Russian Orthodox Parish has been an Enduring Refuge of Faith and Friendship

Parishioners Olga VandeZande and Rita Smith lighting candles at Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Church in Milwaukee WI before the Holy Saturday service

A bastion of faith, culture, and friendship for Eastern European immigrants since the early 1950s, Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Church will celebrate Orthodox Easter and the mystery of resurrection today as a congregation that has gradually undergone a rebirth of its own. Always area-wide in its reach, the little brick church with the small, onion-shaped dome at 1136 W. Madison St. has endured even as fewer of those immigrants have made the Walker’s Point neighbourhood their home. The grey-green interior of the church was repainted a light blue in 2007. A multi-year effort to replace icons that were painted by the original priest recently was completed. Gleaming new ones are in place on the iconostas, or decorative wooden sanctuary screen, with some painted by Archbishop Alypy, a renowned iconographer and the presiding Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Chicago and Detroit.

Nadia Petrov, 85, of Cudahy, the church’s starosta, or elder, can remember when the World War II generation of immigrant members began aging and the congregation dwindled. “One time, I thought for sure we have to close the church, but, slowly they start coming… new people, younger people”, she said. How important is the church to its people, at least 90% of whom are immigrants from Russia, the Ukraine, Baltic countries. and other parts of the former Soviet Union? “It’s very important”, said Victoriya Rufanova, 33, of Wauwatosa, a nephrology researcher at the Medical College of Wisconsin who came to Wisconsin from Moscow in 2001. “And I think I got very lucky that we have this church here, because it’s our culture. It’s our people. And it’s God’s at the same time. It’s something you look forward to, which gives you power to be here in this country”.

The cultural adjustments were difficult for her when she first came. She knew few people she could talk with. But, the spirituality and socialisation at church helped. And there were other positives beyond the economic opportunities in the United States. “You come here and what you feel is, it’s very good and calm here”, said Rufanova, a mother of two. “And people are very nice here. They are much less stressed than in Russia. For me, the first year was like vacation compared to my life in Moscow. But, after that, life is coming slowly to you and you start to work hard, as usual, getting on track”.

Fr John Shaw reads the Gospel during the Holy Saturday liturgy

Bolstered by immigration since the fall of Eastern European communism in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the church now has 600 to 1,000 people who sometimes attend services, said Fr John Shaw, 61, who has served as Holy Trinity’s priest for 17 years. The Sunday divine liturgy, which drew 20 to 25 people when he first arrived, now, often has up to 70 people, with many more crowding the small interior for Christmas, Holy Saturday, and Easter (or, Pascha, in Russian) services, Fr John said, who converted to Orthodoxy from Anglicanism at age 17 and is a distant relative of playwright George Bernard Shaw.

Partly because people did not acquire the tradition of regular church attendance under communism, a core group of 40 registered families is supplemented by an ever-changing group of periodic drop-ins, he said. Slava Sadovnikov, 27, a home caregiver for a senior citizen in Waukesha, is not a regular churchgoer but, he said he finds comfort and peace by periodically attending liturgies, lighting a candle, and saying prayers for loved ones at the church.

Olga Kravtsova, 38, a Bayside mother of seven children, feels that the Holy Spirit led her and her husband, Sergey, to the church after he was considering a position as a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee when the family was living in the Los Angeles area. Seeing on the Internet that there was a Russian Orthodox church here was an important factor in their decision-making. “I wouldn’t have even started looking at the job offer if there wasn’t a Russian church in the city”, said Sergey Kravtsov, 36.

The first time they came to the church happened to be the feast of the Holy Trinity, which Olga Kravtsova saw as providential. She also had been hoping for years to find an Orthodox school for her children and was pleased that she could enrol her children in the school at St Sava Serbian Orthodox Cathedral on the city’s south side. “I was dreaming years about having an Orthodox school for my children”, she said. “And when the Holy Spirit led us to this town, we find this school for my children. I’m so very happy”.

Fr John Shaw says the prayer of absolution over parishioner Olga VandeZande

Irina Chekanova, 66, of Franklin, who came here from Moscow 15 years ago when her husband, Valeri, was offered a job as a cardiovascular researcher, said, “We are very happy that there is this church. It’s part of our life. It’s our culture, our world. It’s very, very difficult for us without this church, and I would like to say thanks to our priest, Fr John. We love him”. Fr John gives two short sermons each Sunday, one in English and the other in Russian. Each is different because many people understand both languages. Some English is used at services, but otherwise they are all in Slavonic, “an ancient language that is to Russian what Latin is to Spanish or Italian”, Rev Shaw said.

Many of the new icons of angels, apostles, saints, Mary, the Baby Jesus, and Christ were painted by Father Paul Akmolin, a young priest in West Virginia who once lived briefly in the Milwaukee area, Fr John said. “It certainly makes the church look a lot more attractive inside”, Rev Shaw said. “They are the same images that were there before, except better quality. It has a positive effect on the worshippers. We see icons as, some call them the gospel for the illiterate, but, they help us focus our thoughts in prayer. We don’t worship the icons. We direct our prayers to Christ. We look at an image of Christ. We ask the saints to pray for us, and we look at an image of St Nicholas or St Seraphim, or something like that. So, it helps us concentrate on prayer. One woman said that there was no way that her mind could wander in church because everything that her eyes could focus on was some sort of a religious symbol”.

April 26, 2008

Tom Heinen

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=744059 (in English)

 

Editor’s Note:

This article brought to mind a comment of an OCA cleric saying that the ROCOR and MP only wish to serve Russian immigrants. Hmm… he should give Fr John Shaw the news! Oh, dear! Fr John is one of the most respected clergyman in the ROCOR (rightfully so) and I have heard nothing but good things concerning him. Na Mnogaya Lyeta, Batiushka John, steady on, if you will!

The situation is far more complex, variegated, and (at times) downright quirky than the intellectuals at SVS would have it. In short, it is something that you could not dream up on your own. I think that C. S. Lewis was right when he said that such was a sign of authenticity. If such is so, then, the simplistic nostrums offered by some intellectual parties must be… oh, my!… wrong. The Spirit listeth where HE willeth the Scripture tells us. That means that the true Church is going to be more like a jumbled, helter-skelter, unmatched, and happy working-class Moscow apartment in Bibirovo than a Better Homes and Gardens American upper-middle class home in the proper suburb (Crestwood in Westchester, perchance?) with sterile Danish Modern furniture and a plasma TV.

Lucy Rossmeisl (left) sells Paskha cheese and a kulich (Easter bread) to Rita Smith at Holy Trinity parish

There are some things in the Church that are mathoms, to use a word from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. A mathom was an item in the Shire (the home of the Hobbits, remember?) that was passed about from hand to hand as a “birthday present”, but, the hobbits had forgotten its original use and purpose. Nevertheless, they loved these quirky old things. It gave them grounding, a connection with all the previous generations of hobbits. Such is the way of it in the Church too. Why do we bake kulichi only at Easter? I dunno. Neither does anyone else, either. We come up with all kinds of dubious ex post facto explanations, but, the true answer to “why do we bake kulichi at Easter” is “it is what we have always done”.

There are people who fear the “same old thing”. “What we have always done” does not suffice, and such sorts attempt to square the circle by researching all kinds of obscure and forgotten literature to find “meanings” for it all. Eureka! They find some quotation by some forgotten Church Father in a dusty tome and they dance about like a Greek peasant at a wedding (If you were to ask me, “Do you prefer the scholar or the Greek peasant”, I would say, “Make mine Zorba, thank you very much”.). If they would only write dense and unreadable monographs, present them at “conferences”, and stay within the arid confines of academe, I do not think that many of us would mind overly much. They would be out of our hair, in any case, and we could carry on with real life, as we should.

Unfortunately, these sorts sometimes get the itch to “enlighten” us. In fact, there were certain periods that were known for that kind of thing. One such was the “Silly ‘60s”. There was Flower Power, Woodstock, the Beatles, and all kinds of fanciful experimentation going on in the Catholic and Protestant churches. Well, most of us are aware of what the Catholics called “Vatican II”. That was not so much an event as it was a mind-set. Some of our people caught the disease because they were influenced overly much by Catholic colleagues and teachers (Hopko and Schmemann come to mind, especially the former).

It all was laid out so logically and neatly. It makes so much “sense”. What could we muster against such? Simple… Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Church in Milwaukee WI and other parishes like unto it. The icons weren’t “perfect”. The exterior needed a little paint. There was the usual joy and pain of a small parish. Not everything matched, and not everything was “according to Hoyle”. However, if you were to ask Fr John or any of his parishioners, they would tell you that it worked, and that was good enough for them, thank you very much.

Icon of Christ on the iconostas at Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Church in Milwaukee 

The intellectuals have forgotten what the purpose of the Church is, if they ever knew it in the first place. The Church is a place where we go to be SAVED. I don’t know about you, but, I am the sort who needs all the help that she can get. In short, I am not making any claim to being brighter, better, or more important than the next person. To be truthful, I have not read much of the Fathers, for that seems otiose and irrelevant to me. You do not encounter Christ in a book. You encounter Him in the other Christians you meet at liturgy. You receive His blessing when you are absolved. You kiss Him when you venerate the icons. You hear Him in the voice of a wise confessor (thank you, Fr George!). You greet Him when you walk into His house, the Church.

You encounter Him at Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Church in Milwaukee. I bow before Fr John and his parishioners and pray that the Lord gives them many, many more years. Thank you, Mr Heinen, for writing such a lovely article. Well done.

CHRISTOS VOSKRESE!

VOISTINNU VOSKRESE!