Hear our Prayer For the Shanghai Quarantine

The screams in Shanghai have been compared to the sounds of hell. Have you heard them? 

The residents of these buildings have endured forced and all-encompassing lockdown, removal for quarantine of those who test positive for covid, separation of parents from children in quarantine, and now hunger if not starvation brought on by being trapped in their buildings unable to leave to even purchase food.

What means was left for them to express their pain? Screaming out of their windows.

In 2020, when Italians stayed home for their first lockdown in March of 2020, many of us were inspired by the beautiful singing from their windows. The screams of Shanghai seem to be a horror filled bookend to those songs, but bookend is not the right phrase because nothing is ending.

Shanghai is the most modern and wealthy city in China. It has a usually vibrant port, centers of education, research, and technology and has been an economic powerhouse for China.  Boasting a famous skyline with unique and impressively tall skyscrapers, Shanghai is also the most populous city in the world.

Back in the late 1800’s, Shanghai was a thousand-year-old fishing village. It rose to prominence after the Opium wars when it was forced to open to trade with Europeans and became a booming city. By the 1930’s when St. John the Wonderworker arrived to be the bishop there, Shanghai was known as the “Paris of the Orient”.  Beautiful Art Deco skyscrapers lined its cosmopolitan streets, but along with prosperity and wealth, Shanghai was famous for gambling, opium, and prostitution. 

St. John was known to walk the streets of Shanghai barefoot, finding abandoned orphans whom he took into the church’s orphanage. He built the Cathedral of Shanghai which is dedicated the Surety of Sinners icon. St. John continued to protect and minister to the children and his parish when Shanghai became devastated by war during the Japanese invasion of 1939. When communism gained power after WWII, St. John, the orphans, and many of his parishioners left Shanghai and embarked on a dangerous journey. They eventually came to San Francisco where they settled.

The Cathedral of Shanghai still stands. In 2019, that parish was permitted  to celebrate Pascha for the first time in that church since 1965. We have Orthodox brothers and sisters among the suffering in Shanghai. As I wrote previously about the church in China, Christianity in China has experienced a surge in recent years, but as an underground church subject to intense persecution.

I have felt a special connection to St. John the Wonderworker because I was a member of the first church in America consecrated to him. When my daughter was sick, our priest brought out a mantle that had belonged to Saint John and wrapped her in it while we wrapped her in our prayers. He is a beloved saint.

Back in the 1930’s, a Chinese journalist was quoted as saying that Shanghai was “a city with forty-eight story skyscrapers built upon twenty-eight layers of hell.” Right now, the people of Shanghai are suffering to the point of emitting screams of anguish which are expressive of those 28 layers of hell. We may feel helpless in the face of so much suffering, but we can pray for them. They have a heavenly intercessor who we can ask to help them- Saint John. 

O, beloved Hierarch John, while living amongst us thou didst see the future as if present, distant things as if near, the hearts and minds of men as if they were thine own. We know that in this thou wast illumined by God, with Whom thou wast ever in the mystical communion of prayer, and with Whom thou now abidest eternally. As thou once didst hear the mental petitions of thy far-scattered flock even before they could speak to thee, so now hear our prayers and bring them before the Lord. Thou hast gone over unto the life unaging, unto the other world, yet thou art in truth not far from us, for heaven is closer to us than our own souls. Show us who feel frightened and alone the same compassion that thou didst once show to the trembling fatherless ones. Give to us who have fallen into sin, confusion and despair the same stern yet loving instruction that thou didst once give to thy chosen flock. In thee we see the living likeness of our Maker, the living spirit of the Gospel, and the foundation of our Faith.

In the pure life that thou hast led during our sinful times, we see a model of virtue, a source of instruction and inspiration. Beholding the grace bestowed upon thee, we know that God hath not abandoned His people. It is rather we that have fallen from Him, and so must regain the likeness of Divinity as thou hast done. Through thine intercession, O blessed one, grant that we may increase our striving toward our heavenly homeland, setting our affections on things above, laboring in prayer and virtue, waging war against the attacks of our fallen nature. Invoke the mercy of God, that we may one day join thee in His Kingdom. For our deepest wish is to live forever with Him, with the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Troparion in Tone 5:
Thy care for thy flock in its sojourn has prefigured the supplications which thou didst ever offer up for the whole world. Thus do we believe, having come to know thy love, O holy hierarch and wonderworker John. Wholly sanctified by God through the ministry of the all-pure Mysteries, and thyself strengthened thereby, thou didst hasten unto suffering, O most gladsome healer—hasten now also to the aid of us who honor thee with all our heart!

--This prayer is from the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia--