All Saints of America
Troparion (Tone 8)
As the bountiful harvest of Your sowing of salvation,
the lands of North and South America offer to You, O Lord, all the saints
who have shone forth in them.
By their prayers keep the Church and our land in abiding peace
through the Theotokos, O most Merciful One!
Kontakion (Tone 3)
Today the choir of Saints who were pleasing to God in the lands
of North and South America
stands before us in the Church and invisibly prays to God for us.
With them the Angels glorify Him,
and all the Saints of the Church of Christ keep festival with them;
and together they all pray for us to the Pre-eternal God.
Who are these “All Saints of America”?
As Anglicans and part of the Independent Sacramentalist community, we recognise the presence of sanctity beyond our own tradition. The Saints of America show forth a wide spectrum of God’s work in the new world, under the patronage of Our Lady of Guadeloupe, the Queen of the Americas
From the Eastern churches, this list includes
Innocent of Alaska,
Raphael of Brooklyn,
Tikhon of Moscow,
Arseny,
Nicholas,
John of San Francisco,
Juvenaly,
Jacob of Alaska,
Alexis of Wilkes-Barre,
John of Chicago,
Herman of Alaska,
Peter the Aleut,
Alexander Hotovitsky,
Seraphim of Platina.
For the Roman ecclesial communities, this list includes:
Juan Diego
Junipero Serra
Elizabeth Ann Seton
Frances Cabrini
John Neumann
Oscar Romero
René Goupil
Théodore Guérin
Katharine Drexel
Rose Philippine Duchesne
Isaac Jogues
Kateri Tekakwitha
And many many others:
It will come as a surprise to many, if not most, to learn that there are at least some 137 men and women who have lived in North or South America who have been beatified or canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. Sixty of them were canonized and 77 beatified. Most of these, 50 of them, came from Mexico and another 33 were from Brazil. The United States and Canada together can claim eight North American Martyrs. Individually Canada boasts another twelve saints or blesseds and the United States, nine. Seven were from Peru; three each were from Argentina and Chile; and one each from Guatemala, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Venezuela. All except eight of these were beatified or canonized within the last one hundred years or so. Of these, Pope John Paul II was responsible for the canonization of 28 and the beatification of 32 others.
From the Anglican communities, the list of saints grows to include:
Samuel Seabury,
The Wesley Brothers,
Charles Henry Brent,
The Martyrs of Memphis,
Harriet Bedell,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
Amelia Bloomer,
Sojourner Truth,
Harriet Ross Tubman,
Thomas Bray,
James Lloyd Breck,
Phillips Brooks,
Anna Julia Haywood Cooper,
Alexander Crummell,
Jonathan Myrick Daniels,
James de Koven,
William Porcher DuBose,
Julia Emery,
King Kamehameha IV and his wife Emma,
Enmegahbowh,
John Hobart,
James Holly,
James Huntington,
William Huntington,
Absolom Jones,
Frances Joseph-Gaudet,
Jackson Kemper,
William A. Muhlenberg,
David P. Oakerhater,
Vida Dutton Scudder,
Thomas Gallaudet,
Henry Winter Syle,
William White,
Channing Moore Williams…
And others.
From the wider tradition, the action of God, the Sanctity of the Holy Spirit can be seen in the lives of Martin Luther King, Jr, Eleanor Roosevelt, John Muir, Dorothy Day, John Coltrane, and others who through their lives and art, their self-sacrificial love and their actions show the love of GOd to the world.
This list will keep growing.
The feast of All Saints of America is celebrated on the Second Sunday following Pentecost. The Theotokos of Guadalupe is celebrated on 12 December.
Troparion (Tone 4)
When you appeared in the New World, O Theotokos,
you fixed your image on Juan Diego’s rose laden tilma.
All the poor, hungry, and oppressed seek you, Lady of Guadalupe.
We gaze upon your miraculous icon and find hope,
crying out to your Son concealed in your womb:
Hear our plea for justice, O most merciful Lord.
Kontakion (Tone 7)
No longer shall the New World lie wounded in useless blood sacrifice,
for she who is clothed with the sun has revealed the Son to us.
O Mother of the Americas, imprint His Name upon our hearts,
just as you wove your image into the cactus cloth.
Teach your children to cry out:
O Christ God, our hope, glory to you.
That is a significant list. Very nice, indeed.
Although he’s usually referred to as being “of ŽiÄa,” St. Nikolaj Velimirović spent the last years of his life in South Canaan as the Dean and Rector of St. Tikhon’s Seminary.