A feast of American saints

[muckefuck]

So, while researching the life of St. John Kochurov (whose Chicago connexion is that he helped found Holy Trinity Cathedral--designed by Louis Sullivan--in Ukrainian Village), we stumbled across an excellent page on American saints hosted by the Orthodox Church in America. St. Herman of Alaska, Wonderworker of All America, was the only one Monshu and I had ever heard of before. Who knew that there was a St. Raphael of Brooklyn? The story we found most interesting, however, was that of St. Alexis Toth, who was actually a Uniate priest until snubbed by Fr John Ireland (a man, quoth Monshu, "who did a lot of good for the Church and a lot of bad") because of the window it opened on Catholic immigrant history--though the tales of half-Aleut missionary St. Jacob of Alaska are also not without their (entirely different) appeal.

Enjoy!

Comments

Holy Trinity on Levitt St..

[darkphuque.livejournal.com]

Have you ever gone there? When you consider it is the *only* church Louis Sullivan ever built, its quite a piece.
The stained glass windows are the real Sullivan touch. They house the Tikvin Icon, which Bp. John Garclaves (of blessed memory)
smuggled out of Russia. It was brought out on Great Feast days. I helped serve a funeral there in the early eighties.
It is a wonderful piece of architecure, but the iconography is terrible. The Church was endowed by Nicholas I, if memory serves cotrrectly.

Re: Holy Trinity on Levitt St..

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I've always wanted to, but it's just not a neighbourhood I'm in the habit of visiting. (I really need to make some strategically-placed friends.) What's so terrible about the iconography?

Re: Holy Trinity on Levitt St..

[darkphuque.livejournal.com]

The wall Icons and those in the Iconostasion are from that period in Russian history when they weren't Icons but "Paintings". They all look like something out of 19th cent Austra...and poorly done at that.

I went there for years, and finally they started a bit of cleaning (renovation). As they cleaned the walls from all the soot and incense, there were "Romantic" cherubs.....in the dome.

Icons serve a distinct purpose in Orthodox Worship and Theology. They are painted by formula, without interpretation by the painter...so that we don't get caught up in the image but see beyond it.

icons vs. paintings

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

That was our biggest disappointment at St. Andrews on Sheridan. The interior wall paintings were totally in the Western tradition. Perfectly nice, I guess, but we wanted Byzantine.

Re: icons vs. paintings

[darkphuque.livejournal.com]

You wrote: <

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You wrote: <<Perfectly nice, I guess, but we wanted Byzantine.>>

Exactly...you should see St Sophia in LA....not only are the "icons" romantic, but they're faces (angels/Archangels/Cherubim, etc. are the faces of the Donor's Grand children/grand nieces and nephews...
Disgusting. It destroys the whole reason to have images in the Church.