In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“Blessed are the eyes which see the things you see; for I tell you that many prophets and kings have desired to see what you see, and have not seen it, and to hear what you hear, and have not heard it.”
These words, spoken by the Lord to his disciples 2,000 years ago, were doubtless for them a boundless spring of comfort and courage. Generations of great men had desired to see the sight they now beheld with their very eyes: the Son of God in the flesh, the Messiah, Immanuel, God with us.
For us, however, these words might ring hollow, or even become a source of disquiet: blessed were those eyes and those ears, indeed, but what of our eyes and ears? What sight have we seen? What word have we heard?
But in fact, we have seen the same sight and heard the same word as fellow disciples heard 2,000 years ago. In the proclamation of the Gospel, even this very morning, we have heard the words of the Lord himself. Those words also depict for us an image, an icon of Christ. Therefore we, too, are witnesses of God incarnate. The Son, the perfect image of the Father, who reveals the Father to whom he wills, has revealed the Father to us through the power of the preaching of his word.
More than this, he has revealed the Father to us in the image of the saints. He is the seal of the Father’s likeness, and he impresses his image on the lives and works of the saints. Seeing their witness, we behold Christ, and beholding Christ, we behold God himself.
Today, we celebrate the witness of Saint Olga. During her lifetime, that witness was restricted by space and time, by geography and history. She shone the light of Christ on her family and neighbors in the Yukon-Kuskokwim region of Alaska. But now, her witness illumines the entire earth.
Our Lord’s words, his image, are no longer restricted to Galilee, not hidden behind two millennia of history; likewise, the saints are not restricted by time and space. When we read their lives, we are not reading the distant deeds of the dead, but encountering the living witness of men and women who are more alive than we are, for they are with God, and he is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
One way in which the saints, and Saint Olga especially, bear continuous witness to God is through the wonders worked by their prayers. Seen from one perspective, these miracles are special favors from heaven, given according to God’s ineffable providence and counsel.
From another perspective, however, they are simply a reminder for us, who are so often hard-hearted and stiff-necked, that God is living and active in his saints and in our lives. He is always at work through his saints—both those departed this life and those who still remain, often hidden, in our midst—guiding us toward salvation and leading us toward himself. As St. Paisios the Athonite teaches, if our eyes were fully open, then we would perceive our whole life and the whole world as a miracle of God.
May God, who has blessed our eyes to see himself through the witness of St. Olga of Kwethluk and of all the saints, grant us through her prayers ever more to perceive his working and discern his will for our salvation, leading us onward to his glory by the sweetness of his words and the gentle and kindly light of his countenance.
To him, one God in Trinity, be all glory and adoration, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.