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St Olga of Kwethluk was just glorified the other day and I had some thoughts on how timely it is. Initially I was posting this as part of a reply in the Orthobro thread, but felt it best here.
We are living in some odd times. No, not in the "end of ze world" sense of it; we've been living in the End Times since Pentecost and Christ Himself said that, "Only the Father knows the hour" so frankly I think any further discussion on that is pointless. The obsession over trying to figure out when the world ends and obsessing over Revelation and over what holy people have said about it, I think, have become idols and distractions from our spiritual walk with Christ. The Protestant obsession over it is a huge part of why I never looked towards that tradition with any serious consideration prior to becoming Orthodox.
No, instead we are living in some oddly super politically charged times and not just with world events, but within our own parish communities. We have our own share of community issues related to things like the balance of preserving a culture vs evangelism to the broader society, New vs Old Calendars, American culture war issues within the Church, etc etc etc. A lot of this seemed to exist just below the surface of life until the Pandemic and the ecclesiastical problems in Ukraine that predated Russia's 2022 invasion.
We Orthodox in North America are functioning with an deficit of basic Christian love and compassion. Somewhere in the very old introduction sticky is my conversion story into Orthodoxy and what I'll point out is this: it wasn't the theology that attracted me. I grew up Roman Catholic so I had no need to find a Church that practiced Communion and believed in the Real Presence. I already had bishops, priests, and deacons. I already had a large respect for the Virgin Mary. And, I already had a strong sense of identity as an American Catholic in a sort of Diet Irish flavor. I was already part of a larger, greater organization that stretched beyond the four walls of the building I worshiped in on Sundays. And it was quite ethnically diverse with Americans, Black Catholics, Filipinos, Vietnamese, Hispanics, and, Native Americans.
See, growing up Catholic in a rural part of the Pacific Northwest made me a particular target in high school being attacked by militant atheists/secularists who had an ax to grind about the Catholic Church's sex scandals. It made me a target to every flavor of Evangelical and Reformed Protestantism who blame the Catholic Church for every evil that has happened in the world since Pentecost. It made me a target to the 20% Mormon population of my high school because I didn't flaunt my faith like they did. These attacks and insults, well, actually strengthened my faith and in some ways made me a far more devout Catholic. Eventually I took a critical view of Church History and came to the conclusion that today's Roman Catholic Church is not the same as the 1st Century Christian Church founded on Pentecost.
So then what could possibly lead to my departure from Rome at the age of sixteen to the greener pastures of the Eastern Orthodox Church? The family influence of my Orthodox stepmom and later Orthodox dad played a part, but no, family unity was not it especially with my atheist brother. It was not some desire to be part of a conservative redoubt to the ongoing culture war which was starting to heat up when the notion of legalizing so-called "gay marriage" became a thing. It was not even the changless-ness of the Orthodox Divine Liturgy as the Catholic Church in America continued its un-ending quest of needless liturgical reform in the name of Vatican II. Ultimately, it was the love of people and hospitality of the non-Orthodox which the Orthodox, especially the babushki, have for everyone.
And so here we are today with a weird subset of hatred and malice within American Orthodoxy that doesn't appear to be addressed. We have COVID converts who became Orthodox as part of the Fr Peter Heers cult believing that COVID was concoccted to attack the Orthodox Church and that receiving any COVID vaccine means compromising one's salvation because they think that it is the mark of the beast. We have the anti-abortion zealots who believe that Russia is an Orthodox Utopia, Putin is a living saint, and that all Orthodox should abandon their homelands because of America's abotion laws (ironically ignoring the fact that Russia has consistently had higher abortion numbers than the USA for decades). We have these misguided, hateful people who think that any marginal show of basic compassion is indicative of a larger plot to turn the Orthodox Church into a watered down version of herself similar to the Anglican Communion. And, lastly, we have people who believe that just because Pascha 2025 was one of those years when the two Easters are on the same day, and that Pope Francis toyed with the idea of aligning the Catholic calculation of Easter to the Orthodox calculation, that it can only mean that the Ecumenical Patriarch is going to reunite the entire Eastern Orthodox Church into an Eastern Catholic Church subservient to the Pope in Rome.
With all this, I have to ask: where are people getting these crazy ideas, and why aren't our bishops and priests saying anything about any of it? We need our Church leadership to address these problems and quit burying their heads in the sand and ignoring them because they will not simply go away and disappear. They will persist.
I also have to ask what the Black Eyed Peas asked in 2003, "Where is the Love?" Are we not teaching it anymore? Did the Assembly of Bishops put out a communique saying not to teach that as Christians we are to love one another? The generation of babushki who survived Communist persecution, the ones who by their love brought me and others into the Faith, are dying out; why are we dishonoring their memory by acting the opposite of how they did?
I can't speak for how the Orthodox Church operates in the Old World because I have never been there and have never been a part of it. My ancestors have been in North America since the 1680s, so whatever connections I have on the other side of the Atlantic are flimsy at best. But, I do worry about the state of Orthodoxy in America. I worry that as we fail to teach and live the Gospel, that we will become just another hate-filled, politically-driven non-profit organization just like the Religious Right of Jimmy Swaggert, Jerry Fallwell, and so many other charlatians and hypocrites.
So, what does all this have to do with St Olga of Kwethluk? When we look at her earthly life in comparison with some of our other saints, it really isn't all that remarkable or noteworthy. She did not convert an entire nation of people like St Patrick for the Irish or St Nina for the Georgians. She did not defend the faith against heresy in well-articulated writings like St Athanasius against the Arians or St John of Damascus against the Iconoclasts. She was not a martyr like 40 Martyrs of Sebaste, St Peter the Aleut, or St John Kochurov, or any of the other countless martyrs from Communist persecution in the last century or Islamic persecution in the last 1400 years. She was simply a mother, a grandmother, a godmother, a midwife, and, the wife of a priest in a backwater village accessible almost exclusively by river boat where just over 700 people live.
Instead, she simply lived in her village and loved everyone. Christ said that there are two great Commandments: to love the Lord Your God with all your heart, strength, soul, etc; and, to love your neighbor as yourself. St Olga followed these two Commandments and that is why hundreds of people traveled to a poor Yupik village in western Alaska on the banks of the Kuskokwim River. There were eight bishops present and sadly only one was non-OCA from ROCOR. Which means that there was zero episcopal representation from the Antiochians, Greeks, Carpatho-Russians, Bulgarians, Georgians, Macedonians, or, Serbs. No wonder we laity remain divided in our jurisdictions when even our hierarchs can not be bothered to show for the glorification of someone native to the American lands who is not part of some diaspora group. Someone who's family has likely been cradle Orthodox since St Jacob Netsvetov, a priest of mixed Russian-Aleut heritage, introduced the people of the Kuskokwim River to Christ almost two centuries ago. An Orthodox generation ago, this glorification would have no doubt have had at least Metropolitan Philip of the Antiochians, Metropolitan Nicholas of the Carpatho-Russians, and even at least one of the Greek bishops in attendance. Instead our bishops no longer care about pan-Orthodoxy and even actively fight against it; especially the Greeks and ROCOR. I am, to put it bluntly, disappointed in each and every one of our hierarchs, especially my own, for failing to keep the spirit of Pan-Orthodoxy alive.
We need St Olga of Kwethluk. We need this simple, humble, example of Christian love and compassion. Nineteen years ago when I was chrismated Orthodox (something that people today consider heretical because of Fr Peter Heers' misguided views on the sacraments) there was someone who was like St Olga in every Orthodox parish. She was usually an old grandmotherly lady who survived WWII as a child and later survived Communism in the Warsaw Pact nations, survived the Greek Military Junta, or survived the various wars and civil wars in the Middle East. Now there are fewer of them as that generation dies off. What will we have left when they're gone? What are we doing to be that person for somebody else or are we the reason somebody never comes to Church and hates Christ? Perhaps if we had more people like St Olga of Kwethluk we would have fewer Jay Dyer and the Orthobros.
As former poster OrthodoxyUSA used to end his posts: Forgive me.
We are living in some odd times. No, not in the "end of ze world" sense of it; we've been living in the End Times since Pentecost and Christ Himself said that, "Only the Father knows the hour" so frankly I think any further discussion on that is pointless. The obsession over trying to figure out when the world ends and obsessing over Revelation and over what holy people have said about it, I think, have become idols and distractions from our spiritual walk with Christ. The Protestant obsession over it is a huge part of why I never looked towards that tradition with any serious consideration prior to becoming Orthodox.
No, instead we are living in some oddly super politically charged times and not just with world events, but within our own parish communities. We have our own share of community issues related to things like the balance of preserving a culture vs evangelism to the broader society, New vs Old Calendars, American culture war issues within the Church, etc etc etc. A lot of this seemed to exist just below the surface of life until the Pandemic and the ecclesiastical problems in Ukraine that predated Russia's 2022 invasion.
We Orthodox in North America are functioning with an deficit of basic Christian love and compassion. Somewhere in the very old introduction sticky is my conversion story into Orthodoxy and what I'll point out is this: it wasn't the theology that attracted me. I grew up Roman Catholic so I had no need to find a Church that practiced Communion and believed in the Real Presence. I already had bishops, priests, and deacons. I already had a large respect for the Virgin Mary. And, I already had a strong sense of identity as an American Catholic in a sort of Diet Irish flavor. I was already part of a larger, greater organization that stretched beyond the four walls of the building I worshiped in on Sundays. And it was quite ethnically diverse with Americans, Black Catholics, Filipinos, Vietnamese, Hispanics, and, Native Americans.
See, growing up Catholic in a rural part of the Pacific Northwest made me a particular target in high school being attacked by militant atheists/secularists who had an ax to grind about the Catholic Church's sex scandals. It made me a target to every flavor of Evangelical and Reformed Protestantism who blame the Catholic Church for every evil that has happened in the world since Pentecost. It made me a target to the 20% Mormon population of my high school because I didn't flaunt my faith like they did. These attacks and insults, well, actually strengthened my faith and in some ways made me a far more devout Catholic. Eventually I took a critical view of Church History and came to the conclusion that today's Roman Catholic Church is not the same as the 1st Century Christian Church founded on Pentecost.
So then what could possibly lead to my departure from Rome at the age of sixteen to the greener pastures of the Eastern Orthodox Church? The family influence of my Orthodox stepmom and later Orthodox dad played a part, but no, family unity was not it especially with my atheist brother. It was not some desire to be part of a conservative redoubt to the ongoing culture war which was starting to heat up when the notion of legalizing so-called "gay marriage" became a thing. It was not even the changless-ness of the Orthodox Divine Liturgy as the Catholic Church in America continued its un-ending quest of needless liturgical reform in the name of Vatican II. Ultimately, it was the love of people and hospitality of the non-Orthodox which the Orthodox, especially the babushki, have for everyone.
And so here we are today with a weird subset of hatred and malice within American Orthodoxy that doesn't appear to be addressed. We have COVID converts who became Orthodox as part of the Fr Peter Heers cult believing that COVID was concoccted to attack the Orthodox Church and that receiving any COVID vaccine means compromising one's salvation because they think that it is the mark of the beast. We have the anti-abortion zealots who believe that Russia is an Orthodox Utopia, Putin is a living saint, and that all Orthodox should abandon their homelands because of America's abotion laws (ironically ignoring the fact that Russia has consistently had higher abortion numbers than the USA for decades). We have these misguided, hateful people who think that any marginal show of basic compassion is indicative of a larger plot to turn the Orthodox Church into a watered down version of herself similar to the Anglican Communion. And, lastly, we have people who believe that just because Pascha 2025 was one of those years when the two Easters are on the same day, and that Pope Francis toyed with the idea of aligning the Catholic calculation of Easter to the Orthodox calculation, that it can only mean that the Ecumenical Patriarch is going to reunite the entire Eastern Orthodox Church into an Eastern Catholic Church subservient to the Pope in Rome.
With all this, I have to ask: where are people getting these crazy ideas, and why aren't our bishops and priests saying anything about any of it? We need our Church leadership to address these problems and quit burying their heads in the sand and ignoring them because they will not simply go away and disappear. They will persist.
I also have to ask what the Black Eyed Peas asked in 2003, "Where is the Love?" Are we not teaching it anymore? Did the Assembly of Bishops put out a communique saying not to teach that as Christians we are to love one another? The generation of babushki who survived Communist persecution, the ones who by their love brought me and others into the Faith, are dying out; why are we dishonoring their memory by acting the opposite of how they did?
I can't speak for how the Orthodox Church operates in the Old World because I have never been there and have never been a part of it. My ancestors have been in North America since the 1680s, so whatever connections I have on the other side of the Atlantic are flimsy at best. But, I do worry about the state of Orthodoxy in America. I worry that as we fail to teach and live the Gospel, that we will become just another hate-filled, politically-driven non-profit organization just like the Religious Right of Jimmy Swaggert, Jerry Fallwell, and so many other charlatians and hypocrites.
So, what does all this have to do with St Olga of Kwethluk? When we look at her earthly life in comparison with some of our other saints, it really isn't all that remarkable or noteworthy. She did not convert an entire nation of people like St Patrick for the Irish or St Nina for the Georgians. She did not defend the faith against heresy in well-articulated writings like St Athanasius against the Arians or St John of Damascus against the Iconoclasts. She was not a martyr like 40 Martyrs of Sebaste, St Peter the Aleut, or St John Kochurov, or any of the other countless martyrs from Communist persecution in the last century or Islamic persecution in the last 1400 years. She was simply a mother, a grandmother, a godmother, a midwife, and, the wife of a priest in a backwater village accessible almost exclusively by river boat where just over 700 people live.
Instead, she simply lived in her village and loved everyone. Christ said that there are two great Commandments: to love the Lord Your God with all your heart, strength, soul, etc; and, to love your neighbor as yourself. St Olga followed these two Commandments and that is why hundreds of people traveled to a poor Yupik village in western Alaska on the banks of the Kuskokwim River. There were eight bishops present and sadly only one was non-OCA from ROCOR. Which means that there was zero episcopal representation from the Antiochians, Greeks, Carpatho-Russians, Bulgarians, Georgians, Macedonians, or, Serbs. No wonder we laity remain divided in our jurisdictions when even our hierarchs can not be bothered to show for the glorification of someone native to the American lands who is not part of some diaspora group. Someone who's family has likely been cradle Orthodox since St Jacob Netsvetov, a priest of mixed Russian-Aleut heritage, introduced the people of the Kuskokwim River to Christ almost two centuries ago. An Orthodox generation ago, this glorification would have no doubt have had at least Metropolitan Philip of the Antiochians, Metropolitan Nicholas of the Carpatho-Russians, and even at least one of the Greek bishops in attendance. Instead our bishops no longer care about pan-Orthodoxy and even actively fight against it; especially the Greeks and ROCOR. I am, to put it bluntly, disappointed in each and every one of our hierarchs, especially my own, for failing to keep the spirit of Pan-Orthodoxy alive.
We need St Olga of Kwethluk. We need this simple, humble, example of Christian love and compassion. Nineteen years ago when I was chrismated Orthodox (something that people today consider heretical because of Fr Peter Heers' misguided views on the sacraments) there was someone who was like St Olga in every Orthodox parish. She was usually an old grandmotherly lady who survived WWII as a child and later survived Communism in the Warsaw Pact nations, survived the Greek Military Junta, or survived the various wars and civil wars in the Middle East. Now there are fewer of them as that generation dies off. What will we have left when they're gone? What are we doing to be that person for somebody else or are we the reason somebody never comes to Church and hates Christ? Perhaps if we had more people like St Olga of Kwethluk we would have fewer Jay Dyer and the Orthobros.
As former poster OrthodoxyUSA used to end his posts: Forgive me.
