For all the saints...

This morning I read a very moving account of a modern Orthodox saint, Matushka Olga, who reposed as recently as 1979. She was a native Alaskan Orthodox, of the Yup'ik nationality, and the wife of a presbyter (that is what "Matushka" means, "little Mother"). Brother Pandelis in Australia has posted the complete story, but I want to quote just one passage, the testimony of a woman who had been damaged by sexual abuse, whom Matushka Olga helped. To read the whole story and especially this passage in context, click HERE. What it tells of Matushka is hard to believe, but I have also known people like this who did and said similar things. The saints are all around us. "Being encompassed by so great a cloud of witnesses..."

Only after this did Holy Mother Olga speak. She spoke about God and people who choose to do evil things. She said the people who hurt me thought they could make me carry their evil inside of me by rape. She was very firm when she said, "That's a lie. Only God can carry evil away. The only thing they could put inside you was the seed of life which is a creation of God and cannot pollute anyone." I was never polluted. It just felt that way because of the evil intentions of the people near me. What I had held inside me was the pain, terror, shame, and helplessness I felt. We had labored together and that was all out of me now. She burned some grass over the little flame and the smoke went straight up to God who is both the judge and the forgiver. I understood by the "incense" that it wasn't my job to carry the sins of people against me either. It was God's, and what an ever-unfolding richness this taste of salvation is. At the end of this healing time we went outside together. It was not dark in the visioning prayer. There were so many stars stretching to infinity. The sky was all shimmer with a moving veil of light. (I had seen photos of the northern light but didn't know that they move.) Either Matushka Olga said, or we both heard in our hearts -- I can't remember which -- that the moving curtain of light was to be for us a promise that God can create great beauty from complete desolation and nothingness. For me it was like proof of the healing -- great beauty where there had been nothing before but despair hidden by shame and great effort.

And even as Matushka Olga was a healer in Christ for this woman, so can we also be healers and helpers on the Way to those whom the Lord places in our paths. Let's make best use of the time, to do what we do in the Light, so that the people among whom we walk can give glory to God.