Pray for the suffering people of Ukraine, Gaza and the West Bank.
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I know, you long-time readers have heard this story before. So have I! I’m telling it again 1 So you newer readers will hear it. 2 Because all good stories deserve re-telling. Why do you suppose the Church year repeats itself over and over again? 3 Because I just love to tell it.
So, down to business:
Back in Post 541, I was still in Greece. * I had purchased an icon of Saint Nicholas in which he looked almost identical to the bishop we had visited on Crete, Ireneaus of Kastelli, whose calm, holy, sweet, happy face I could not forget, as he interacted 
with his people. And now I had a “picture” of that face.
At the time I was missing two points: 1 Saint Nicholas didn’t look like Bishop Irenaeus. It was the other way around. Saint Nicholas is the prototype of all good bishops, even in how they look – their eyes, their facial expressions. 2 Icons are more than “pictures”, as I was soon to find out, to my amazement.
- I almost wrote “we were still in Greece”, because I always feel like you were traveling with me.
I had spent two weeks with the Orthodox Church. During my first week, at the Conference, I realized how much I agreed with Orthodox teachings. During the second week I saw how ordinary people lived their Orthodox Faith and, though I didn’t understand a word of it, I fell in love with it.
My last Sunday in Greece I worshiped at a very nice Anglican church in Athens, where I knew some people. Would it feel like returning home? No. It felt like I had just left The Church and returned to Anglicanism. I knew I was in trouble.
When I left home I had been demoralized – trapped in a situation I had no idea how to handle: in an Episcopal Church which was turning away from The Faith as I had learned it in the Episcopal Church. But I didn’t know where else to turn. Rome? no way. Orthodoxy? too ethnic. Protestant Evangelicalism? Honestly, I considered that – for about two hours. No.
When I returned home, my wife took one look at me and saw that something had changed. I tried to describe what had happened to me in Greece. After a while she asked “Do you want to be Orthodox?” I answered “No.” I was lying. And she knew it.
Ever since seminary twenty five years before, I had suspected the Orthodox had it right. Now my heart was Orthodox, but my mind was still in process. I had to find some way to justify this intellectually. I began to read every Orthodox book I could find. It happened about six months later. I was in the midst of Father Alexander Schmemann’s book Church, World, Mission * when my “paradigm” flipped – and for the first time I grasped how Orthodoxy functions. I had been thinking like a Western Christian, conforming to authority from the top down, whether the Pope or the Holy Scriptures. (The problem with Anglicanism was we didn’t agree what the top-down authority was.)
- A book of his essays.
But Orthodox do it the other way around. In the Orthodox Church, it all begins with shared experience. Originally the Apostles’ experience with Jesus Christ as later recorded in the New Testament *, analyzed and clarified by the Holy Fathers and summed up in the Creed. This experience with Christ continues in the Church, the “Body of Christ”, in a multitude of ways.
- The Bible didn’t come first. The Church community came first.
So there I was. Ready to go with no way to get there. I didn’t see how we could afford it. We had to get our two kids through college. Besides, I felt responsible for my congregation: After twenty years at Saint Boniface Episcopal Church, I loved the people, and I knew they loved me. They were good people. Our parish tradition was well established and was “kind of Orthodox”. I felt it was wrong to abandon them in the face of what was coming in the Episcopal Church.
Furthermore I knew I couldn’t, wouldn’t go Orthodox without my wife Dianna’s approval and support. Getting that would be no easy matter. She had been active, both in our Diocese and also in the national Church, in trying to preserve “traditional Anglicanism”. She had loved and lost, and she’d “had it” with Church. She hadn’t had my experience in Greece. She was glad for me, but she didn’t understand it. She was a long way from wanting to be Orthodox. I promised myself that I would not even attempt to become Orthodox until she also wanted it for herself. But that left her in a bind: she loved me and knew how badly I wanted to be Orthodox.
So there I was. I couldn’t see any way forward or any way out. Maybe I could become Orthodox when I retired? which would be at least twenty years in the future. Twenty years… …
“Are we ever going to talk about Saint Nicholas?” they all cried.
Yes!
Saint Nicholas takes charge.
Now, this is a very strange story.
You’ll remember that icon of Saint Nicholas which I brought back from Greece. I hung it on a wall at Saint Boniface Church with a candle next to it and lighted it at every service. That was quite acceptable in “high church” parishes. Saints were honored, although nobody really expected anything to come of it.
After Evening Prayer (like Orthodox Vespers) one weeknight, a woman came up to me at said: “That icon of Saint Nicholas – have you noticed how his expression changes?” I said “No…. …” She was a sweet lady, but sometimes a little bit… well, you know.
Nevertheless, I began to look at the icon – and sure enough! Some evenings he was happy, sometimes sad, sometimes definitely displeased. Not that the paint moved… but something happened. I wondered: Is he sort of like the Mona Lisa, into whose expression one could read slightly different meanings at different times? But this was more than that. These changes were distinct and clear.
Not long after, another woman who came to the service heard us discussing this strange phenomenon and suggested that perhaps Nicholas was just reflecting my moods. So I checked that out. No. Sometimes I’d be happy, and he’d be displeased. Or it could go the other way ‘round. I had no idea was what happening. One possibility was that my mind was slowly going over the edge.
Looking back, I see now that Saint Nicholas was pulling me into relationship with him. * Gradually I found myself not just looking at the icon, but talking to it – quietly. No, talking through the icon to Saint Nicholas. I was discovering what Orthodox know: that icons are windows into Heaven.
- Number 17 of Father Thomas Hopko’s “Fifty Five Maxims or Christian Living” is “Maintain communion with the saints.”
But now I was about to discover that saints can also look out through those windows.
Saint Nicholas does something “off the wall”.
I had just come back from an Episcopalian clergy meeting. Not even ten years before, in my Episcopal Diocese of Milwaukee, Anglo-Catholic practice and “Catholic” teaching were normal among the parishes and clergy. Now we had a new bishop, and suddenly the clergy were “all over the place”. I knew I did not belong there any more. I knew I needed to be Orthodox – but how? I had no idea.
Brothers and sisters, here is a working principle: Often when we’ve tried hard but can’t do it, and we give up – that is when we leave an opening for God to step in. Or sometimes he sends one of his saints.
I came home and stood before the icon of Saint Nicholas, so discouraged, so demoralized. I looked, and Nicholas had a smug look on his face, like he was so proud of himself. And I “lost it”. I said to him, “How can you hang there looking so pleased with yourself, while I’m so miserable?” And then…
Then he told me that Saint Nicholas Church was coming.
He “told me”. Did I hear words? No, it wasn’t like that at all. I can’t describe it. But somehow he planted those words in my mind, so that I felt absolutely certain it was true. He had told me. I know I stood there with my mouth hanging open.
Dreams, Visions and Messages from On High …and from talking icons.
Let’s interrupt our narrative and talk about these phenomena. They are not common. Don’t you go staring at an icon waiting for a revelation. Don’t go to bed tonight expecting a vision. In fact that guarantees it will not happen. Nevertheless these things do occur. If they do, how should we handle them?
The teaching of the Church is:
1 We should ignore them! The problem is they could be coming not from on high but from down below. The devil can use tricks like these to lead people astray.
Muhammed said the Archangel Gabriel visited him and dictated the Koran, resulting in the new religion of Islam. Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon faith, claimed he had been visited by the angel Moroni who dictated to him The Book of Mormon. I don’t think they were making this up. I believe somebody visited them.
Let’s take some proper reactions:
Remember how Saint Anthony the Great was visited in his cell by a great and magnificent figure who identified himself as Jesus Christ, asking Anthony to bow down before him. Anthony did the right thing: He refused, and the demon vanished.
On April 22, 1994, at Saint George Antiochian Orthodox Church, Cicero, Illinois, the icon of the Theotokos on their iconostasis began to weep profusely. His Grace Bishop Basel came immediately, and the first thing he did was say Prayers of Exorcism, in case something demonic was at work. Then he went for a cup of coffee. When he returned she was still weeping. He prostrated before her, the Miraculous Icon of Our Lady of Cicero. For many months afterward, the church was filled with pilgrims, some of whom came by the busload. I went down one day to help anoint them.
Another positive example, which we commemorated just this week: In 1822 on the Greek island of Tinos, a nun Pelagia was visited in a dream by the Theotokos, who told her that her miraculous icon was hidden at a certain place beneath the ground, gave her the exact location, and directed her to get men to dig for it. What did Pelagia do? The right thing. She ignored it, thinking this could be a delusion from the devil. Next night the Virgin came again, giving her the same message, but more directly. Again Pelagia ignored it. A third time the Theotokos came and now angrily told her to get a move on! So Pelagia went to the bishop with the message. It turned out that another man on the island had had the same dream. So the message was confirmed. After considerable excavation, a medieval church was found and the icon of the Theotokos. Today the icon lies in a great church built in honor of the Virgin Mary. From that day to this, there have been innumerable pilgrims and many healing miracles. Pelagia’s vision was authentic. The nun Saint Pelagia is commemorated on July 23.
2 If you receive a message that is in any way contrary to the teachings of the Church and the Holy Scriptures, drop it immediately. Run!
3 If it comes repeatedly, do what Saint Pelagia did: take it to your priest and, if possible, your bishop.
4 Another way of confirming the validity would be if any others have seen the same vision or received the same message. This was the case with Saint Pelagia. And, for another example, with the discovery of the relics of three long-forgotten martyrs on the island of Lesvos. Do you know this wonderful story? At the bottom of today’s Post, you can access a Post I wrote about it in 2021.
Back to the story
When Saint Nicholas spoke to me from his icon, I was afraid to tell anybody about it for a long time, lest they think I myself had gone “off the wall”. * Indeed I wanted to prove to myself that my despair was not causing me to become deranged. I knew there was nothing contrary to the Faith in what Saint Nicholas said and much that seemed wonderful, so I didn’t discount it. I figured this was safe, inasmuch as he didn’t tell me to do anything. I concluded that my only job was not to get in his way and see what happened.
- If this is what you’re thinking, I understand it. Feel free.
Within myself I continued to feel sure that Saint Nicholas Church was on the way.
How would this new Saint Nicholas Orthodox Church come to pass? I had no idea. Would it be an entirely new institution? Or was there some way to turn my Saint Boniface Episcopal into Saint Nicholas Orthodox? I had no idea. Was there anything specific I should avoid doing to keep out of his way? I had no idea. All I knew was my life was about to be turned upside down, and I was afraid I would become a pauper, and I was scared… and alone, because I hadn’t even dared tell my wife about this. I felt sure she would think I was nuts.
I did proceed to teach Orthodox theology (insofar as I understood it) at Saint Boniface Church, describing it as just the teachings of the ancient Fathers. The 1979 Episcopal Book of Common Prayer included many options borrowed from Orthodox worship, so I used all of them. I got to know many of the Orthodox clergy in the Milwaukee area, all of whom I liked and were very welcoming. To my surprise and relief, behind those mysterious vestments and icon screens lurked very approachable men. And I discovered there was now such a thing as English-language Orthodoxy.
And then I waited and waited, frustrated, because I wanted to be Orthodox. Frustrated because Saint Nicholas, having told me what he was about to do, wasn’t doing it. Where was he?
He didn’t appear again till after Saint Nicholas Church was founded. But, looking back, it’s clear he had been with us the whole time. In those intervening years a number of very striking things happened – a couple of them surely more than coincidental – to move us on our way. But that’s a story for another day.
The Fulfillment
In September 1989 our new Saint Nicholas Orthodox Mission was founded, four years after Saint Nicholas had told me it was coming. Today, almost 36 years later, Saint Nicholas Orthodox Church, Cedarburg, Wisconsin, is flourishing, and that icon of Saint Nicholas which I brought back from Greece forty years ago sits in honor near our church entrance. Since this picture was taken he has been enclosed in a glass case, because he was getting kissed out of existence.
He did it!
Next Week: The “Surge”. Why are so many young people suddenly coming to the Orthodox Church? I want your input on this.
Week after Next: Saint Laurence of Rome