Elder Porphyrios was born in the village of Aghios loannis

 

December 2nd – Elder Porphyrios

Posted on 01/03/2011 by lucas

Elder Porphyrios was born in the village of Aghios loannis in the province of Karystia on the Greek island of Evia [Euboea] on
the 7th February 1906.
The name he received at birth was Evangelos.
His parents, Leonidas and Eleni Bairaktaris, were poor farmers and had difficulty in supporting their large family. For this reason his father left for America where he worked on the construction of the Panama Canal.
Young Evangelos was the fourth child of the family.
As a boy he looked after sheep on the hills and had completed only the first class of primary school when, at the age of seven, he was obliged on account of his family’s extreme poverty to go to the nearby town of Chalkida to work.
He worked there in a shop for two or three years.
Thereafter he went to Piraeus to work in a general store owned by a relative.
At the age of twelve he left secretly to go to the Holy Mountain.
His longing was to imitate Saint John the Hut-dweller whose life he had read and for whom he felt a special affinity.
The grace of God led him to the hermitage of Saint George in Kavsokalyvia where he lived in obedience to two elders, natural brothers, Panteleimon, who was a father confessor, and Ioannikios, who was a priest. He devoted himself with great love and in a spirit of utter obedience to the two elders who had a reputation for being exceptionally austere.
He became a monk at the age of fourteen and took the name of Niketas. Two years later he took his final monastic vows of the Great Schema. Shortly thereafter God granted him the gift of clear sight.
At the age of nineteen he became very seriously ill and was obliged to leave the Holy Mountain. He returned to Evia where he went to live in the Monastery of Saint Charalambos at Levka.
A year later, in 1926, and at the age of twenty, he was ordained priest at the Church of Saint Charalambos in Kymi by the Archbishop of Sinai, Porphyrios III, who gave him the name Porphyrios.
At the age of twenty-two he became a confessor and spiritual father.
For a time he was parish priest in the village of Tsakei in Evia.
He lived for twelve years in the Monastery of Saint Charalambos in Evia serving as a spiritual guide and confessor and then for three years in the deserted Monastery of Saint Nicholas in Ano Vatheia.
In 1940, on the eve of Greece’s entrance into the Second World War, Elder Porphyrios moved to Athens where he became chaplain and confessor in the Polyclinic Hospital.
He himself said that he served there for thirty-three years as if it were a single day, devoting himself untiringly to his spiritual work and to easing pain and suffering.
As of 1955 he made his home in the tiny Monastery of Saint Nicholas in Kallisia on the foothills of Mount Penteli. He rented this monastic dependency along with the surrounding area from the Penteli Monastery and worked the land with great diligence.
At the same time he carried out his copious work of spiritual guidance.
In the summer of 1979 he moved to Milesi, a village some thirty miles north of Athens and overlooking his native Evia, with the dream of founding a monastery there.
To begin with he lived in a caravan under exceedingly adverse circumstances and later in a simple room constructed from breeze blocks where he endured
without complaint his many health troubles.
In 1984 he moved into a room in a wing of the monastery which was under construction.
In spite of the fact that the elder was seriously ill and blind, he worked constantly and unstintingly for the completion of the monastery.
On the 26th February 1990 he was able to see his dream becoming reality when the foundation stone of the church of the Transfiguration was laid.
During the final years of his earthly life he began to prepare himself for his death.
His desire was to return to the Holy Mountain and to his beloved Kavsokalyvia where, secretly and silently, just as he had lived, he would tender up his soul to her Bridegroom.
He was often heard to say, ‘My desire now that I have grown old is to go and die up there’.
So it was that he came to his saintly end in his hermitage in Kavsokalyvia on
the morning of 2nd December 1991.
The last words that were heard to pass from his lips were the words from our Lord’s high-priestly prayer which he loved so much and repeated so often: that they may be one.
From the Life & Discourses of Elder Porphyrios the Kapsokalyvite:
“One morning I was walking alone in the Virgin forest.
Everything, freshened by the morning dew, was shining in the sunlight. I found myself in a gorge. I walked through it and sat on a rock.
Cold water was running peacefully beside me and I was saying the prayer.
Complete peace. Nothing could be heard. After a while the silence was broken by a sweet, intoxicating voice singing and praising the Creator.
I looked. I couldn’t discern anything. Eventually, on a branch opposite me I saw a tiny bird.
It was a nightingale [Luscinia megarhynchos]. I listened as the nightingale trilled unstintingly, its throat puffed out to bursting in sustained song.
The microscopic little bird was stretching back its wings in
order to find power to emit those sweetest of tones, and puffing out its throat to produce
that exquisite voice. If only I had a cup of water to give it to drink and quench its thirst!
Tears came to my eyes – the same tears of grace that flowed so effortlessly and that I had acquired from Old Dimas [an old Russian Athonite hermit]. It was the second time I had experienced them. . . .
. . . ‘Why did they [nightingales] puff out their throats to bursting?’ The purpose was worship, to sing to their Creator, to worship God. That’s how I explained it. [from:'Wounded by Love: The Life & the Wisdom of Elder Porphyrios', ed. Sisters of the Holy Convent of Chrysopigi]
Later in this book, Elder Porphyrios refers again to this experience in a chapter called, |
‘On Creation’.  At the end of the chapter, he writes:
“All these things connected with nature help us greatly in our spiritual life when they are conjoined with the grace of God. When I sense the harmony of nature, I am brought to tears. Why should we be bored with life? Let us live life with the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Truth. The person who has the Spirit of God, who has Divine Wisdom, sees all things with love of God and notices all things. The wisdom of God makes him grasp all things and delight in all things“.
Listen and I’ll recite my poem to you. It’s by Lambros Porphyras. [Poet from the port of Piraeus 1879-1932 - 'Poetry from Homer to Seferis' by Prof.C.Trypanis].
This captures my present state; I’ve got it constantly before me. It fits with my life.
“If only the pine trees that cover the hillside would giveme a pileof their numberless branches,then finding a spot in a hollow beside them, I’d build there my dwelling, a hut low and lonely.
If only’t were summer-time, then they could give me a couch of their dry leaves, pine needles, to lie on, and then I would join in the song of the pine trees, their chorus at dawn-break of whispers and rustlings.
And nothing beyond this would I wish thereafter.
And when full of joy from this life I’d be parted, again they would lend me a few of their brances and make me a bower, a bed everlasting“.
In a touching passage about his first days on the Holy Mountain, Elder Porphyrios writes:
“One night there was a vigil service at the Kyriakon, the church of the Holy Trinity.
This was very shortly after I had arrived, during the first few days.
Our skete was celebrating its feast day.
My elders left in the early evening for the church and left me in the hermitage to sleep.
I was young and they thought I might not be able to stay awake until the morning when
the vigil would end.
After midnight Father Ioannikios came and woke me up. ‘Wake up and get dressed’, he said, ‘and we’ll go to the church’.
I jumped up at once and in three minutes we had arrived at the Holy Trinity church.
He ushered me into the church first. It was the first time I had been inside.
I was overwhelmed! The church was filled with monks standing upright in an attitude of reverence and attentiveness. The chandeliers shed their light everywhere, lighting up the icons on the walls and on the icon stands. Everything was bright and shining.
The little oil lamps were lit, the incense exuded fragrance and the singing resonated devoutly in the otherworldly beauty of the night. I was overcome with awe, but also with fear.
I felt that I was no longer on earth, but that I had been transported to heaven.
Father Ioannikios nodded to me to go forward and kiss the icons. I remained motionless. ‘Take my hand, take my hand’! I started to shout. ‘ I’m scared’! He took me by the hand and, gripping him tightly, I went up to venerate the icons. It was my first experience.
It was engraved on my innermost soul. I will never forget it“.
There is no contradiction of course, because what the monks were doing in and through the physical structure of the temple was the human equivalent of the nightingale’s song.
As the Elder notes in the chapter ‘On Creation‘, while the nightingales are indeed praising their Creator and expressing their purpose by displaying ‘the greatness of God and His providence’, ‘God’s purposefulness is expressed differently in us, in mankind. We have freedom and reason’.
It is with the aid of these gifts that we produce art – our nightingale song.
Archimandrite Vasileios of Iveron has written ['What is Unique about Orthodox Culture' - Montréal: Alexander, 2001 pg. 20] :
Here [on the Holy Mountain 'Athos'] we find ourselves on another plane of education, culturally and spiritually. We find ourselves in a realm of high art [in architecture, iconography, music, poetry, prose] which is a fruit of spiritual maturity and
a starting point for spiritual maturity.
There is a reverence for man, a deep knowledge and development of the capacities concealed within him. And the grace with which matter is filled is revealed.
The same spirit prevails and is manifested everywhere. In the whole architecture of the Mountain [in the way Monasteries, Sketes, Cells and Huts have been formed and established in different places].
In the way the program [the daily schedule] is organized. In the expression of the icons.
In poetry; in the music of the chant. In the architecture of words and life.
Thus, the Temple, in the Orthodox view, is hardly a cage to imprison God, but rather ‘a house for the name of the Lord God of Israel’ [2Chron.6: 7], an expression of Praise and Beauty through human Art.

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