Distinctly Montana Magazine

18 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • FA L L 2 0 2 3 his six siblings helped out, several eventually joining the family business. There was a burgeoning Orthodox Christian community in San Francis- co where Jovan spent much of his childhood. After graduating from high school in 1881, he served there as a reader, chanter, and Sunday school teacher. As his dedication to the church increased, his love for the beauty and solemnity of Orthodox worship deepened, and he desired with all his heart to serve God and his fellow man at the holy altar. He would later affirm that it was his intention from childhood to become a priest, and he never thought of anything else. After graduating high school, Jovan spent three years in Sitka, Alas- ka, serving at St. Michaels Cathedral, and returned to San Francisco in 1888. On December 18 of that year, at Jovan's request, Bishop Vladimir tonsured Jovan a monk, giving him the name Sebastian, since his tonsur- ing happened on the feast day of St. Sebastian, Martyr of Rome. A week later, Bishop Vladimir ordained Fr. Sebastian to the diaconate. Fr. Sebas- tian served under Bishop Vladimir until 1890, when the bishop sent him to study at the Theological Academy in St. Petersburg, then the imperial capital of Russia. When the climate in St. Petersburg began negatively affecting his health, Fr. Sebastian transferred to the Theological Academy in Kiev, Ukraine. He returned to America in 1892 and was reassigned as a deacon of the San Francisco cathedral. That same year, he was ordained to the holy priesthood in St. Basil's Cathedral. As a hieromonk, Fr. Sebastian worked tirelessly as a missionary priest to the Orthodox Christians spread throughout California and the Pacific Northwest. While baptizing an infant in Jackson, California, he saw that many Serbian miners had settled there and started families. Jackson was a gold rush boomtown, and mining companies everywhere favored Serbs for their large frames, strength, and reputation for being good workers. In Jackson, Fr. Sebastian would learn to organize a community and mobilize them to build a church successfully. In 1894, St. Sava Church in Jackson was finished and became the first Serbian Orthodox Christian church con- secrated in the western hemisphere. Fr. Sebastian first visited Butte in August of 1897, two years before Mon- tana joined the union as a state. He brought what he had learned in Jack- son with him. The upstart in the Montana Territory was just beginning to experience its own boom on what would later be called The Richest Hill on Earth. There was a large and rapidly expanding population of Serbs in Butte at that time; they all lived on the east side of the city, in a neighbor- hood that stood on what today is the Berkeley Pit. The automobile had yet to be invented, and so Fr. Sebastian took a train from San Francisco to the end of the line somewhere in what was then in the northern part of the Idaho Territory, then hiked over the Rocky Mountains, making the 300+ mile trek on foot, his portable communion kit in tow. Fr. Sebastian celebrated the first Divine Liturgy in the history of Montana on August 14, 1897. Afterward, he met with the thirty-one Serbs in atten- dance to organize the first Serbian Orthodox Christian parish in Montana Territory. Fr. Sebastian visited Butte four to six times a year to serve Divine Liturgy and observe the church's progress. As the word spread among the Serbian community, the project quickly gained momentum. Paper currency was still a rare and suspect novelty in 1897 Butte, and most miners carried their life's savings in their pockets. When Fr. Sebas- tian told the miners they should build a church, the faithful miners walked up and turned their pockets out, freely giving up their gold. Their faith was such that they said, "It's only money, Father—we can earn more in the mines tomorrow. But if we die tomorrow with the gold still in our pockets, we will have to answer to God for why we did not build this church." They raised enough capital for the church's construction in just seven days. St. Sebastian Photo Courtesy of Sebastian Press: sebastianpress.org Saint Sebastian of Jackson and San Francisco, Acrylic on canvas, 2021 by His Grace Bishop Maxim Courtesy of Sebastian Press: sebastianpress.org

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