About the Shrine
Why is there a rustic roadside shrine complete with Byzantine cross and onion dome on Lafayette Avenue in North Beacon Hill?
The modest purpose of this shrine is to stir up a love and devotion to the saints, heal divisions between the East and West, and invoke the metaphysical reality of beauty by offering a window into the resplendent glory of Christ and His mystical body, the Church.
Why don’t these roadside shrines exist throughout the city?
In our postmodern and disenchanted age, rife with materialism, we have forgotten the saints. In thrall to the Machine, our senses have deadened to the mythopoetic, the sacramental, and the true fairytale. The otherworldly, yet earthy and haunting witness of the lives of saints strike us as foreign, implausible. Yet they display a sign of astonishment to us moderns— their sorrows and the injustices they bear are a beatitude. Collectively, the saints manifest a true and unfeigned diversity, drawn from all corners of humanity.
Their commemoration is a remedy to heal and warm the heart, drawing out compunction in a time where the love of many waxes cold. The saints are the sparks that dart about in the stubble; would that their lives enkindle a holy desire!
Our Blessed Lord said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father.” (John 14:12) And so this is why St. Mary of Egypt walked on water and St. Barsanuphrius raised the dead; wild bears and wolves befriended St. Seraphim of Sarov; St. John Maximovich bilocated to celebrate the Divine Liturgy in San Francisco and Shanghai simultaneously.
Each day of the year, the Church, from East to West, keeps in her memory a litany of saints. For the purposes of this shrine, only one saint’s icon is featured for each day. Occasionally, an icon of an event from the life of Our Lord may take precedent on major Feast Days. Typically, a saint is commemorated on the day of his or her death, which denotes their day of entry into the Heavenly Kingdom.
The life of each saint is utterly unique, a glimpse into the radically transcendent potential of the human person when one dies to this world and becomes united to and transformed in Christ.
Please feel free to take a moment to linger in front of this shrine and ask for the intercession of the saints, “for we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.” (Hebrews 12:1)
“O Lord Jesus Christ, wondrous in your saints, save us who sing to you!” (Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom)
The Byzantine Shrine on Beacon Hill 