Innocent of Alaska
Saint Innocent, Equal-to-the-Apostles, Enlightener of the Aleuts and Metropolitan of Moscow
Equal to the Apostles · Bishop · b. 1797 — d. 1879
Commemorated 31 March — Repose of the Enlightener of Alaska and Metropolitan of Moscow, 6 October — Commemoration with the Glorification (1977)
Innocent (John Veniaminov, 1797–1879) was the great apostle of Orthodoxy in Alaska and the Russian Far East — a married priest of Siberia who volunteered for the missions of the Aleutian Islands, learned the languages of the peoples he served, translated the Scriptures and services into Aleut and other tongues, and, after his wife's death, was consecrated the first Orthodox bishop of Kamchatka, the Kurils and the Aleutians. He crossed and re-crossed a diocese larger than a continent by kayak and dog-sled, and ended his days as Metropolitan of Moscow and founder of the Orthodox Missionary Society. He is honoured as Equal-to-the-Apostles.
John Popov-Veniaminov was born in 1797 in the Irkutsk region of Siberia, the son of a church server, and was trained in the Irkutsk seminary; ordained priest, he served in that city. In 1823, when a priest was sought for the remote mission of Unalaska in the Aleutian Islands, John — almost alone — volunteered, and set out with his wife and family on a journey of over a year to the edge of the Russian world.
For fifteen years he laboured among the Aleuts of Unalaska and later the Tlingit of Sitka. He learned their languages, devised an alphabet for the Aleut tongue, translated the Gospel of Matthew, the catechism and the Divine Liturgy, and wrote for his people the tender little book Indication of the Way into the Kingdom of Heaven, which was afterward rendered into many languages. He built churches, taught crafts and letters, vaccinated against smallpox, and won the peoples not by compulsion but by love, respecting their dignity and their ways. His ethnographic and scientific observations of the islands and their inhabitants were of such quality that he was made a member of learned societies.
On a visit to Russia in 1839 he learned that his wife had died; taking monastic vows with the name Innocent, he was in 1840 consecrated bishop of the vast new diocese of Kamchatka, the Kurils and the Aleutians — the first Orthodox bishop of America and the North Pacific. For a quarter-century he traversed this immense territory, extending the mission to Kamchatka, the Amur and the newly-opened lands of the Russian Far East, ever translating, teaching and ordaining native clergy. In 1868, old and nearly blind, he was called against his wish to be Metropolitan of Moscow, the first see of the Russian Church; there he founded the Orthodox Missionary Society to sustain the work he had begun. He reposed on March 31, 1879 (Great Saturday of that year), and was glorified by the Church in 1977 as Equal-to-the- Apostles and Enlightener of Alaska.
Feast and commemoration
March 31 (church date; Old Calendar civil April 13) — his repose — and October 6 with the commemoration of his 1977 glorification. He is numbered among the Saints of North America.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4
O Father Innocent, in truth thou didst prove to be an apostle to the peoples, and a herald of the Gospel of Christ: for thou didst give thyself to the enlightening of the far-off tribes, translating for them the words of life and gathering them into the Church. Wherefore, as thou didst then labour without ceasing, so now intercede that our souls may be saved.
Original translation from the Slavonic
Appointed readings
Epistle — Hebrews 7:26–8:2
26For such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens; 27Who needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people’s: for this he did once, when he offered up himself. 28For the law maketh men high priests which have infirmity; but the word of the oath, which was since the law, maketh the Son, who is consecrated for evermore. 1Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum: We have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens; 2A minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man.
Gospel — John 10:9–16
9I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture. 10The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. 11I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. 12But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep. 13The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep. 14I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. 15As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.
Iconography
Innocent is shown as a bishop in the Russian pontifical vesture, the omophorion and white klobuk of a metropolitan, holding the Gospel or a scroll, sometimes with a church of the Alaskan mission or the sea and islands behind him. As he reposed in 1879, public-domain photographs of him survive; painted icons are of the modern period. The stored image is what this entry asked for: a lithograph portrait made in the saint's lifetime (1840s–1860s) — the bishop seated in the klobuk with panagia and pectoral cross, the scroll of his missionary translations under his hand — a period likeness, not an icon, and identified as such. A pre-1900 painted icon of him cannot exist and no modern one is storable; the lifetime portrait stands in that place.