In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and
of the Holy Spirit. Amen. We know that in the
Church there are countless martyrs. Every single
day in the lives of the saints, you could read
about a different martyr, a group of martyrs.
Sometimes many at the same time. Sometimes thousands
at the same time. Forty martyrs. the ten martyrs
of Crete, and so on and so forth. These are all
magnificent stories for us to see how a Christian
can take seriously what the Lord said. Fear not,
little flock, for it is your father's good pleasure
to give you the kingdom. The martyr we're commemorating
today was a priest. So we call him a hiero martyr.
The word hiero simply means priest. And he wasn't
a martyr from far away or long ago. He's a martyr
from our own time. His grandchildren are still
living. I know a priest who is acquainted with
them. This higher martyr is John, John known
as John of Chicago and St. Petersburg. I'm going
to tell you a little story about him. A person's
life isn't told in 10, 15, 20 minutes or even
2 hours or 10 hours. Every day there's something
significant in the life of any one of you. Something
important that happens. But we'll have to skip
over that for this man and just focus on mainly
the end of his life. He's a man that took those
words of the Lord very seriously. Do not fear,
little flock, for it is your father's good pleasure
to give you the kingdom. For where your treasure
is, there your heart will be also. These words
apply to this saint, Hiram Ardijan of Chicago.
He was born in 1871 in Russia, in a city not
too far from Moscow. His father was a priest.
His grandfather was a priest. At the time, that
was quite normal. There weren't many options
for a person, the son of a priest. Except to
become a priest. And you would go to a local
seminary. And they were, the moral life and the
material life of those places was rather low.
Because not everybody wanted to be there. In
any case, he was married in 1895. Of course,
his wife. was the daughter of a priest. They
traveled to New York and then to Chicago. He
had a burning desire at seminary where he excelled
at the St. Petersburg Academy. He had a burning
desire to be a missionary, and he was invited
by Bishop Nicholas, who was the bishop of the
American diocese at the time, to come. He came
to Chicago. He knew no English at the time. But
he was assigned to minister to a rather disorganized
and scattered, you couldn't call it a congregation
because they were not yet congregated, spread
out over hundreds of miles around Chicago. For
10 years, this man diligently and with excellent
administrative skills and pastoral skills, of
course he could sing, he could chant, he could
pray. He loved the people. He brought people
together from Chicago, from Madison, Illinois,
from Streeter, Illinois, any established congregations,
growing them from hardly anything to in each
place over 200, easily in a few years. This man
was creative. He did something that I can imagine
my father doing. There was the world. the World
Exposition in Chicago, the World's Fair, and
at the Russian Exposition, there was a chapel.
It had been built in Russia, taken apart piece
by piece, brought to Chicago, and reassembled.
He asked for it, to have it. He couldn't have
the whole thing, but he had it brought to Streeter,
Illinois, about 100 miles outside of Chicago,
and they built it again. It lasted maybe 15 years,
then it was sold, sadly, to a Baptist congregation.
The various Orthodox elements were stripped out,
and eventually it's not there now. It was demolished.
He took small groups of miners and laborers and
butchers, Slovaks, Greeks, Serbs, Hungarian,
Russians, Eastern Rite Catholics, Galicians.
and built that parish. A hymn for today tells
us that he was the comfort and consolation of
the people. He ministered to them in all their
needs and cares. He guided them in a strange
land, like Abraham of Holt, and he was deeply
loved. At the exact same time, He was laboring,
and this is not a coincidence because this is
how God's providence works. With him was St.
Ticon, who arrived in America in 1898 to become
the bishop of the American diocese. Alexis Toth,
St. Sebastian Dobovich of Jackson in San Francisco,
St. Raphael of Brooklyn. St. John, this man,
Kucherov is his name, Kucherov, worked with all
of them. In 1900, the year 1900, he was terribly
homesick. His family was still there in Russia.
Not his immediate family, but his parents and
his in -laws. And so he received a blessing to
return to Russia to see them. But what did he
do? How did he spend his time? Resting from all
his labors? No. fundraising. He raised $50 ,000
over the period that he was there so that he
could build a church in Chicago, a proper church.
On the 10th anniversary of his ordination, he
received the gold cross, and Bishop Tikhon, who
greatly admired John Kocherov, said in his remarks,
in his congratulatory remarks that day, You've
faced so many difficulties. Loneliness, being
isolated from brother priests. Living in a untidy,
wet, half -ruined building with your family.
They're sick all the time. You've been sick continually.
Your congregation is spread out over hundreds
of miles. Their faith is weak. St. Ticon said,
the faith of his congregation was torn asunder
by wild beasts. Well, with this 50 ,000, St.
John managed to build the magnificent Cathedral
of the Holy Trinity in Chicago, which is something
you can see today. There will be a huge celebration
in this lovely place designed by the well -known
American architect, interestingly enough, Louis
Sullivan. In 1907, feeling again homesick, and
his in -laws needed him and his wife to return,
he came back to Russia with his six children.
And he was eventually, after six or seven or
eight years of labors in various churches and
dioceses, assigned to the immense Cathedral of
St. Catherine in the town of Tsarskoe Selo. the
Tsar's village. You have to remember this was
1916 and World War I was tearing Russia apart.
We have it in our minds because this is what
we were taught in school that Russia was terribly
backward, just filled with peasants. The church
was so corrupt. The peasants were unhappy. In
fact, the peasants had been freed. Decades before,
Russia was extremely prosperous, but it wasn't
prepared for World War I, and the devastation
and the exhaustion of the war eventually led
to the abdication of the Tsar, and into that
vacuum came the Bolsheviks. Not many of them,
but vicious enough to do whatever they felt they
had to do to gain power. In 1917, in October,
at the end of the month, the Bolsheviks seized
power in Petrograd and St. John, seeing the chaos
there and fearing what was to come, the frightful
suffering that Russia was to endure, called his
congregation to be vigilant, to remember what
Jesus said, what we heard today, where your treasure
is. There will your heart be also. Let your waist
be girded, your lamps burning, and you yourselves
be like men who wait for their master. When he
will return from the wedding, that when he comes
and knocks, they may open unto him. To be prepared.
To be ready. Blessed are the servants whom the
master, when he comes, will find watching. On
the morning of the 30th of October, 1917, That
would have been yesterday's date for us. Stopping
at the outskirts of this town of Tsarskoe Selo,
the Bolshevik forces began to bombard the city.
They shelled the city. The inhabitants of that
town, like everywhere else in Russia, did not
realize there was a civil war. The people gathered
then in the cathedral. to pray for peace. Bombs
were falling. They're praying for the end of
fighting. And they organized a cross procession.
The hundreds and hundreds of people, perhaps
thousands, processing throughout the entire city
with the cross, singing and praying. The Cossack
soldiers that were guarding that town decided
it was time to leave. They said to St. John,
time for prayer is over. Time to run. And his
response and the response of the other priests.
These are our people. This is our place. This
is our cathedral. Our brothers are coming to
us. What harm will they cause us? You see how
people that are holy always see the good. always
see their responsibility before God. And they
will carry it out, no matter what the danger.
So they stayed. On the morning of October the
31st, 1917, today is the anniversary, the Bolshevik
forces entered the town. They encountered no
opposition because the soldiers were gone. The
priests were then rounded up, accused of inciting
resistance against the attack. St. John tried
to reason with the soldiers, the Bolsheviks.
This is not true. We were praying for peace.
We were praying for God's love. We were praying
for the restoration and the end of civil strife.
We were not praying for the Cossacks or this
group or that group. The leaders made an example
of him. They punched him repeatedly, knocked
him down, abused him, dragged him out to a field,
and shot him. And he was not yet dead, and they
left him there. They came out later and shot
him numerous times until he was dead. So, we
have the first martyr of the Bolshevik Revolution.
Of which there would be countless martyrs. Not
casualties, dear people. But witnesses to the
love and glory of God. Witnesses to the kingdom
of God. Not witnesses to evil. Oh, the demons,
my friends. Legion is the name, as we heard in
that gospel. Possessed, rational men. to do horrible,
brutal, ungodly acts against their fellow human
beings. Atheism, please remember, is not a philosophy.
Atheism has no guiding principle except the self.
And the power of the passions in any one of us
can easily prevail. Where there is no authority
of God, where there is no law of God, Dostoevsky
claimed, then all things are allowed. And what
dreadful things. What dreadful things. Yes, the
sorrow on earth and the loss of so much. But
the crown of glory, but the crown of glory of
a faithful witness to Christ in the heavens,
so joy too. I'm wearing this red vestment today
because red is the color of the blood of the
martyrs. It's an embroidered vestment. Some people
may say it's a little too extravagant. But I
think of the hymn we sing on Saturday night.
The Lord is robed. He is clothed in majesty.
The Lord is girded with strength. And this is
what he does for the faithful who will stand
before him. He will robe us in glory and honor.
and especially the martyrs who stand about his
throne. Because martyrs are not afraid of losing
anything, because they know in Christ they have
everything. They have died to sin, and they've
died to death already in their baptism. And they
have the kingdom of God within themselves. Their
treasure is there in the kingdom in their heart.
And they witness, the word martyr means witness,
and they are the ones most like Christ because
they do what Christ did. They witness to God's
kingdom that is not of this world, but is for
this world. They witness to the reality of the
resurrection because they're not afraid of death.
That reality of which we partake of at every
liturgy when we receive the precious body and
blood of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ,
his resurrected and glorified body, and we become
resurrected a little bit too. Fear not, little
flock. It is your father's good pleasure to give
you the kingdom. For St. John, the treasure in
heaven, his heart was already there. Saint Tikhon
of Moscow, learning of this martyrdom as he was
attending the All -Russian Council of 1917, the
one that would elect him patriarch, he said the
following, Adorned with the martyr's crown, the
reposed pastor, John, now stands before the throne
of God amongst the chosen faithful of Christ's
holy flock. He was destined to be the zealous
parish priest and inspired witness even unto
death. Quoting the Book of Revelation, even unto
death of Christ's truth, Archpriest John Kocharov,
who met a martyr's death at the hands of the
apostates and fighters of God on 31st October
1917 in Saroskoye Selo, the first martyr under
the Bolsheviks of the Russian Church. We have
a great intercessor before God, one close to
us. Okay, you may not be a fan of the Chicago
White Sox or the Chicago of this or the Bears,
but you're a fan of Chicago now. The place of
the witness of the pastorship of this magnificent
man, this magnificent pastor. His work still
continues because we pray. We offer intercession
before him, and he answers us before the throne
of God. Through his prayers, Lord Jesus Christ,
our God, have mercy on us.