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Instructions and Teachings
St Tikhon of Moscow, Russian Orthodox American Messenger, 1898–1905
An Address Made on the Occasion of the Handing of the Crosier to the Right Rev. Innocent,…
Right Reverend Bishop Innocent, my beloved brother in Christ!
In my capacity of your nearest fellow servant and coworker on the field of Christ, I hand to you this crosier, which is a symbol of your new high service, and I congratulate you with all my soul on your receiving the grace of the bishophood.
Thinking of this truly great event of your life, I am especially struck with the significant circumstance of your being consecrated in the very Cathedral, on the same day and nearly the same date (15 December 1840) where and on which sixty three years ago the ever remembered Innocent, later Metropolitan of Moscow, also was consecrated the Bishop of the Aleuts. At your entering the monastic order, you were given a name which this prelate also bore. Now Alaska is allotted to you, where Innocent also was Bishop; you will pray in the church and live in the house, which were erected by his thought and labour. All this necessarily must dispose you towards imitating the example of this great prelate; so I pray the Lord that you should be able to enter into his labour and to be as successful as he in your work in Alaska.
You, my beloved brother, who have studied so profoundly the problems of pastorship, know well what is the most necessary for us to have success in our pastoral labour. The most necessary is to be charitable towards the people and to love your flock with all your heart, remembering that Christ, the Head of all the pastors, did likewise. “I have compassion on the multitude”, spoke Christ the Saviour, so he taught men, he cured their diseases and miraculously fed them (Matthew 15, 32; Mark 8, 2). In teaching them the faith of Christ, and in bettering their material condition, Bishop Innocent was moved by the love of his flock, by his great compassion for his “dear and kind Aleuts”. In truth, one can not but feel sorry for these people; and at the present time they need love and care more than ever. Of the true faith they know but very little, thought they long to know more; at times, they are neglected by their own missionaries, and harmed by missionaries of other denominations; occasionally they suffer injustice and loss at the hands of commercial companies and traders; and often they go hungry and have not sufficient clothing... How can a man help having compassion on them? I trust, my beloved brother, that you also will love and pity them, that your heart also will hold them near and dear. Of this I am assured by the fact of your exchanging your present easy and comfortable circumstances for the needs and hardships of the life in Alaska, though you know them well. I do not think, that in this you were attracted by the high honors of your present superior tittle. In America more than anywhere else, the position of a Bishop is, in the words of Saint Isidor the Pelusiat, a labor, not a luxury, a responsible service, not an irresponsible domination, a fatherly care, not an oppressing willfulness.
Now, you receive this crosier not only as a symbol of your archiepiscopal authority, but also as a pilgrims staff, on which you will have to lean many a time on the rough pathways in the northern tundras. You also receive it as a shepherd’s staff, with which a good shepherd guards his flock from the greed of the “wolves, who seek its ruin”, from the attacks and appropriations of various missionaries, who do not object to “building their edifice on somebody’s else foundation”.
However, do not let this trouble you, my brother! God is with us, and today you have received the grace of God. Start on your way, rejoicing that the Lord once more leads you into the country, where and for the sake of which you have entered the monastic order and have given the vow of self abnegation. Rejoice, that now you will come there endowed with increased grace and power, and so can be of a greater help to those, whom your soul knew and loved of yore.
Give now your first archiepiscopal blessing to those of the faithful, who now stand around you, and also in your thoughts call it on the Orthodox children of Alaska, who are so far from you in distance, yet so near in your heart.