Saint Nicholas Orthodox Church

  

Holding to the Orthodox faith, as to something holy, loving it with all their hearts and prizing it above all, Orthodox people ought, moreover, to endeavor to spread it amongst people of other creeds. Christ the Saviour has said that "neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candle stick, and it giveth light unto all that are in the house." (Matthew 5, 15) The light of Orthodoxy was not lit to shine only on a small number of men. The Orthodox Church is universal; it remembers the words of its Founder: "Go ye into the world, and preach the gospel to every creature" (Luke, 16, 15), "go ye therefore and teach all nations." (Matthew 28, 19) We ought to share our spiritual wealth, our truth, light and joy with others, who are deprived of these blessings, but often are seeking them and thirsting for them. Once "a vision appeared to Paul in the night, there stood a man from Macedonia and implored him, saying, come over into Macedonia, and help us" (Acts 16, 9), after which the apostle started for this country to preach Christ. We also hear a similar inviting voice. We live surrounded by people of alien creeds; in the sea of other religions, our Church is a small island of salvation, towards which swim some of the people, plunged in the sea of life. "Come, hurry, help," we sometimes hear from the heathen of far Alaska, and oftener from those who are our brothers in blood and once were our brothers in faith also, the Uniates. "Receive us into your community, give us one of your good pastors, send us a priest that we might have the Divine Service performed for us on a holy day, help us to build a church, to start a school for our children, so that they do not lose in America their faith," those are the wails we often hear, especially of late. And are we to remain deaf and insensible? God save us from such a lack of sympathy. Otherwise woe unto us, "for we have taken away the key of knowledge, we entered not in ourselves, and them that were entering in we hindered" (Luke 11, 52).          

From Homily of Holy Hierarch and New Confessor Patriarch Tikhon, delivered in San Francisco, 1903