Bishop Saint Jonah of Hankou
Today we celebrate the brief but holy, meek and self-giving life of Saint Jonah (Pokrovskiy) of Hankou – another of the saints of China alongside the Chinese Martyrs and Archbishop Saint John the Wonderworker. Though Saint Jonah’s life was full of hardships, sorrow and displacement, he nonetheless lived in a spirit of service to the poor and unfortunate.
Vladimir (nicknamed ‘Volodya’) was born in 1888 in the rural area of the oblast’ of Kaluga in western Russia to peasant parents, and was orphaned at the age of eight. He was adopted by a village deacon surnamed Pokrovskiy; and subsequently schooled within the Church. He graduated from the parish school and from seminary in Kaluga proper before entering Kazan Theological Seminary in Tatarstan in 1909. (Note how many of the Russian clerics who go to China either have roots in the Turkic regions or else have done scholarly work there!) After his third year there, he took the tonsure with the monastic name of Jonah, and entered the Optina Pustyn’, where he learned the gentle wisdom and meekness of the Optina Startsy Saint Joseph and Saint Anatolius the Younger. He returned to Kazan Theological Seminary as a priestmonk and graduated in 1914, (reluctantly) accepting a position to teach Scriptural theology as a private-docent (or associate professor).
Father Jonah, however, was not content to sit idly by in safety while men and women on the Eastern Front of the Great War were being slaughtered – he joined the Eleventh Army of the Russian Empire as a military chaplain. He returned to Kazan after the withdrawal of Russia from the War following the Revolution, but the Bolsheviks forced him to flee Tatarstan to Perm. There he was imprisoned, beaten and sent to a kangaroo trial in Tyumen; however, he was freed en route at Tobolsk by the White Army. He served again in the White Army as a military chaplain, and his unit (led by the Cossack General Aleksandr Dutov) took him all across the Urals and southern Siberia. Though he was raised in rank to abbot by ROCA for his service in the White Army, he was nonetheless subjected to long marches, extreme cold and severe physical hardships on his journey into the Gobi Desert and Inner Mongolia – all of which took a toll on his health.
In 1922, he came to Beijing. He was received into the Russian Mission there, and elevated to Bishop with the titular Eparchy of Hankou 漢口 (which is now part of Wuhan in Hubei Province 湖北武漢); however, he was actually called to serve in the border town of Manzhouli in what was then Xing’an Province 興安滿洲里, but which is now part of Inner Mongolia. Manzhouli, a ‘railway town’ set up as a frontier (not unlike the later-blossoming Baotou) on the China Far East Railway, had recently become home to great throngs of KVŽDist Russians – some Red, mostly White – displaced by the Civil War. The Chinese, Mongolians, Evenkil and Manchurians who lived in Manzhouli helped the recent refugees as best they could. However, resources and space were strained. Children did not have enough bread to eat. Families did not have space to sleep safely. In addition, the Orthodox Christians of the city were poorly-catechised and lacking in leadership and spiritual energy; very few people regularly attended the Orthodox Church, and the parish priests there were often lacklustre in their homiletics and wanting in their basic Orthodox formation.
The newly-crowned Bishop of Hankou had his work cut out for him, but he took to it with great zeal and love. He began preaching sermons from the amvon of the church in Manzhouli brimming with a spirit of love. He established a full church choir. He even began teaching local children in the state-run high schools, published church writings, and taught university-level courses in theology and philosophy at Harbin. The spiritual side of his mission was not attended to the neglect of the social side, however. Within three years of his arrival, Bishop Jonah: founded an orphanage feeding and housing thirty homeless children; a parish grade and junior-high school teaching five hundred; a soup kitchen feeding two hundred people a day; and a clinic that provided free medical care to the very poorest people of Xing’an. He had a particular parental love for children, having lost his own birth-parents at such an early age.
Bishop Jonah, a model of Christlike self-giving, was attentive to all of the needs of his flock, whether spiritual or material, and showed a sincere friendship and compassion to everyone he met, even to the Communists in Manzhouli who were the enemies of the Church. He worked tirelessly for his flock, often making the trip to Harbin by train to raise funds for his various social and churchly projects in Manzhouli. The bishop had an eager and intense mind, a broad wealth of intellectual interests, but he lived with remarkable simplicity and humility – often on a diet of stir-fried potatoes and black rye bread, with old, frequently-patched clothes and shoes.
Bishop Jonah fell ill in 1925 after treating a priest who had typhoid, and himself became infected with an inflammation of the tonsils. Though he ran a high temperature and was barely able to stand, he still blessed the carts collecting food and goods for the orphanage and helped to send them on their way, even waiting at the window of his study to hear that the errand was discharged. His infection grew worse, spread to his throat and gave him blood poisoning. The saintly Bishop, understanding that he was reaching the end of his life, saw his doctor (who confirmed the seriousness of his illness), received confession from Archbishop Methodius of Harbin, and then went into his study to type out his testament. In the church, a molieben was being prayed for his health; he retired to his room, where a number of Chinese and Russians had gathered to visit him. He put on the vestments that had belonged to Saint Ambrosius the Younger of Optina, and began to fervently pray the canon for the departure of the soul. He asked, however, to be buried in the simple white robe and mitre he’d received from his Manchurian flock, and to be buried behind the altar – he wanted to be close to the poor folk he served even in his death. He made those present promise not to throw the children out of the orphanage, but to take care of them as he had. He then lay down on his bed and said: ‘Forgive me; pray for me.’ With these simple words he reposed.
Eight thousand people came out to mourn Bishop Jonah at his funeral, served by Archbishop Methodius. At the time, the town of Manzhouli had about ten thousand people. However, even leaving this life did not prevent him from helping his flock. A young boy, Nikolai Dergachev, suffered from a chronic disease in his legs, such that he couldn’t stand without intense pain. At the hour of Bishop Jonah’s repose, Nikolai had a dream in which Bishop Jonah visited him and told him: ‘Take my legs. I don’t need them anymore; give me yours!’ On waking up, young Nikolai Dergachev found his legs had miraculously healed. Nikolai Dergachev, who moved to Harbin (and later married and had two daughters), had a lifelong devotion to Bishop Jonah, whom he venerated as a saint and whose portrait he kept alongside his personal icons.
The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, and particularly the monastery of the Holy Trinity in Jordanville, undertook an investigation to seek out his relics and ascertain his fitness for glorification. The site of the cathedral in Manzhouli had long been abandoned; it had been demolished by the Chinese Communists in 1964. His relics were not found, but not for lack of trying: his Manchurian, Chinese and Russian flock had been incredibly diligent in their fond memory of Bishop Jonah, and they spared no effort or expense in trying to locate him. On the twentieth of October, 1996, the Bishops’ Sobor of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia glorified his memory, and this glorification was confirmed by the Moscow Patriarchate on the third of February 2016. Holy Enlightener Jonah, Bishop of Hankou, pray to Our Lord Jesus Christ for us!
Thou wast a good pastor for the Russian people,
Who had departed in exodus to live in a foreign land,
Guiding them in every way,
But especially with the love of Christ,
In all providing a model of love unfeigned.
O Father Jonah, holy hierarch of Christ,
Entreat Him for the salvation of our souls!
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