(11.) Women and Children First: The Inspiring Example of St. John, the Father of Orphans
(11.) Women and Children First: The Inspiring Example of St. John, the Father of Orphans.
“True religious worship that is pure in the eyes of our Father God is this: to personally care for orphans and widows in their distressing troubles, and to refuse to be corrupted by the world’s values.” (James 1:27).
Another St. John. In the middle years of the Twentieth Century there was a barefoot, unassuming priest who let his little light shine into the very heart of darkness, into the horrific world of child abandonment. His official name is John Maximovitch of Shanghai and San Francisco. This particular St. John was a Russian Orthodox priest who was born in Ukraine and ended up being hounded by communists from one part of the world to another until he ended up with a significant ministry in San Francisco. Father John was known as a devoted Christ-follower with a special heart for children. He was beloved by every child who knew him, because he was playful and gave them his light-hearted, undivided attention when with them. When sprinkling holy water on the children, he would often simply squirt the water straight into their face and make them laugh. While leading a church service, he would often be lost from sight until he was found sitting with a young child and playing some silly game.
Motherless Child — The Blind Boys of Alabama (youtube.com)
Orphans in Distress. Early in his ministry in Shanghai, China, he one day noticed the garbage workers making their way down his street, and they were doing a strange thing… The trashmen would often come upon what appeared to be a lump of filthy material on the sidewalk, and they would kick at this small heap of rags. If the shapeless lump moved, they left it there where it lay. If the lump didn’t move, they picked it up and threw it into the garbage truck and moved on. Father John wondered what was going on, so he went out to the street to investigate. He discovered that those lumps of filthy rags were actually young homeless children lying there with nowhere else to go. The starving orphans who didn’t move after being kicked by the garbagemen were considered worthless trash and simply tossed away with the garbage. The children who did manage to move were alive but obviously in great need. This all-too-common part of Shanghai society was unacceptable to Father John, so he immediately went down the street and lifted up all those remaining children and took them to his home. That first day he rescued eight children hopelessly close to death. He continued his rescue operation and soon established an orphanage of over 100 children. It didn’t take long for Father John’s orphanage to include over 1,500 abandoned orphans.
On the Move. There soon came a wave of communists taking over that part of China, and like a mother hen he somehow gathered all his orphans and took them to an island in the Philippines where there was a refugee settlement. But soon, he had to transplant his children to Australia, and then finally to San Francisco. He refused to let even one of his children be unprotected or left vulnerable. During his life-saving “children’s ministry,” John was known to walk quietly through the sleeping quarters of his children, picking up any blankets that had fallen off the sleeping orphan in the night. He ended up spending most of his nighttime hours picking up those blankets off the floor, putting them back on the child, and saying a prayer over each one. Somehow during his extensive ministry with abandoned children, he had time to visit prisons, hospitals, and mental institutions to pray for each person and give them Communion.
‘Father of Orphans.’ John Maximovitch died in 1966 and his body lies in the cathedral he once led in San Francisco. There is also a classical, K-12 school there named in his honor, St. John’s Orthodox Academy. St. John’s heart for children lives on.
“Enough! How long will you defend the evil-doers? How long will show kindness to those who do wicked things? You’re here to defend the defenseless, to give justice to the weak and fatherless, to maintain the rights of the oppressed and needy. Your job is to rescue the powerless and stand up for them, to deliver them from all who exploit them!” (Psalm 82:2-4).
Not Here? Think Again. Certainly we shuddered as we read about the appalling treatment of children in Shanghai, thanking God that this horrific mistreatment of children is not a part of our contemporary life in the United States. Tragically, though, child abandonment is ingrained in our society as well…
VAN MORRISON ~ Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child ~.wmv (youtube.com)
CHILD ABANDONMENT. World-wide, there are over 60 million children who have been abandoned and thus live on the streets or in an orphanage of some sort, as of 2024. In the United States, the latest statistic is appalling: At least 7,000 children older than newborns are abandoned each year, and even more mind-boggling, there are at least 22,000 babies who are abandoned in the hospitals alone. The result of this willingness of a parent to abandon their own child is graphically seen in pediatric hospitals and in the ER’s. It is estimated that fully one-fifth of the total population of children in American hospitals are abandoned. In the pediatric hospitals in the Triangle area of North Carolina, for example, there has been such an increase of child abandonment in the hospitals that there is a minimum of beds available for those children who need medical care. Evidently, parents have found it more convenient to simply refuse to pick up their child in the hospital after medical treatment. Many parents simply disappear from a child’s life after dropping them off at the hospital, and the child remains there in the hospital, abandoned and homeless. The abandoned children continue to take up beds because there is simply no place to house them. All the pediatric mental health facilities are full. And many of the abandoned children in the hospitals are in need of mental health treatment. Foster care organizations reportedly will not accept these children languishing in the hospitals because of their high-risk, especially needy status that most foster homes are ill equipped to handle. Most of the abandoned kids in hospitals are from low-income families, therefore they cannot be placed in private facilities that would be too expensive for them. Right now, at least in North Carolina, a solution to this on-going problem has not been discovered. Meanwhile, the child abandonment issue in pediatric hospitals continues to increase.
“He put a child in the middle of the room. Then, cradling the little one in his arms, Jesus said, ‘Whoever embraces one of these children as I do embrace me, and far more than me – God who sent me… Woe to anyone who is the downfall of one of these little ones. If you give one of these children a hard time, bullying, corrupting, or taking advantage of their simple trust, you’ll soon wish you hadn’t. You’d be better off dropped in the middle of the lake with a millstone around your neck.’” (Mark 9:36, 37, 42; also Matthew 18:5-6).
Each Child is Sacred. Creator God hates any type of dishonoring of children, any type of treatment that shows an unwillingness to accept the eternal value of children. Mistreatment of children fills God with divine disgust. Every child is made in the image of God, and so is a sacred human being. In the Judeo-Christian faith, children are honored, held up as valuable and treated as such. Jesus reserved one of his starkest warnings against those who would harm children. Children are highly valued by Jesus, and He went way out of His way to communicate that. He said that there was a special punishment reserved for those who harmed children in any way. He gave a recommendation for anyone who mistreated children: It would be better for you to have a huge boulder, a giant millstone, tied around your neck and be thrown into the deep blue sea, than to receive the punishment you richly deserve.