Saints Do Not Fit into Templates

We present to our readers an address delivered by Fr. Andrei Tkachev at a conference dedicated to St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco, organized by the Sretensky Monastery — originally published on OrthoChristian.

Something about any saint. About someone you’ve never seen—say, St. George the Trophy-Bearer, or the Great Martyr Barbara, or Blessed Matrona. Every believer can say something about any saint, if in some way he or she is connected to that saint, touches that saint. Whether by bearing his name, or serving in a church consecrated in his honor, or having received something from him—something spiritual, from another world, from the Kingdom to come, a gift of some kind.

And so, of course, from an everyday, worldly point of view, I have no right to speak about St. John (Maximovich). But from the point of view of belonging to the Church of Christ—I can say a few words about him, words that live in my heart and flow out from it.

First of all, I want to say that we do not know our saints—in the sense that, out of great modesty, they concealed what was happening within them. We know the miracles they performed for us. We see the people, still alive, who were given Holy Communion by Archbishop John after being pronounced terminal by doctors. We see marriages that were falling apart but were reunited in love. We see people who lived disorderly lives, and then suddenly repented. That is, we see the actions of the saints.

It is the same with God. We theologians might put it more precisely, more clearly: We speak of God in terms of His manifestations. That He is merciful, almighty, all-knowing, patient, long-suffering, righteous in His judgments. But of the essence of God we cannot speak. For the glory of the Godhead is inaccessible to us.

And something very similar applies to the saints. We do not know how they lived. And they remain silent about it.

If Archbishop John were like Blessed Augustine, for instance, he would have written a huge volume about how he suffered and struggled with some sin, some passion. It would have been very interesting literature. There would be thick tomes describing his inner states: “I thought this, then I thought that. Then I fell asleep in my pondering, and I dreamed. Then I awoke, then I prayed, and a thought came to me…” Western literature is like that. Western culture is like that. It’s all psychology, all about chewing over what need not even be chewed—what could simply be swallowed. There’s this love of self in it, perhaps, or something else—some good, some bad. There’s a lot in it.

But of Bishop John—we know nothing.

We only know whom he healed, whom he blessed, for whom he prayed. That he walked with these gifts. That he gathered knowledge about saints of the Western Church who had been forgotten there—and even more forgotten in our Church, because they are far off, and we have no contact with them. But he unearthed all this.

And that is all we know.

And this chaste hiddenness, it seems to me, deserves great attention. In fact, we know nothing at all—about anyone. We do not even know ourselves, which is why there are moments when we do something and then marvel: “How could I have done that?” People who know us ask the same: “How could you have said that? How could you have acted like that?” I do not know; they do not know; no one knows. Only God knows.

Evgeny Yevtushenko, who recently passed away [in 2017]—may he rest in God’s Kingdom—has a line: “And about our own father we know everything, knowing nothing at all.” Truly, we know almost nothing about our parents, for their most burning years—the first love, first kiss, first theft, first fight, first deceit, first happiness, first grief—all took place without us. They brought us into the world only after they had already grown up. All that was greatest and most hidden in their lives happened before we existed. I find that very important.

We move around the edges of things. We may think we know St. Seraphim of Sarov or St. Nicholas the Wonder-worker very well, but in reality we know almost nothing. The honest admission of our ignorance is precious—especially for modern people, who are know-it-alls and proud. They want to know everything and are sure they do.

The first thought that comes to me when I speak of Archbishop John… Let St. Nicholas of Serbia (whom Archbishop John knew, and who knew Archbishop John when he was still a hieromonk at the Belgrade seminary) be the bridge. A young girl once asked Bishop Nicholas: “Why are there no saints today?” He replied: “What do you mean, foolish child? Look at Hieromonk John!”—he was already an obvious saint in his own lifetime, and saints recognized it. That matters greatly, because when sinners call someone a saint, a sinner may be mistaken—passion, hidden motives, family ties, advantage can play a role. But when a saint says a man is a saint—that is weighty.

St. Nicholas … (By the way, St. Dimitry of Rostov, when writing the Lives of the Saints, had a principle: “God forbid that I lie about a saint.” Better to keep silent than to say what you do not truly know.) St. Nicholas said: “The sun pours out its energy, its warmth, its light on everyone; nothing can live without it—no man, no animal, no plant. But what happens inside the sun? Inside are nightmares—nuclear explosions, storms and whirlwinds, fiery tornadoes. It is uninhabitable. So it is with the saints: within them is the same turmoil as inside the sun, yet outwardly they give us light and warmth, grace and blessing.”

I am convinced—at least I feel in my heart—that saints are deeply suffering people who never said a word about their suffering. They bore their own pain and the pain of others all their lives, and what they gave us outwardly was light and fire. What was within them we cannot say for certain—and for that we are grateful, that they did not burden us with their sorrows. We pour out our troubles to them: “I suffer from this, I am tormented by that; help me, a sinner.” They kept silent, not to create an illusion of sinlessness, but so that we might not suffer from what tormented them.

And I think there’s something else very important to say about St. John of Shanghai—that saints, unfortunately, are easier to venerate from a distance. When a saint is part of our own circle—be it a work group, a church community, or any other setting—we run the danger of not recognizing him. We run the danger of calling him insane, of seeing him as a fool or a breaker of traditions. A deceiver, a glory-seeker—whatever you like. Some saints have been called self-promoters, others lovers of money. Still others were considered idiots. And this danger threatens each of us.

From a distance, it’s very easy to bow before St. John, to fall at his feet in San Francisco, or simply to call upon his holy name from afar. But you see, not all Orthodox recognized him as a saint. There was the temptation to call him a fool. And they did. He was judged. He was medically examined and declared unfit to hold a bishop’s throne.

I don’t say this to condemn those who did it—God forbid. I say it so you would understand that, if a saint were living among us, all of us would be tempted. Because saints don’t conform to templates. He didn’t look like a typical saint. He stepped beyond boundaries. He had no edges—he overflowed them. And that’s not his flaw, it’s our danger. Because we live by templates. We want to relate to life according to our mental models. We have a mental template for authority, for women, for priests, for monks. Any deviation from the pattern causes us anxiety. And we protect our psyche by condemning others.

Condemnation is the soul’s reaction when it’s trying to preserve its internal order against unwanted, unpleasant, untimely information: “He must be wrong—because I think differently.” And this applies to saints. Not to sinners. Sinners, we tolerate. We put up with thieves, bribe-takers, polygamists, adulterers—we tolerate them all. Modern Western philosophy tells us we’re not to judge anyone for anything. And yet that same philosophy judges people—for holiness.

How much are we part of that civilization? Pretty thoroughly. We, too, are very tolerant of sin—and very intolerant of holiness. This can be seen with Archbishop John as well. He too was someone who suffered, probably at the hands of demons. Because they could not love him. They could not ignore him.

Remember in the Book of Job, when the Lord asks the devil, Whence comest thou? and the devil says, From going to and fro in the earth. And God replies, Hast thou considered my servant Job? And the devil says, Of course I have. How could the devil not notice Job? If all serve the devil and Job serves God, how could the devil not notice him? The evil one knows whom he finds intolerable.

Surely Bishop John suffered because of that. But he also suffered at our hands. That’s why I say: life is paradoxical and mysterious. And holiness is unrecognizable. It only becomes recognizable with time, at a distance. Fully, and by everyone, only eventually. Now, of course, there’s no debate that St. Nicholas was a saint. But when he struck Arius on the cheek, you can be sure that even his brother bishops had their doubts—can a holy man go around slapping people who hold different opinions or theological views?

I, in principle, love this person. I’m a little ashamed to speak about him, because there is such a great distance between the speaker and the subject of conversation. But let’s not go into that. That, too, is a kind of psychologism. So, it seems to me that the source of his holiness is entirely legitimate, it is open. If we were to ask, “Where did he get this?”—just as they said about Christ, “How does He know the Scriptures, having never learned?” or “Where does He get this knowledge?” You see, holiness—extraordinary holiness in the twentieth century—with each year it gets harder, with each century it gets harder to be saints. It is a paradoxical holiness, but it draws on exactly the same sources as we do. So what did he have? The lives of the saints, strictness with himself, a kind of good silence about his hidden problems, or difficulties, or spiritual warfare, the Divine Liturgy. As it is written of him, “Ever sanctifying with the Divine Mysteries, he hastened to the aid of the suffering and was a most consoling healer.” That is, the Church life. He lived in the Church, he was obedient to the hierarchy, he served the Liturgy. He tried to serve every day. He deeply loved the entire history of the Church. He read the same books we read. He had no secret knowledge. And I think that’s very important—because, in principle, anyone could be like that. If we consider the sources—yes. We attend the same school, read the same books, partake of the same Mysteries, celebrate the same feasts. Yet for some reason, he shines, and another does not. That is the mystery. This doesn’t mean only he must shine. But imagine if there were 20 such Johns in the Russian Church Abroad. Can you imagine twenty of them? It’s hard to imagine twenty, or thirty, or even five. Hard to imagine. Now imagine there were none. Oh Lord, grant me not such a life. At least one is needed—just one. And he draws his holiness from the same open and legal sources from which others might have drawn it also—but for some reason did not. In this sense, the saints will judge the world. In this sense, we are not just coming to a feast, but to a judgment, because the saints judge the world.

That same St. Nikolai of Serbia said that the Lord speaks of this in the Gospel: “Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father; there is one who accuses you, even Moses, in whom you trust.” You trust in Moses, but he will testify against you, because you do not believe in the One whom the Father has sent. And so, St. Nikolai of Serbia says: “You know, we boast of St. Sergius of Radonezh or St. Seraphim of Sarov, or someone else. The Bulgarians boast of St. John of Rila, the Serbs boast of St. Sava of Serbia, the Russians boast of St. Seraphim. Everyone wants something to boast about. But don’t be quick to boast—the saints will judge us.”

Perhaps God will entrust the judgment of our people to the best people of our people. And they will say: “Why weren’t you like us? Why didn’t you at least try to be like us?” And so there is a kind of fear here. Because in principle we are boasting. We’re doing something pleasant for ourselves. In our Church, in our nation, in our language, there was a great man who spoke and thought. And we rejoice. But let’s flip it a little. In our nation there was a man who will later say: “Why didn’t you at least try to be like me?” Well, not “like me”—they don’t speak like that. Like him, like him, like them—all your saints. And that praise may become a cause of condemnation. Everything in Christianity is like that.

In Christianity, there is motherhood and virginity united in one female body—the Virgin and Mother [of God] at once. In Christianity, three equals one. God is Trinity and God is One. Both are true. In Christianity, every saint consoles and gladdens us—and at the same time, should terrify us. Because to be near a saint is frightening. Have you ever been near a saint? St. Sophrony (Sakharov) wrote about St. Silouan the Athonite: “It is frightening to be near the saints.” Frightening, because you are laid bare before the saint, and everything is visible. It is very easy with sinners. Being with sinners is pure pleasure. All are scoundrels, I am a scoundrel among scoundrels, and we’re all in filth, and the filth is invisible on any of us. But as soon as a saint walks into the room, everything is laid bare at once. Where did it all come from? It is frightening to be with the saints. And I am certain of this. It is a deep conviction of mine. It does not depend on virtues, or intellect, or knowledge... I am deeply convinced that saints must be venerated with fear. One must fear that they could do what we cannot. Ask any noble woman, hard-working and fruitful—like Elena Chavchavadze. Is it easy to make films about saints? Not to imitate them—just to make a film about them is already hard. There are countless obstacles—just try to tell their story. That alone is hard. To imitate them is harder still.

And so, dear brothers, dear bishops, dear brothers and sisters, I rejoice together with all of you that we have a living Church. A real, living Church. Not in the sense of the modernist movement, when the schismatics called themselves a Church. We have a real, living Church. And in that Church, there are both righteous and sinners. And all are needed there. The righteous do not judge the sinners. And the sinners marvel at the righteous. And today we marvel at another one of our dear ones. I have just said what I feel right now, in this moment. And if it’s true, glory to God. And if I’ve lied in anything, forgive me, Lord. Thank you.

Archpriest Andrei Tkachev
Translation by OrthoChristian.com

7 February 2025

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