ST. TIKHON (APRIL 7TH)

St. Tikhon of Moscow, Enlightener of the Americas

By Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West) 

St. Tikhon of Moscow, Patriarch of All Russia, died on this day and is remembered throughout the Orthodox world. He is especially commemorated in our Church and as a special friend to all Western Christians in search of a grace-filled spiritual home. 

St. Tikhon created the “Liturgy of St. Tikhon” from the American BCP, jettisoning Reformed influences and restoring the Anglican Patrimony to an Orthodox theology and ecclesiological worldview, and was instrumental in its certification to the Holy Synod of the Moscow Patriarchate. While standing firm against “lowest-common-denominator” Ecumenism, he was warm, open and inviting to Western Christians, and tried to create space for a Western Rite within Holy Orthodoxy. 

St. Tikhon, who became Patriarch in 1917, was Bishop of the Aleutians and North America from 1898-1907 and did much to establish churches for the growing Orthodox immigrant communities in New York, Chicago and the coal & steel-making cities of Pennsylvania & Ohio. He received many Anglicans and established the first, though small, Western Rite communities that later became our Church. The Bishops in our Synod descend directly from St. Tikhon’s mission in the West, and we commemorate him with special fondness as our “Father Amongst the Saints.”

St. Tikhon, Great Illuminator of the Americas, pray for us!