Facing East by Frederica Mathewes-Green

Author:Frederica Mathewes-Green
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-11-26T05:00:00+00:00

Sunday, August 20

The Prophet Samuel

TENTH WEEK AFTER PENTECOST

Orthodox in Charleston, From Western to Eastern Rite

Today we’re driving again, this time from our rental beachhouse on the seacoast outside Charleston, South Carolina, up the interstate to North Charleston. Gary and I grew up in Charleston, and North Charleston was the industrial, trailer park region just beyond the pale. It’s the place where streets have names like Ashley Phosphate Road.

It’s where you can pick up a fifties-era Methodist church for under six figures, so we are going today to worship with a new Antiochian mission, St. John Maximovich. Like us, these folks are nearly all converts, and the priest had a long career in the Episcopal Church. At a conference a few weeks ago Gary learned that, when he was chrismated in 1993, the percentage of convert priests was about 45 percent. Now it’s 78 percent. Converts are changing the face of this church.

The full name of this parish is St. John Maximovich of San Francisco; it’s startling to have a saint named after an American city. He died in 1966 and was canonized (the Orthodox call it “glorified”) in 1994; these things can happen much more quickly in Orthodoxy than in Catholicism. St. John was an eccentric figure, stern and often cryptic, and a wonder-worker, and the combination has won the affection of many. A photo of him shows a bent man with a wild graying beard and hair, wearing a fierce expression and holding a staff as he makes his way down the street. The caption reads, “Archbishop John as he typically looked as he walked the streets of San Francisco.”

I love this photo; it’s so countercultural. I guess I’m still a hippie at heart. I’m always urging Gary to grow out his hair and wear his cassock everywhere; don’t you want to be as challenging as St. John of San Francisco? The answer is, I’m afraid, no. Gary still wants to spend an afternoon puttering around a record store and not look completely strange. I guess I’d feel the same.

One of the stories about St. John concerns an orphanage he started in Shanghai. Mrs. Shakhmatova, who ran the home, had scolded him one day for continuing to bring home children when she hadn’t enough food for the ones already there. After this tongue lashing, he sadly asked her what she needed most and she said, “Everything, but at least some oatmeal!” There was nothing in the house for breakfast.

All night long, she said, she could hear him praying, throwing himself to the floor in loud prostrations. When she dropped off to sleep toward dawn she was awakened by the doorbell. There stood an English importer who had a surplus of oatmeal and who wondered if he could donate it to the orphanage. As she stood gaping, they began to cart in bag after bag of the stuff. St. John came down the stairs at this point and, with a single glance of reproach, went out to say his prayers.

The little church of St.

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