Relics and Feast

The veneration of St. Alexis of Wilkes-Barre after 1994: his relics enshrined at St. Tikhon’s Monastery in South Canaan, Pennsylvania; his feast on 7 May, the day of his repose; and the hymnography, iconography, and dedications through which the returned-Uniate church keeps his memory.

Tradition: Carpatho-Rusyn / American Orthodox

The Repose

Toth reposed on 7 May 1909 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where he had lived and labored for the last sixteen or seventeen years of his life (OCA, “Repose of Saint Alexis Toth,” oca.org, giving Friday, 7 May 1909). He was buried at St. Tikhon’s Monastery in South Canaan — the monastery founded during his own missionary years, at the center of the Pennsylvania region his movement had transformed (OCA, “Repose of Saint Alexis Toth”; on St. Tikhon’s founding in 1905, see The Immigrant Era). His commemoration is kept on 7 May, the day of his repose, under the title “Saint Alexis Toth, Confessor and Defender of Orthodoxy in America.”

[Disputed: the day of Toth’s repose. The OCA and the overwhelming weight of the sources give 7 May 1909, and the feast is kept on 7 May (oca.org). A single reference work gives 9 May 1909 (Encyclopedia.com, “Toth, Alexis”), an outlier not reflected in the liturgical commemoration. The collection uses 7 May 1909, the date of the feast, and notes the 9 May variant as an isolated discrepancy.]

The Relics

In preparation for the 1994 glorification, Toth’s remains were exhumed at St. Tikhon’s and, by the Synod’s proclamation that “his honorable remains be considered as holy relics,” enshrined for veneration at the monastery (OCA, “The Proclamation of the Holy Synod of Bishops on the Glorification of Saint Alexis Toth,” oca.org; ACROD, “St. Alexis Toth,” describing the exhumation and enshrinement for the glorification). The relics rest at St. Tikhon’s Monastery, which is thus both his burial place and the site of his glorification and shrine — a rare convergence that makes the monastery the principal center of his cult (OCA, “Proclamation”; the monastery’s own history, sttikhonsmonastery.org, as locator).

The location is fitting in a way the collection has already noted: the confessor of the Carpatho-Rusyn return lies at the heart of the church his movement helped to build, in the monastery founded by the hierarch (St. Tikhon) under whom the American mission came of age (see St. Tikhon of Moscow). Pilgrims to St. Tikhon’s — above all at the Memorial Day pilgrimage on which he was glorified — venerate his relics as those of the “Father of Orthodoxy in America” (see Father of Orthodoxy in America).

Hymnography and Iconography

With the glorification came the liturgical apparatus of a saint. A troparion, kontakion, and full service were composed for St. Alexis, and an akathist to him has been published (an Akathist Service to St. Alexis Toth is in print, e.g. through St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, svspress.com; the OCA and ACROD provide the troparion and kontakion for his feast). His icon depicts him as a priest — vested in the phelonion, holding a cross or a scroll, sometimes with a church signifying the parishes he returned — in the manner proper to a righteous confessor-priest rather than a monastic or a martyr (OCA and ACROD iconographic materials, as locators). The hymnography names him, in the settled liturgical formula, confessor and defender of Orthodoxy in America and shepherd of the returning Rusyns.

Dedications and Continuing Veneration

Toth’s name is carried by parishes and institutions of the returned-Uniate church. The mother parish of St. Mary’s, Minneapolis — the community he first led into Orthodoxy in 1891 — stands within the OCA, and churches dedicated to St. Alexis of Wilkes-Barre have been established in the decades since his glorification (OCA parish records, oca.org, as locators; e.g. St. Alexis of Wilkes-Barre parishes and the naming of chapels and cathedrals in his honor). His feast is kept with particular solemnity in the Pennsylvania parishes of his movement and at Holy Resurrection in Wilkes-Barre, his own church (Diocese of Philadelphia and Eastern Pennsylvania, “Feast of St. Alexis Toth Celebrated at Holy Trinity Church, Wilkes-Barre,” doepa.org, as locator).

The veneration is thus concentrated where the history was: in the anthracite-and-steel parishes of Pennsylvania and the upper Midwest, among the descendants of the immigrants Toth returned. It is a living, ethnically rooted cult — the Carpatho-Rusyn American church honoring the man it regards as its founder in Orthodoxy — and it is spreading, with the glorification, into the wider American Orthodox calendar as one of the growing synaxis of North American saints (see The Saints of North America). Whether Toth is best titled the “Father of Orthodoxy in America,” and how his cult relates to the wider American synaxis and the Carpatho-Rusyn aftermath, are the questions of the final section.

See Also

References

  • Orthodox Church in America. “Repose of Saint Alexis Toth, Confessor and Defender of Orthodoxy in America”; “The Proclamation of the Holy Synod of Bishops on the Glorification of Saint Alexis Toth.” oca.org — used as locators (7 May 1909; the relics at St. Tikhon’s).
  • American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese. “St. Alexis Toth.” acrod.org — used as locator (exhumation and enshrinement).
  • Monastery of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk. sttikhonsmonastery.org — used as locator (the relics and shrine).
  • Akathist Service to St. Alexis Toth. St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press (svspress.com) — the published akathist.
  • Diocese of Philadelphia and Eastern Pennsylvania. “Feast of St. Alexis Toth Celebrated at Holy Trinity Church, Wilkes-Barre, PA.” doepa.org — used as locator.
  • “Toth, Alexis.” Encyclopedia.com — used as locator (the 9 May variant).