On glorification day in Kwethluk, the official festivities began with the arrival of esteemed clergy by boat. A frenzy of about 300 people gathered at the riverbank, including Arnashaq of Kwethluk, who waited peacefully in the crowd. In one hand she held a bouquet of tall grass and wildflowers she picked to lay at the bishop’s feet. In the other, she cradled her baby.
“She’s named after her. The Yup’ik name Arrsamquq,” Arnashaq explains.
In the canon of saints in the Orthodox Church, St. Olga of Kwethluk, Matushka of All Alaska, is one rooted in her womanhood. In life she was a midwife and mother. When she died, she was buried in her wedding dress. In the Kuskokwim community of 800, she was known for her generosity and healing of women’s pain. After her death in 1979, she continued to be a source of strength for women in suffering.
Arnashaq said that she thought of St. Olga through her difficult birth.
“I was in the hospital, in the NICU [neonatal intensive care unit] for 49 days. My baby was born on Good Friday,” Arnashaq said. “And when I finally came here, it felt like I was walking on air. And seeing all these people coming in after waiting so long to witness all of this, and it’s finally here — its amazing.”
Pilgrims came from all over to see and understand where St. Olga lived and walked, some journeying from as far away as Romania and Australia. But for Arnashaq, growing up in Kwethluk, she’s been in touch with the tangibility of St. Olga throughout her life.
“My mother and the priests would advise me to talk to her. And every time I would feel like I couldn’t hold myself, I would go to her grave and ask her to pray, and to God, for me,” Arnashaq said.
Officially a saint
In a four-hour glorification service that afternoon, Olinka “Arrsamquq” Michael, or Matushka Olga, officially became a saint in the Orthodox faith. Pilgrims spilled out of St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church. A group of women sat with their children on the grass.
Many of the pilgrims who traveled to be here came alone. When her husband couldn't make it, Anchorage-based Melania Saclarides decided to make the pilgrimage by plane and by boat alone with her two young daughters.
Saclarides said that it’s something like a prayer in stepping forth into the uncomfortableness and unknown of the pilgrimage. All because it meant something to get here.
“She’s a midwife, and I’m a nurse, and I think she’s very special and close to me, and I’ve prayed to her during every labor of my own children,” Saclarides said. “And I just really wanted to be here to be with everyone. And even though it's hard to make it, it’s such a joy.”
A young girl wandered over to play with Saclarides’ children and a group of toddlers and mothers that had gathered outside of the church. She breathed an exuberant “Hi!” into the microphone and introduced herself as Emelia.
Emelia, age 7, is Matushka Olga’s great-great granddaughter. And, like her great-great-grandmother before her, she's known as the family’s baby whisperer. With all of these people visiting the village, I asked her what she hoped they would see.
“Like a big, big church, and a lot of priests, and loving people,” Emelia said.
Loosening the cords
That last part — the loving people — rang true for pilgrim Hope Forti, who traveled to Kwethluk alone from Colorado Springs, Colo. She said that seeing where St. Olga lived carves out the image of a human person, one she’s found strength in through hard times.
“My husband died when I was five weeks pregnant with our daughter, and then when she was born, she was put on life support for nine days and then a month in the hospital,” Forti recounted. “And so our priest's wife actually sent me her little prayer service that we have for St. Olga.”
Forti said that the prayer for St. Olga spoke to her, both to the suffering of her daughter’s birth trauma, but also in her life as a foster parent of 12 years.
“And she has a line in that prayer service that says, like, 'Blessed are you who untangle the cords' or 'who loosen the cords of a tangled past,' and so for both parts of my life and for all the kids that I'm trying to love, I need that. Like, I cling on to that,” Forti said.
Within the state, such tangles are prevalent. Alaska has among highest rates of domestic violence in the country, with studies finding that nearly half the women in the state will be a victim during their lives. That’s even higher for Alaska Native women.
Before sainthood, Olga was known as Blessed Matushka Olga, healer of the abused and broken. Her icon is depicted carrying a basin of water. It’s a symbol of her midwifery, but also a nod to the Yupi’k maqivik, or steambath culture, through which she was said to heal women’s pain by listening in the women-only space – untangling the pain of their pasts.
“I feel like I've just tried to take on her when I'm flustered and frustrated by the depth of trauma that I'm facing. Like, just to sit and be and hold a hand or give a hug,” Forti explained. “And, like, probably the most helpful thing is gonna be the simplest thing and the most connected human thing. So that’s what she reminds me of when I get too in my head.”
Forti said that being here, where Olga lived, has helped her grasp the human essence of a holy figure. It reminds her that anyone can be a saint.
For many who have come to Kwethluk, that sentiment is the whole point of the pilgrimage. The visitors walk the paths she walked, meeting her neighbors and descendants. And for many who have prayed to her, its also a way to say thank you.
Down by the river
The evening of St. Olga’s glorification was the warmest of the year yet. A group of women giggled as they made their way down to the riverbank, the midnight sunset hazy pink behind them. Skiffs rippled the water as they passed by.
Daria Safronova Simeonoff, who traveled from Kodiak, said that she convinced the others to plunge by telling them it had the holy implications of swimming in the Dead Sea or the River Jordan. But she said this with a cheeky kind of smile, like mostly she just thought it would be fun.
“It’s on the cold side!” Safronova Simeonoff called out from the water. “And there is a current!”
Antonia Brown from Minneapolis was among the women.
“She’s the first [Yup'ik] Native American saint and just the fact that she’s so intertwined with Orthodoxy and just followed God — just being Choctaw Native American that’s really important to me because Christianity has killed a lot of Native Americans and a lot of stories in history, and that’s not the case in Orthodoxy, and that means the world to me,” Brown said.
Some of the women swam in their dresses from the service, long florals flowing in the water. Laughing, they beckoned to the others on the riverbank.
Downriver from the church where St. Olga’s relics lay, in offshoot of the Kuskokwim that she lived beside, the women gasped at the water’s coolness. They drifted briefly in the current.
