russian Church Abroad by the rival "jurisdictions" that sprang up after 1927. (Russian text published in TSARSKY VESTNIK, February, 1931.)

GOING THROUGH periodicals and books in my private library, I found an old letter, sent to me from Russia in 1922 by a monk-friend. Here is what he writes me:

"My dear friend, Father Gerasim!

"Our monastery in Tula has been closed and all of us chased out. At first I lived in my home town and took over the parish in the town of N. But when the whole diocese of Tula was occupied by the Living Church heretic-atheists, I had to flee from the parish. Now I live in Moscow with Bishop Theodore. Evdokim (Bishop) also called me to Nizhni-Novgorod, but I did not go to him, since he is also a Living Church heretic now.

"Now in Russia the Church is ruled by heretic-clergy.

"I also have visited Patriarch Tikhon, who lives now in the Donskoy Monastery. I told him about what you have written to me from America. To this he replied to me: 'For the Church abroad I am calm: it is governed synodically and by hierarchs well known to me.'"

Do you hear, all you schismatics from the Church of Christ, the Orthodox Church, what His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon said about the Higher Church Authority of the Church Outside Russia?

Do you hear what he said?

Archimandrite Gerasim (Schmaltz) Afognak, Alaska