A saint's day
St Herman of Alaska
St Herman, a monk of Valaam, was one of ten monks sent in 1793 to bring the Gospel to the native peoples of Alaska. On Spruce Island near Kodiak, which he called “New Valaam,” he lived for decades in prayer and labor, taught orphans, fed the poor, nursed the sick through a deadly epidemic and defended the Aleuts against abuse. He reposed in 1837, and in 1970 he was glorified as the first saint of the Orthodox Church in America, the Wonderworker of All America.
The dates
- Kept on
- 13 December (26 December on the Old Calendar)
- Next, New Calendar
- Next, Old Calendar
The New Calendar (the Greek, Antiochian, Romanian and Bulgarian churches, the OCA and most converts) keeps fixed feasts on the church date; the Old Calendar (the Russian, Serbian and Georgian churches, Jerusalem and Mount Athos) keeps them 13 days later. Pascha and the feasts that follow it are kept on the same day by both.
How the day is kept
Orthodox Christians in America pray to him for protection from flood, fire and storm, remembering how he stopped a flood with an icon of the Mother of God and halted a forest fire at a line turned in the moss.
The Church keeps a second feast for his glorification, when the OCA and the Russian Church Abroad glorified him together.
Name days
These names keep their name day on this feast:
The saint
Icons for the feast
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