Glorification (1994)

The glorification of Archbishop John (Maximovitch) by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in San Francisco on July 2, 1994 — the first ROCOR glorification of a hierarch who had himself lived and labored within the emigration; the Moscow Patriarchate’s 2008 recognition of his veneration for the whole Russian Church; his feast on July 2 (June 19 O.S.); the troparion; and his standing today as the best-known saint of ROCOR.

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

The ROCOR Glorification, July 2, 1994

Archbishop John was solemnly glorified (canonized) by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia on July 2, 1994 (June 19, Old Style) — the twenty-eighth anniversary of his repose — at the Cathedral of the Most Holy Theotokos “Joy of All Who Sorrow” in San Francisco, the cathedral he had built and beneath which he had been buried (OCA, “Saint John [Maximovitch], Archbishop of Shanghai and San Francisco”; Wikipedia, “John of Shanghai and San Francisco” — “glorified … on July 2, 1994, the 28th anniversary of his death”). The celebration extended across July 1–3, 1994, and was deliberately timed within the wider commemoration of the bicentennial of Orthodoxy in America (1794–1994), ROCOR glorifying St. John together with St. Innocent of Alaska and St. Nicholas of Japan in that same season (ROCOR Studies, “The Order of Glorifying Saints in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (1920–2007)”).

First glorification of the emigration itself

St. John’s glorification holds a particular place in the order of ROCOR’s canonizations. ROCOR’s earlier glorifications honored saints of pre-revolutionary or homeland Russia and the New Martyrs who suffered there: St. John of Kronstadt (1964) — ROCOR’s first canonization — St. Herman of Alaska (1970), Blessed Xenia of St. Petersburg (1978), and the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia (1981) (ROCOR Studies, “The Order of Glorifying Saints”). St. John was the first saint glorified by ROCOR who had himself been a hierarch of the Church Abroad — a man of the emigration, formed in the diaspora and laboring his whole episcopal life within it (China, Western Europe, and the United States). St. John of Kronstadt and Blessed Xenia had lived and died in imperial Russia; the New Martyrs had suffered in the Soviet homeland; St. Herman and the other early American saints belonged to the pre-revolutionary Alaskan mission. St. John of Shanghai, by contrast, was consecrated, served, and reposed entirely outside Russia, within the structures of the Church Abroad itself. In this sense his glorification was the Church Abroad recognizing holiness produced within its own twentieth-century exile, rather than received from the Russia it had left — a framing widely drawn in the ROCOR literature and consistent with the chronology in ROCOR Studies’ survey. (The qualification “of the emigration itself” is the operative one: it distinguishes a saint of the diaspora’s own life from saints of the homeland whom the diaspora glorified.)

The service and the hierarchs

The rite followed the traditional Orthodox order of glorification. Before the services, the prepared reliquary was solemnly processed from the sepulchre up into the nave of the cathedral (Perekrestov, OrthoChristian). As Archpriest Peter Perekrestov — a participant and the chief chronicler of the event — records, the order unfolded across the celebration: a Panikhida (memorial service) for the reposed Archbishop John was served for the last time, after which he would be invoked not as one prayed for but as a saint prayed to; then at the All-Night Vigil the stichera to the new saint were sung, and during the litya St. John was named for the first time as “our father among the saints John, Archbishop of Shanghai and San Francisco the Wonderworker, whose glorification is presently taking place.” At the appointed moment the reliquary was opened to public veneration — the First Hierarch “came up to the reliquary, untied the icon of St. John … and everyone could see St. John’s relics” — and the festal Divine Liturgy followed (Perekrestov, “The Opening of the Relics, and Glorification of St. John Maximovitch,” OrthoChristian).

The glorification was presided over by the ROCOR Synod of Bishops under First Hierarch Metropolitan Vitaly (Ustinov), with numerous hierarchs, clergy, and faithful from across the Church Abroad in attendance (Perekrestov, OrthoChristian). Perekrestov notes that Metropolitan Vitaly had at first hesitated over the canonization and then, at a Synod meeting, unexpectedly assented — the obstacle giving way at the decisive moment (Perekrestov, OrthoChristian). The ruling diocesan hierarch and principal mover of the cause was Archbishop Anthony (Medvedev) of San Francisco and Western America, who had conducted the 1993 examination of the relics (see repose-and-relics.md). For the glorification a full liturgical service was composed — troparion, kontakion, canon, and stichera — together with an akathist to the saint that has since spread widely (the akathist’s first kontakion hails him as “chosen wonderworker and pleaser of Christ, who pourest forth inexhaustible streams of inspiration and a multitude of miracles upon the whole world”; Akathist to St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco, Holy Virgin Cathedral texts).

The Moscow Patriarchate’s Recognition (2008)

For its first years St. John’s veneration was confined, in formal terms, to ROCOR and the churches in communion with it. After the 2007 reconciliation of ROCOR with the Moscow Patriarchate (the Act of Canonical Communion, May 17, 2007 — see Orthodoxy Guide: The 2007 Reunion), the question of incorporating ROCOR’s own glorified saints into the calendar of the whole Russian Orthodox Church arose naturally.

The Bishops’ Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, meeting in Moscow on June 24–29, 2008, acting on the report of Metropolitan Yuvenaly (Poyarkov) of Krutitsy and Kolomna, chairman of the Synodal Commission for the Canonization of Saints, resolved to receive St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco — along with other saints earlier glorified by ROCOR — into the calendar of the Russian Orthodox Church for veneration by the whole Church, fixing his commemoration on June 19 / July 2 (OrthoChristian and OCA both date the Moscow recognition to 2008; the OCA life: “His glorification was later recognized for universal veneration by the Patriarchate of Moscow on July 2, 2008”; Wikipedia, citing the 2008 Bishops’ Council, “declared universal veneration … setting a day of his memory on June 19 (July 2)”). The exact conciliar formula is the act of including the saint in the month-calendar (mesyatseslov) of the Russian Orthodox Church for general (church-wide) veneration; this was not a fresh canonization but the reception and extension of ROCOR’s 1994 glorification to the whole Russian Church — the dating “July 2, 2008” in several lives reflecting his feast falling within the council’s reception, the council session itself being June 24–29.

Veneration Today

St. John is today venerated far beyond ROCOR, across jurisdictional lines:

  • ROCOR keeps his principal feast and holds his open shrine in San Francisco; the cathedral and the Western American Diocese mark his anniversaries with great solemnity (Western American Diocese, schedules for the 20th and 30th anniversaries; OrthoChristian, 2024).
  • The Moscow Patriarchate commemorates him church-wide since 2008.
  • The Orthodox Church in America (OCA) commemorates him on July 2 and publishes his life; OCA communities bear his name, including the Monastery of St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco (Manton, California) and the St. John of Shanghai parish/mission in Vancouver, British Columbia (OCA Archdiocese of Canada) (OCA parish directory; oca.org life).
  • He is honored in Serbian, Greek, and Antiochian parishes as well — a reflection of the catholic, trans-ethnic character of his veneration; Greek Orthodox and Antiochian parishes publish his life and keep his feast (e.g., St. Basil Greek Orthodox Church and Antiochian Archdiocese resources on “Saint John Maximovitch”). His connection to Serbia (his tonsure and ordination in the Serbian lands; see belgrade-and-tonsure.md) gives him a natural place in Serbian devotion.

Feast day

His feast is July 2 (June 19, Old Style), the day of his repose. In some calendars and in much of ROCOR practice the celebration is transferred to or also kept on the Saturday nearest to June 19 O.S. (July 2 N.S.), to accommodate the great pilgrimage to the San Francisco shrine (Wikipedia: commemorated “on July 2” or “the Saturday nearest to July 2” in ROCOR).

Troparion

The troparion appointed to the saint (Tone 5), in the translation used at the Holy Virgin Cathedral, San Francisco, reads:

“Lo, thy care for thy flock in its sojourn prefigured the supplication which thou dost ever offer up for the whole world. Thus do we believe, having come to know thy love, O holy hierarch and wonderworker John. Wholly sanctified by God through the ministry of the all-pure Mysteries and thyself ever strengthened thereby, thou didst hasten to the suffering, O most gladsome healer. Hasten now also to the aid of us who honor thee with all our heart.” (Service to St. John of San Francisco, Holy Virgin Cathedral, San Francisco; sfsobor.com service texts.)

The troparion’s imagery — care for “thy flock in its sojourn” widening into “supplication … for the whole world” — captures the saint’s own trajectory from a hierarch of the scattered Russian emigration to an intercessor venerated across the Orthodox world. The appointed kontakion and the akathist sustain the same themes of wonderworking, mercy to the suffering, and bold intercession before the Throne of God (Holy Virgin Cathedral service texts; Akathist to St. John, oikos V: “O bold intercessor, before the Throne of God”).

Place in ROCOR and the Symbolism of 2007

St. John of Shanghai is, by common reckoning, the best-known and most widely venerated saint of the Russian Church Abroad — the figure in whom ROCOR’s twentieth-century witness is most concentrated, and the one whose veneration most readily crossed jurisdictional boundaries even before the reconciliations of the new century. Analysts of the 2007 ROCOR–Moscow reunion have noted the symbolic weight of his canonization and of the 2008 reception: a saint formed in the emigration, glorified by the Church Abroad in 1994, and then received for veneration by the whole Russian Church in 2008, embodies the healing of the very division he had lived through — a sign that the holiness of the diaspora and the holiness of the homeland belong to one Church (an interpretation attributed to commentators on the reunion; see Orthodoxy Guide: The 2007 Reunion and place-in-rocor.md). The interpretation is offered here as analysis attributed to such commentators, not as a conciliar pronouncement.

See Also

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