American Orthodoxy’s Own Saints

Sebastian belongs to the growing synaxis of North America’s own saints — Herman and Innocent and Jacob of Alaska, Tikhon and Raphael and the New Martyrs of the immigrant archdiocese, John of Shanghai of the diaspora. Set among them, he is the first American-born priest-saint and the father of Serbian Orthodoxy in the New World. This closing file places him in that company and offers the collection’s sober, provisional assessment.

Tradition: Serbian Orthodox / American (glorified 2015)

A Continent That Now Has Its Own Saints

For most of its history, Orthodoxy in North America venerated saints who belonged to other lands — the fathers of the desert, the hierarchs of Byzantium, the wonderworkers of Russia and the Balkans. In the last century that has changed: the continent has begun to glorify its own. The repository’s synaxis of North American saints (see The Saints of North America) now runs from the Alaskan missionaries through the bishops and priests of the immigrant archdiocese to the most recent native glorifications, and Sebastian Dabović stands within it. To see his significance whole, he must be set among his fellow American saints:

  • St. Herman of Alaska (c. 1751–1836) and St. Innocent (Veniaminov) (1797–1879) — the monk and the apostle-bishop of the original Alaskan mission, the cornerstone and the architect of American Orthodoxy (see St. Herman of Alaska, St. Innocent of Alaska).
  • St. Jacob (Netsvetov) (1802–1864) — the first priest of native Alaskan descent and the first saint born on the continent, whose “first” stands beside Sebastian’s own (see The First American-Born Priest-Saint).
  • St. Tikhon of Moscow (1865–1925) and St. Raphael of Brooklyn (1860–1915) — Sebastian’s own archbishop and his fellow archimandrite-missionary, the leaders of the multiethnic mission within which he built Serbian church life (see St. Tikhon of Moscow, St. Raphael of Brooklyn; and Alongside Tikhon and Raphael).
  • St. John (Maximovitch) of Shanghai and San Francisco (1896–1966) — the wonderworking bishop of the diaspora who, like Sebastian, ended his days on the California coast, and whose incorrupt relics rest in San Francisco (see St. John of Shanghai).

Among these, Sebastian occupies a distinct niche: he is the one born in the United States, the native son of the immigrant Church, and the father of Serbian Orthodoxy in the New World. Herman and Innocent came from Russia; Tikhon from Russia; Raphael from Damascus; John from Russia by way of Shanghai. Sebastian alone was born on United States soil and raised in the American mission itself. In the synaxis of North American saints he is the first the continent produced from its own immigrant families and raised to the altar (see The First American-Born Priest-Saint).

What He Contributes to the Synaxis

Each member of the American synaxis carries a particular gift, and Sebastian’s is legible. From him the American Church receives: the model of the native-born missionary priest, proof that the immigrant Church could raise its own; the pioneer of English-language Orthodox proclamation, who preached and published in the tongue of the country a decade before Hapgood’s Service Book (see Preaching and the English Liturgy); the pan-Orthodox servant who ministered to Serbs, Russians, Greeks, and Arabs indifferently, an icon of the unity of the pre-1917 Church (see The Tireless Traveler); and the self-emptied ascetic who auctioned his own decorations for the war-wounded and died on his last five cents’ worth of bread (see The Last Years and Žiča). He is missionary, author, unifier, and pauper-saint at once — a fittingly American combination, and a fittingly Orthodox one.

A Sober and Provisional Assessment

Per the repository’s habitual reserve about recent glorifications (see METHODOLOGY §4 and the model of the St. Sophrony collection), the collection offers its assessment of Sebastian’s stature as a contemporary judgment, not the settled verdict of the Church’s long reception. He was glorified only in 2015; his cult, outside the Serbian-American community and the parish at Jackson, is still young; and the sober historian will note that his fame rests substantially on one devoted modern biography and one eyewitness bishop’s tribute (see The St. Herman Press Biography). None of this is a reason for doubt — it is the ordinary situation of a recent saint — but it counsels the modesty the methodology requires: to venerate the saint the Serbian Church has glorified, to tell his documented life honestly with its disputed dates flagged, and to leave the final weighing of his stature to the Church’s continuing reception.

Within those limits, the assessment is clear and can be stated without exaggeration. Sebastian Dabović was, by the documented record, a missionary of extraordinary energy and reach who planted the first Serbian churches of the New World, pioneered English-language Orthodox writing and preaching in America, served four nations within the one Russian mission, gave away everything he had for the suffering of his people, and died in evangelical poverty proclaiming “only the Kingdom of Heaven.” St. Nikolai, who knew him and buried him, called him “the greatest Serbian missionary of modern times” and “a viceless man” — the considered praise of a credible witness (see The Last Years and Žiča). The Serbian Church has confirmed that judgment by entering him among the saints. This collection venerates the saint she has glorified, holds his life to the standard of honest history, and commends him as what he was: the first American-born priest-saint, the father of Serbian Orthodoxy in America, and a witness that the soil of the New World can bring forth holiness of its own.

See Also

References

  • Orthodoxy in America (this repository). The Saints of North America — the synaxis of North American saints and its groups.
  • St. Herman of Alaska, St. Innocent of Alaska, St. Tikhon of Moscow, St. Raphael of Brooklyn, St. John of Shanghai (this repository) — the sibling collections on the American saints.
  • Damascene (Christensen), Hieromonk. Archimandrite Sebastian Dabovich: Serbian Orthodox Apostle to America. Platina, CA: St. Herman Press. (The documented life; St. Nikolai’s tributes.)
  • Orthodox Church in America. “Venerable Sebastian Dabovich.” oca.org — the OCA Life.