On his recent arch-pastoral visit to Saint Michael’s Russian Orthodox Cathedral, His Grace, +Bishop Alexei, returned to the Sitka Cathedral a large, silver 1796 Holy Gospel that he had earlier recovered in September of this year
There was much joy in Sitka over the weekend of September 18-19 (Julian Calendar: November 5-6), culminating with a hierarchical Divine Liturgy on November 21st, the secular calendar date for November 8th, the feast of the Synaxis of the Archangel Michael and other Bodiless powers. During those days, His Grace, +Bishop Alexei made his archpastoral visit to the Cathedral that has been the historic see of the Diocese since 1840.
Saint Paul once wrote to the Thessalonians, “you are our glory and our joy,” words that so aptly describe the newly-departed Archpriest Michael in his apostolic service to the first peoples of this land, for those peoples were and will ever be his glory and his joy. He approached the first peoples as Ruth did Naomi: “thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.” And he became one with the people, one of the people, an elder among the people, a yuk, a real human being. He did this by rejoicing with them that rejoice and weeping with them that weep, but especially rejoicing with that joy of Christ’s resurrection that so animated Father Michael in everything he said and in everything he did.