Sermons and Reports

Beyond his one substantial theological book, St. John Maximovitch’s corpus is made up of conciliar reports, sermons, and pastoral instructions. The most important is his 1938 report to the Second All-Diaspora Council on the spiritual state of the Russian emigration, with its severe diagnosis of émigré secularization and its summons to repentance. To these belong his decades-early advocacy for the veneration of the Royal Martyrs, his published sermons gathered by ROCOR and St. Herman Press, and the recurring themes of his teaching: the universality of the Church, strictness with clergy, and mercy in pastoral economy.

Tradition: ROCOR (glorified 1994; Moscow Patriarchate veneration affirmed 2008)

The 1938 Report to the Second All-Diaspora Council

In 1938 the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia convened its Second All-Diaspora Council (Sobor) at Sremski Karlovci in Yugoslavia. To it Bishop John of Shanghai submitted a report on the condition of the Russian Church abroad, usually rendered in English as “The Spiritual Condition of the Russian People in the Diaspora” (sometimes “The Spiritual State of the Russian Emigration”) (ROCOR Second All-Diaspora Council, 1938, report of Bishop John of Shanghai; orthodoxhistory.org, “St. John Maximovitch on the Purpose of the Russian Diaspora,” April 2, 2024).

The report’s diagnosis is its famous element. St. John read the Revolution and the murder of the Tsar as a collective sin of the Russian people, and the dispersion that followed as both chastisement and mission: “While punishing the Russian people, the Lord at the same time is pointing out the way to salvation by making them teachers of Orthodoxy throughout the world” (Bishop John, 1938 report, as translated in orthodoxhistory.org). He turned a sharp eye on the émigré intelligentsia in particular. A large part of those who had gone abroad, he wrote, belonged to an educated class that “had lived by the ideas of the West”; while “belonging to the Orthodox Church and confessing themselves to be Orthodox,” they had “significantly departed from Orthodoxy,” their chief sin being that they did not build their lives “on the teaching of the Orthodox faith,” but rather strove “to make the rules and teaching of the Orthodox Church conform to their own habits and desires” (Bishop John, 1938 report).

From this diagnosis followed the report’s stark “two paths.” Having failed to spread Orthodoxy and even degraded it by their manner of life, the diaspora stood before a choice: “either to turn to the path of repentance and, beseeching God’s forgiveness and renewing itself spiritually, to make itself capable of giving rebirth to the suffering homeland,” or else “to be finally cut off by God and remain in exile, persecuted by everyone, until gradually degenerating, it disappears from the face of the earth” (Bishop John, 1938 report). The text is the clearest statement of St. John’s ecclesiology of exile: the diaspora is not an accident to be endured but a vocation to be fulfilled or forfeited.

The same 1938 council saw St. John submit a second report, on the situation of the Orthodox Churches, the substance of which circulates in English under the title “The Decline of the Patriarchate of Constantinople” (St. John Maximovitch, report to the Second All-Diaspora Council of ROCOR, 1938; trueorthodoxy.org). Yet the council reports also show the balancing principle of his ecclesiology: he held that the Russian Church Abroad, for all its critique, “must not interrupt communion with other Churches” — a conviction that keeps his diagnosis of émigré failure from collapsing into separatism and that later writers have invoked to argue that St. John was no schismatic (orthochristian.com, “Was St. John (Maximovitch) a Schismatic?,” no. 127695; silouanthompson.net, “Saint John was not a schismatic”). The reports thus hold rebuke and communion together: a severe call to repentance issued from within the bonds of the one Church, not from outside or above it.

The Royal Martyrs

St. John venerated the murdered Tsar Nicholas II and his family decades before any conciliar act, and his advocacy is one of the documented antecedents of the 1981 glorification. His memorial sermons in the 1930s, delivered at services for the slain Imperial family, set out the themes that would later become standard in the ROCOR cause: the sacrifices of the Tsar for Russia, and the great sin incurred by the Russian people in the murder of their anointed sovereign (St. John Maximovitch, “In Memory of the Royal Martyrs,” memorial sermon; en.afanasiy.net and stjohndc.org, “In Memory of the Royal Martyrs by St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco”). He held that “the Russian people were entirely guilty for the death of the Tsar,” a judgment continuous with his 1938 report’s reading of the Revolution as collective sin (St. John, “In Memory of the Royal Martyrs”).

The chronology should be stated plainly: St. John reposed in 1966, and the formal glorification of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, including the Royal Family, was performed by the ROCOR Council of Bishops on October 19 / November 1, 1981, under Metropolitan Philaret (Voznesensky) — fifteen years after St. John’s death (see St. Philaret of New York). His role was that of an early advocate whose veneration anticipated the conciliar act, not a participant in it.

Published Sermons and Instructions

St. John’s homiletic and pastoral corpus survives chiefly in collections gathered after his death. ROCOR diocesan publishers and the St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood (St. Herman Press) issued his sermons in English; a two-volume Words / Sermons set circulates under his name, and individual homilies — on the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, on the feasts of the Theotokos, on the meaning of the Church — are widely reprinted from synodal and parish sources (St. John Maximovitch, Words / Sermons, 2 vols.; Holy Trinity Monastery, Orthodox Life, special issues on St. John, Jordanville, NY). Damascene Christensen’s biography preserves and translates much of his preaching and many of his instructions within its narrative (Rose, Seraphim, and Damascene Christensen, Blessed John the Wonderworker, St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood). Because these collections are posthumous compilations drawn from varied parish and periodical sources, particular sayings are best cited to the published collection in which they appear rather than treated as a single authorial volume.

Teaching Themes

The Universality of the Church

St. John’s missionary vision reached beyond the Russian diaspora. He held that Orthodoxy was the faith of all nations and not the property of any one, and he acted on it: in Shanghai he “began working to restore unity among the various Orthodox nationalities” and served, at the request of local Greeks and Macedonians, in the Greek language (OrthodoxWiki, “John (Maximovitch) the Wonderworker,” used as a locator for the primary accounts). In Western Europe he labored to recover the pre-Schism Western saints, collecting their lives and images and submitting a long list of them to the ROCOR Synod for veneration — saints who had lived in Gaul, Britain, and the Low Countries before 1054, among them St. Genevieve of Paris and St. Patrick of Ireland (Wikipedia, “John of Shanghai and San Francisco,” and relicsofthesaints.org, used as locators). This was an unusual undertaking for a Russian hierarch and a deliberate expression of his conviction that Orthodoxy was the native inheritance of the West, not a Russian export to it (see Place in ROCOR). His preserved homily “The Church as the Body of Christ” gives the doctrinal form of this vision — the Church as one body across all peoples — and his report on the Patriarchate of Constantinople gave it a critical edge (St. John Maximovitch, “The Church as the Body of Christ,” trueorthodoxy.org). On the connection between this universality and his missionary blessing of an English-language brotherhood, see The St. John–Seraphim Rose Connection.

Strictness and Mercy

His pastoral character joined an exacting strictness toward clergy and liturgical order with a notable readiness toward mercy in the application of the canons (oikonomia). He demanded of priests the full and unhurried celebration of the services and was severe with liturgical carelessness, yet in dealing with the wounded and the lapsed he was famed for gentleness; the standard accounts present this combination — rigor in the offering of worship, economy in the care of souls — as the signature of his pastorate (Bishop Alexander Mileant, “Life and Miracles of St. John (Maximovitch),” orthochristian.com no. 54575; orthochristian.com, “St. John of Shanghai — Sternness and Sanctity,” no. 35915).

“Holiness Is Not Simply Righteousness”

Among his most quoted passages is a definition of sanctity drawn from his preaching: “Holiness is not simply righteousness, for which the righteous merit the enjoyment of blessedness in the Kingdom of God, but rather such a height of righteousness that men are filled with the grace of God to the extent that it flows from them upon those who associate with them. Great is their blessedness; it proceeds from personal experience of the glory of God” (St. John Maximovitch, on holiness; attributed in ROCOR parish and devotional collections, e.g. stmichaelscleveland.org, citing his sermon). The passage circulates widely in devotional form and is best attributed to his published preaching rather than pinned to a single critical edition.

Significance

Taken together, the reports and sermons show a hierarch whose theology was inseparable from his pastorate. The 1938 report applied dogma to history with prophetic severity; the Royal Martyrs sermons turned that same reading toward repentance and veneration; and the teaching on the universality of the Church gave his ROCOR loyalty a missionary breadth that would bear fruit, after his death, in the English-language Orthodoxy his disciple Fr. Seraphim Rose carried forward.

See Also

• The Orthodox Veneration of the Mother of God — his principal theological work
• Place in ROCOR — his recovery of Western saints and his pan-Orthodox service
• The St. John–Seraphim Rose Connection — the missionary lineage that carried his preaching into English
• St. Philaret of New York — presided over the 1981 glorification of the Royal Martyrs St. John long advocated
• St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco — the saint’s life

References

• Maximovitch, Bishop John. “The Spiritual Condition of the Russian People in the Diaspora” (report to the Second All-Diaspora Council of ROCOR, Sremski Karlovci, 1938). Excerpted and translated at orthodoxhistory.org, “St. John Maximovitch on the Purpose of the Russian Diaspora,” April 2, 2024.
• Maximovitch, St. John. “In Memory of the Royal Martyrs” (memorial sermon). At stjohndc.org and en.afanasiy.net.
• Maximovitch, St. John. Words / Sermons, 2 vols. Published from synodal and St. Herman Press sources.
• Mileant, Bishop Alexander. “Life and Miracles of St. John (Maximovich) of Shanghai and San Francisco.” orthochristian.com no. 54575.
• “St. John of Shanghai — Sternness and Sanctity.” orthochristian.com no. 35915.
• Rose, Fr. Seraphim, and Damascene Christensen. Blessed John the Wonderworker: A Preliminary Account of the Life and Miracles of Archbishop John Maximovitch. Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1987.
• ROCOR Council of Bishops. Act of Glorification of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, October 19 / November 1, 1981.
• Holy Trinity Monastery. Orthodox Life, special issues on St. John. Jordanville, NY.