Sunday of All Saints of North America + Sts. Peter & Paul

We have come to the end of a very long liturgical cycle.

If we look back from the perspective of this Sunday, back through last week's feast of All Saints, to Pentecost, and the Ascension, the Paschal season, and Pascha and Bright Week, then Holy Week, and beyond it to Great Lent and then those weeks of preparation for Great Lent - about a third of the year! - we can see that everything that has taken place in the story of our salvation, and celebrated in our liturgical life, has led us to this day - has led us to glorify God for the flowering of sanctity, of holiness, right here at home!

All that God has done for us in Jesus Christ has resulted in circumstances and persons capable of real holiness, and not only in places far away and long ago, but here, on our own soil.

And so we celebrate the memory and ask the heavenly intercessions of officially glorified saints such as Alexis of Minneapolis, Alexander Hotovitzky, Herman of Alaska, Innocent of Alaska, Jacob of Alaska, John Kochurov, John Maximovitch, Juvenaly of Alaska, Nikolai Velimirovich, Peter the Aleut Youth, Raphael of Brooklyn, Tikhon of Moscow, Varnava (Nastic), the New Confessor (born in Gary, Indiana).

Some might include in their list such blessed ones as Matushka Olga of Kwethluk, Archbishop Arseny, Seraphim Rose, Sebastian Dabovich, Metropolitan Leonty... Some might also include beloved babas, and other saints hidden from the eyes of the world - but known to those whose hearts were touched.

Truly: saints have walked among us - and continue to walk with us. By their prayers may we be numbered among them! The point of everything, after all, is holiness.