It is in the depths of the heart that one decides who to become.
Seeds of hope and love or fear and hatred often find their way into the soil of a person’s
heart and quickens their gait toward either a vision of unending light or toward a
deceptively poisonous darkness.
A young seminarian with a pure and fertile heart sat in a classroom in Smolensk
Seminary in 1853 and listened to stories about the Gospel of Christ being preached in far
off China.
These accounts inspired within him a dazzling vision of his own future as a
missionary -- an entrance into the luminous darkness of the unknown, the
unanticipated, the uncomfortable -- an Abrahamic journey that would take him 6,000
miles eastward to Japan.
Born Ivan Dmitrevich Kasatkin in 1836 in a village near Smolensk, Russia, the future
Nicholas, Saint and Enlightener of Japan, showed much promise as a young seminarian
and upon completion of his studies in Smolensk he earned a scholarship to the St.
Petersburg Theological Academy.
He excelled there too and earned the respect of the
authorities of the Academy who thereafter encouraged him to pursue a life of
scholarship and teaching.
But to the rector’s dismay, instead of heeding this advice Ivan chose to follow his heart’s
deepest yearning after he saw a posting for a replacement priest at the Russian
consulate in Japan: “I have a strong resolution in my heart
to preach Christianity and enlighten the foreign people,” Ivan remarked.
“Going to Japan is the best chance to accomplish my desire.”
Ivan took the name Nicholas (or Nikolai in Russian) upon being tonsured a monk on
June 22, 1860 and was ordained to the diaconate and priesthood within the same year.
While tonsuring him, Bishop Nektariy encouraged him in his missionary calling: “It is
not in a monastery that you will spend your devotional life, but having left your
Homeland you will have to serve our Lord in a far-off and pagan land.
You must take the cross of a zealot, the staff of a pilgrim.
You are called, not only to be a monk but to be an
apostle as well”.
The bishop’s words were prophetic as Fr.
Nikolai’s calling would not be limited to the
parochial duties of a diplomatic chaplain but rather would overflow far beyond the
monastery and consulate and into the hearts and minds of the Japanese people.
Fr.
Nikolai traveled 6,000 miles by horse and carriage, crossing the Urals eastward
through Siberia to Irkutsk before crossing the Baikal Lake by ferry where he was forced
to winter in Nikolaeyevsk.
His delay seemed to be the work of Providence as it brought him face-to-face with one of
the Orthodox Church’s most renowned missionaries, St. Innocent of Alaska, who was
also constrained in his travel by the poor weather conditions.
In St. Innocent, Fr.
Nikolai found a kindred spirit whose heart also burned with the desire to spread the
Gospel beyond the horizon of his familiar homeland.
St. Innocent encouraged Fr.
Nikolai and gave him advice from his forty years of missionary experience.
His first task, said St. Innocent, was to learn the language
of the people.
St. Innocent also warned Fr.
Nikolai the importance of enduring through the darkness of loneliness and despair that
often accompanies missionaries.
He also outfitted him with a new clerical cassock and
cross in order to gain the respect and trust of the Japanese people.
Arriving to Hakodate like a frail and naked seed on a sun-scorched summer day in 1861,
St. Nicholas faced the fierce xenophobia of the Tokugawa shogunate, the last feudal
military government in Japan that saw any foreign missionary presence as a threat to
its sovereignty and ancient heritage.
Fr.
Nikolai attempted to take his mentor’s advice in cultivating the soil of his missionary
field by learning the language of the people.
But he found it nearly impossible to learn Japanese and converse with the local people
and soon he teetered on the brink of abandoning his calling.
He even began reverting back to his academic interests.
But just as an unexpected shower of rain brings renewed hope of harvest to an arid land,
so too did Fr.
Nikolai’s second providential encounter with St. Innocent of Alaska.
The blessed hierarch was re-routed through Japan
en route to Kamchatka and thus had the opportunity to see his beloved protege and
breathe new life into his efforts.
Through this meeting, Fr.
Nikolai received a renewed vigor and zeal, launching him into seven years
of intense study of the language, culture, religion, and customs of the Japanese people.
Fr.
Nikolai even sat at the feet of the teachers of Confucianism, Shintoism, and
Buddhism and listened to the sermons of Buddhist preachers and storytellers in his
attempt to make the unknown familiar.
After years of cultivation with seemingly no fruit in sight, Fr.
Nikolai one day was visited at the consulate by what seemed to be a harbinger
of pestilence and drought to the work that had been done but was, in fact, the first
fruits of his arduous labors.
A samurai shinto priest, and an aggressively xenophobic
and hostile nationalist, Sawabe Takuma, who frequented the consulate in order to give
fencing lessons to an officer, confronted Fr.
Nikolai about his intentions in Japan.
After a tense exchange, Sawabe was struck by
the humble priest’s calm demeanor and reasonable responses to his accusations and
questions.
Slowly he began to open up to the missionary and visited him more often.
Eventually, this man who might very well have come to kill the priest became his first
convert to the faith and was ordained as an Orthodox priest.
Sawabe, given the baptismal name Paul, risked his life numerous
times to bring others to the Faith.
Because missionary activities were banned by the government and converts could be
executed, the growth of the Orthodox Church simultaneously brought a period of
persecution.
But Nikolai saw this as a further catalyst to the flourishing of the Church in
Japan: “These persecutions have served,” he reflected, “with the help of God’s
grace, to make it so that those who had the faith only
in their mind, now had it in their heart.
The enemies of Christ did not have the satisfaction
of hearing even from women or children a single word of weakness or fear in professing
Christ”.
Japan continued to persecute Christians until 1873, when it finally overturned its
xenophobic edicts, and opened its doors to the outside world.
Throughout his missionary career, Fr.
Nikolai focused on the formation of the local leadership of the Church and on translating
scriptural, liturgical, and theological texts into Japanese.
By 1878, more than 4,100 believers had joined the Church, largely
through the instruction and catechesis of indigenous leaders.
Fr.
Nikolai requested that a bishop be sent from Russia.
After being summoned back to the homeland by the Synod, he was consecrated
Bishop on March 30, 1880, in response to his own entreaty.
The fruit from the flowering tree of Orthodoxy in Japan, which began as a small seed of
hope sown in the heart of a young, idealistic seminarian at Smolensk Seminary almost
fifty years earlier was now ripe for harvest.
Yet the laborers were still few: “If the number of preachers here correspond to the
mission’s spiritual needs,” Nicholas remarked in a letter to a friend, “there
would be Orthodox Christians in all the cities and
villages of the provinces in Japan.
All of Japan is ready to adopt Christianity and only
men are needed to gather the harvest in the field of God”.
The missionary’s plea for assistance to the Holy Synod of Russia fell on deaf ears,
as the Russo-Japanese War broke out on February 10,
1904.
Despite limited resources, Fr.
Nikolai is remembered as a model Orthodox missionary
for fully immersing himself in the culture of the people he wanted to convert and by
allowing them to assist him in sharing the faith with others.
Within fifty years after his first arrival, the Church of Japan numbered
266 communities with over 33,000 Orthodox Christians, one archbishop, one bishop,
35 priests, six deacons, 14 teachers of singing, and 116 catechists.
Fr.
Nikolai reposed in peace on Feb. 3rd, 1912 and is still remembered fondly by the
Japanese people.
To this day the Holy Resurrection Cathedral, built by St. Nikolai
himself in the ancient byzantine style, stands perched on a hill overlooking the city of
Tokyo, like a tree providing shade and nourishment to those around it.
Passersby are reminded that Nikolai-do (or Nikolai’s house
as the locals call it) is awaiting them with open arms.
May a seed from this tree of Christ’s universal love fall into our hearts and, through the
prayers of our father among the saints Nikolai, Enlightener of Japan, may we too
cultivate a desire to preach the Good News of Jesus Christ to anyone who has ears to
hear.