Today, advertising is a multi-billion-dollar business which utilizes a myriad of methods to communicate and promote a brand: TV, Radio, Internet, Billboards, Cell Phones, Computers, Magazines, and surprisingly, even Newspapers. Yet, when I was a kid, there were two other ways of advertising that you don’t see anymore. One was Skywriting: in which an airplane would literally “write” across the sky using a trail of smoke to make a word. This obviously took quite a while and captured people’s attention as they looked up and patiently waited to see what was being written.
The other was Searchlights: large beams of light moving back and forth, shining upwards in the night’s sky. As kids, our dad would load us into the car and we would begin driving in the direction of those lights, trying to navigate to their location. Eventually, after numerous “turn heres” and “go theres,” we would come upon the source of those mighty beams, which was usually at a car dealership or restaurant opening. Still, it was an exciting adventure, and we felt like explorers.
Today we celebrate All Saints of North America, including our newest saint, Mother Olga of Alaska, who was just canonized on Friday. All these saints – Herman, Metropolitan Innocent, Patriarch Tikhon, Bishop Raphael Hallaweeny, John Maximovitch, Nikolai of Zhicha, priests Alexis Toth, John Kochurov, Alexander Hotovitzky, Juvenaly, Sebastion Dabovich, and others – are shining lights in the darkness, righteous individual “advertising” Christ.
Being that these are our very own saints in our own backyard, and not in some far-off land from a distant past, we should know who they are and navigate our life towards theirs. Therefore, I encourage you to go to the OCA website or get a book from our library and read about these heroic “lights” of our Church who shine brightly in our North American Land. You will not only find them to be exciting and edifying individuals but encouraging as well!
