Living with the saints

I’m still reading the biography of J. Hudson Taylor, and I am making headway.
It's an interesting and inspiring life story, and so real that I feel I’m right there with Hudson and his people, young missionaries from the British Isles having just made a dangerous ocean crossing to land safely in China, where they have now changed completely into Chinese dress—for the men that meant shaving the front of their heads and putting on false queues—quite a change for mid-19th century Europeans.

But they don’t seem to mind, nor do they complain of the moderate hardships they experience in their day to day lives. Everything is for Jesus to them, and to them He is so real, so present, that nothing can deter or discourage them. I feel very close to them, and to my other saints, because we all have Someone in common, a living Lord who is with us at this very moment, and all the time, whenever we can tear ourselves away from earthly preoccupations. This experience is the reality behind the words of the cherubic hymn in the divine liturgy, “Let us set aside all the cares of this life, that we may receive the King of all…” and in the hymn sung at the service of compline, “for God is with us.”

I imagined the wonderful cameraderie these missionaries shared, as they ventured into the inland regions of China where literally “no [European] man had gone before,” to carry the good news that through Christ we are reconciled to God. It made me think of such moments in my life, and in the lives of the saints I know, how turning around from their own pursuits, they gave themselves to love and serve one another. This thought reminded me of an incident in the life of Sergei Fudel, who was for most of his life a state prisoner in the Soviet Union for his Christian faith. He writes…

During my endless wanderings through the corridors of the Butyrka Prison in Moscow, I suddenly met Father Valentin Sventitsky. Rather foolishly I asked him, “Where are you going?” His face lit up with a kind of inner warmth as he answered, “To be with you!” He was always such a reserved man, severe, exclusive, but that day I felt a ray of kindly, all-seeing saintliness shining at me. He approached my soul, which was in need of his help. He was like a “staréts” [an elder]. This is what prison life can make you see (Light in the Darkness, p. 108).

Reading about Hudson Taylor and his fellow missionaries drew me closer to them and also to the saints I was already on familiar terms with. They are all so similar, and these are the closer examples that have influenced me to be the way I am. So for better or worse, it’s their fault! But this is the way that’s always seemed right to me, even though to others, even other Christians, well, they simply can’t seem to deal with it.

I'm going back now to join my newest friends, the saints of the China Inland Mission, who without having known or ever heard these words from the Orthodox service, lived lives as examples of what they mean…

Having beheld the resurrection of Christ, let us worship the holy Lord Jesus, the only Sinless One. We venerate Your cross, O Christ, and we praise and glorify Your holy resurrection. You are our God. We know no other than You, and we call upon Your name. Come, all faithful, let us venerate the holy resurrection of Christ. For behold, through the cross joy has come to all the world. Blessing the Lord always, let us praise His resurrection. For enduring the cross for us, He destroyed death by death.