StJohn Maximovitch: petition to for Baptism

Discuss Religious, Moral and Ethical topics that are offtopic to other forums and that are within the boundaries of Christian morality and good taste, i.e., no pictures or videos of killings. Any politically charged material must be posted in the private Political and Social Issues forum; please PM admin for access. All rules apply. No promotion of Non-Orthodox-Christian beliefs. No baiting, flaming, or ad hominems. No polemics.
Post Reply
User avatar
Barbara
Protoposter
Posts: 3983
Joined: Sat 29 September 2012 6:03 pm

StJohn Maximovitch: petition to for Baptism

Post by Barbara »

This missive was written, poignantly, less than a month before the repose of the great Saint by an American man who describes his spiritual path to Russian Orthodoxy. Despite meanderings into dreadful atheist belief, this person who went on to become a monastic at Jordanville, somehow managed to strike the right timing !

First, he was able to see St John serving at the Old Holy Virgin Cathedral along with Archimandrite Spyridon [ Efimov ] and other venerable Rocor clergy of the area : Archimandrite Mitrophan [Manuilov] a long time supporter of St John ; Fr. Ilya Wen who was with St John in Shanghai ; probably Protopriest John Shachneff.

Second, this fortunate young man was able to secure St John's permission for reception into Rocor by Holy Baptism on June 10, 1966.

Image

One would like to know which Priest performed the Baptism. Perhaps Fr John Shachneff.

Image
"Built in 1880, this building, in the German-Renaissance style, was originally an Episcopal church. In 1931, the Russian Orthodox Church bought the building and made it the principal cathedral of the International Russian Orthodox Church [ they mean Rocor ]." -- description is from List of San Francisco Landmarks

++++++++++++++++

"A Grasp on Eternity: Petition for Reception into the Church

Often, doc­u­ments which by rights belong in a cli­mate-con­trolled archive will appear as if out of thin air, pre­served by God’s grace to open a win­dow onto his­to­ry in dan­ger of being for­got­ten. We offer one such record below — a peti­tion from one Lau­rence E. Camp­bell to Arch­bish­op John of West­ern Amer­i­ca and San Fran­cis­co (glo­ri­fied by the Church in 1994 as St John of Shang­hai and San Fran­cis­co) for recep­tion into the Ortho­dox Church. We have pre­served the author’s orig­i­nal text, despite some defi­cient translit­er­a­tions of Rus­sian names....

San Fran­cis­co, Cal­i­for­nia
June 8, 1966

The Very Emi­nent John
Arch­bish­op of West­ern Amer­i­ca and San Fran­cis­co
St Tikhon’s Home
598 – 15th Avenue
San Fran­cis­co, Cal­i­for­nia

Your Emi­nence:

It is with much trep­i­da­tion – and hope – that I request your per­mis­sion for entrance into the Rus­sian Ortho­dox Church.

At your sug­ges­tion I dis­cussed my desires in this mat­ter with Archi­man­drite Ambrosy. I trust that he will have com­mu­ni­cat­ed to you his impres­sions of me by the time you receive this let­ter.

My rea­sons for wish­ing to join the One, Holy, Catholic and Apos­tolic Church arise out of the fol­low­ing expe­ri­ences:

I am reli­gious by nature, hav­ing been reared accord­ing to the teach­ings of Protes­tantism, specif­i­cal­ly the Methodist Church. Being of an inquis­i­tive nature, I exam­ined all oth­er vari­eties of reli­gious teach­ing with which I came in con­tact. This search­ing led me to affil­i­ate with the Mor­mon Church dur­ing my twen­ti­eth year. This asso­ci­a­tion seemed to fill my needs for sev­er­al years. Dur­ing my aca­d­e­mic career I began to study the philoso­phers; this in turn led me to con­clude that all of my reli­gious expe­ri­ence was invalid, i.e., super­sti­tion, fables, etc. I arrived at the con­clu­sion that Marx was basi­cal­ly cor­rect in his esti­mate of reli­gion. I began to live accord­ing to stan­dards of my own mak­ing, doing things which were sin­ful under the old, reject­ed stan­dards. But pur­pose­less liv­ing began to depress me, and the idea of pur­pose­less exis­tence drove me at times to despair.

One evening at dusk I fol­lowed an inten­tion which I had car­ried with me for a long time; I went to the Old Sobor on Ful­ton Street1 to see how the Rus­sians wor­shipped. I had stud­ied all reli­gions in the world, either super­fi­cial­ly or care­ful­ly, had attend­ed the wor­ship ser­vices of all the var­i­ous Chris­tian Church­es – Protes­tant, Roman Catholic, even the Greek Ortho­dox – and found lit­tle or noth­ing to com­mend them to my search­ing mind. I had, on one pre­vi­ous occa­sion, dropped in on the spur of the moment at the Green Street Sobor [ the OCA main church in San Francisco ] of the dur­ing a Sun­day Litur­gy and was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised at the beau­ty of the ser­vice and much puz­zled at all I did not under­stand. Through the tele­phone direc­to­ry I learned of the exis­tence of the Holy Vir­gin Cathe­dral and since it was near­er to where I lived I chose to go there. I was hard­ly pre­pared for what I found. When I entered the Church I entered the realm of time­less­ness. There in the light of flick­er­ing can­dles, in the pres­ence of God and His Moth­er and myr­i­ads of Saints por­trayed in the Icons, I saw Your Emi­nence and the oth­er Cler­gy (Father Ilia, Father Spiri­don, Father John, Father Nicholai, Father Met­riphon [sic], and Father Con­stan­ti­ne) chant­i­ng the Ves­per Ser­vice. I felt that I was in the pres­ence of The Holy – I knew no oth­er way to express it at the time. This expe­ri­ence took place in Octo­ber 1964. I have been attend­ing your Church con­tin­u­ous­ly (though at first spo­rad­i­cal­ly) ever since. I dis­cov­ered the Ortho­dox Book Store on Geary Boule­vard not long after­ward. Through many and long dis­cus­sions with Eugene Rose and Gleb Pod­moshin­sky [sic], through read­ing their mag­a­zine Orthodox Wordand many of their oth­er books and pam­phlets avail­able in Eng­lish on Ortho­dox Sub­jects, through care­ful study of the Ser­vice Books avail­able in Eng­lish, through grad­u­al­ly learn­ing how to pray and how to wor­ship (even though clum­si­ly) through being allowed to be present at all of the Beau­ti­ful Ser­vices, through being allowed to feel with my sin-blunt­ed sen­si­tiv­i­ties that I am asso­ci­at­ing with indi­vid­u­als like Your Emi­nence who seem to have a grasp on Eter­ni­ty and to know exact­ly what they are doing and where they are going, I have acquired a desire to join the fel­low­ship of Chris­tians, to par­tic­i­pate ful­ly in the life of the Church, to receive the indis­pens­able bless­ing of the Sacra­ments and their help in the bat­tle with sin. I am con­vinced, although my faith is very weak, that Ortho­doxy, as it has been lived and wit­nessed to by all of the Holy Fathers and the Saints and as it is present­ly wit­nessed to by God’s Appoint­ed Ser­vants, the Hier­ar­chs of the Rus­sian Ortho­dox Abroad and all oth­er tru­ly Ortho­dox peo­ple through­out the world, is that Church which Christ estab­lished Him­self when in the flesh, and that my sal­va­tion can come through no oth­er means.

On this basis, although acute­ly aware of my man­i­fold wicked­ness and weak­ness­es, I earnest­ly ask that you con­sid­er my request and grant me the bless­ing of your approval.

Respect­ful­ly yours,

Lau­rence E. Camp­bell

Lau­rence Camp­bell was grant­ed his request and received Holy Bap­tism two days after com­pos­ing this let­ter. His spon­sor was Eugene Rose, the future Fr Seraphim. Even­tu­al­ly he embarked on the monas­tic path, being ton­sured into the rias­sa at Holy Trin­i­ty Monastery, in Jor­danville, in 1979. In 2012, just two years before his blessed repose, he was ton­sured into the lesser schema with the name John, in hon­or of the saint­ly bish­op with whose bless­ing he was received into the Church 46 years pri­or. Monk John reposed in the Lord on Novem­ber 3, 2014. He is remem­bered through­out the Eng­lish-speak­ing Ortho­dox world as a pro­lific trans­la­tor of litur­gi­cal texts."

http://orthodoxlife.org/church-life/a-g ... he-church/

+++++++++++++++++

If anyone has memories about Monk John [Campbell], please write more to fill out the picture even better. Thanks.

User avatar
Barbara
Protoposter
Posts: 3983
Joined: Sat 29 September 2012 6:03 pm

Re: StJohn Maximovitch: petition to for Baptism

Post by Barbara »

Holy Trinity Monastery, Rocor-MP, highlights the astounding contributions of Monk John [Campbell] -- a former English teacher in San Francisco -- to the Jordanville publishing department spanning 35 years. Here, the English translations of the Church services for the first five days of Lent are described by the Holy Trinity Publications [ HTP ] website :

"Great Lent begins on Clean Monday, seven weeks before Pascha. In 2003 Brother Laurence prepared the second edition of a set of five services books (in English) for the first five days of Lent as served at Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, NY.

These five books are no longer in print; however, HTP makes them available here as free PDF downloads in memory of Monk John (Campbell), the compiler and editor of these volumes. Simply click on each day of the week to access the file.

Monday: The Midnight Office, Matins, the Hours, Typica, Vespers, Great Compline with the Great Canon of St. Andrew. 284pp

Tuesday: The Midnight Office, Matins, the Hours, Typica, Vespers, Great Compline with the Great Canon of St. Andrew. 296pp

Wednesday: The Midnight Office, Matins, the Hours, Typica, Vespers with Divine Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, Great Compline with the Great Canon of St. Andrew. 298pp

Thursday: The Midnight Office, Matins, the Hours, Typica, Vespers, Great Compline with the Great Canon of St. Andrew. 298pp

Friday: The Midnight Office, Matins, the Hours, Typica, Vespers with Divine Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, Supplicatory Canon to Great-Martyr Theodore, Blessing of Kolyva. 238pp

"Monk John (in the world, Laurence Campbell) reposed peacefully in the Lord on Monday November 3, 2014. He spent much of his life preparing English language texts of the Divine Services and private prayers, most notably the 4th edition of the Jordanville Prayer Book, the Unabbreviated Horologion, and Orthodox Life. For all the years that he was member of the Holy Trinity Monastery brotherhood, Fr John was active in the publications department. We are pleased to offer these PDFs of his translation of the services for the first five days of Great Lent in his memory."

http://www.holytrinitypublications.com/ ... _Week.html

Image
Father John [Campbell], named in honor of the hierarch who permitted him to enter Rocor, St John Maximovitch, prays at a service at Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, NY.

Born November 14, 1932, Monk John reposed just before midnight on the day of St Hilarion, November 3, 2014.
He had gone to Jordanville during that fateful summer of 1966 when St John reposed. Lawrence asked several Rocor hierarchs if he could accompany them on the drive across the country for St John's funeral. He must have been amazed at how fortunate he had been to see the great Saint serving at least once, at the Old Cathedral. Perhaps a few more times, too, in San Francisco parishes before St John departed for his last journey, to Seattle.
After the funeral, Lawrence joined St Herman of Alaska Monastery as a novice.

In 1979 he left and went to Jordanville, his home ever after.

User avatar
Barbara
Protoposter
Posts: 3983
Joined: Sat 29 September 2012 6:03 pm

Re: StJohn Maximovitch: petition to for Baptism

Post by Barbara »

Correction : the image above was not just at ANY service but at the important tonsure into the lesser schema of Fr Lawrence [Campbell] and a Fr Dionysiy faintly visible in the background.

Here is another from this event :

http://www.jordanville.org/display_imag ... ercent=100

There are further pictures available at the Jordanville website, as well as a number of Monk John's funeral.

User avatar
Barbara
Protoposter
Posts: 3983
Joined: Sat 29 September 2012 6:03 pm

Re: StJohn Maximovitch: petition to for Baptism

Post by Barbara »

On [ August 9, 1970 ], the bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia also canonized Herman at the Holy Virgin Cathedral (“Joy of All Who Sorrow”) in San Francisco. At the all-night vigil, the canon to St. Herman was read for the first time by Brother Gleb Podmoshensky (later Fr. Herman)...He, Eugene (Seraphim) Rose, and Lawrence Campbell (now Monk John of Holy Trinity Monastery (Jordanville)) gathered material for the Synod of Bishops in order to support the glorification of St. Herman, and also helped compose the liturgical service in his honor."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_of_Alaska


Here is the service that Brother Lawrence, then a novice at St Herman of Alaska Monastery [ from July 1966, seemingly ], participated in composing :

http://sttikhonparker.org/files/Menaion ... Alaska.pdf

User avatar
Barbara
Protoposter
Posts: 3983
Joined: Sat 29 September 2012 6:03 pm

Re: StJohn Maximovitch: petition to for Baptism

Post by Barbara »

In the pictures of Fr. John [Campbell]'s funeral, one can clearly see, along with an icon, an Orthodox Life magazine tucked in to the side of the coffin.
Perhaps it was a significant issue of the venerable English language publication to which he had contributed translations or other editorial work ?

http://www.jordanville.org/public/sv/ga ... p?ssid=626

Post Reply