Only if the sky can forego its stars, earth
its grass, honeycombs their honey, streams
their water, and breasts their milk will our
tongues be able to renounce their praise of
the saints, in whom God is the strength of
life and the fame of death.

St. Paulinus of Nola, Poem 19 (405 A.D.)

Today we can clearly see that St. Herman came to America not merely to bring Holy Orthodoxy to the pagan Alaskan natives, but also to awaken the sense of the genuine Orthodox roots which lie deep underneath the fallen-away Christianity of the West, which is the spiritual background of America today. Even in our frightful times, when the foundations of any kind of decent life are collapsing, a chosen few are finding their way back to the Orthodoxy which, in the dim mists of history, was the patrimony of their own ancestors. Thus, this Prologue is devoted to the Orthodox patrimony of the sons of Western lands—to the Orthodox saints of the West, whose proper Ortho— dox veneration was so much desired by the great 20^th century apostle to the West, Archbishop John Maximovitch.
 

 
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