609. Let’s go travelling: How I First Met Saint Nektarios

This article is a rewrite from a couple of older Posts. I want you new readers to get acquainted with this wonderful saint. Besides I want to visit him again, and in my old age this is the only way I can do it.

So, here we go again!

I had heard of Saint Nektarios for years, since he is commemorated in the Proskomidi service (“preparation” of the Holy Gifts, the bread and wine) before Divine Liturgy, and also during Matins. Someone had given me a small icon of him which I put on the wall at Saint Nicholas Church, and I had occasionally anointed people using oil from the lamps at Saint Nektarios monastery, but I didn’t really know much about him.

Then in the year 2000 parishioners Tony and Chrys Wood (memory eternal, Tony +) visited his shrine on the Greek island of Aegina * and brought me a book about him which moved me deeply. (Have any of you noticed how certain saints inexplicably take hold of us?)

• “EGGina” approximately – close enough so the ticket agent at the dock will understand you.

Before we go any farther, let me tell you about him.

A brief Life of Saint Nektarios – before and after he died.

 

Nektarios had a difficult life. Originally from Greece, born in 1846, he became a bishop while serving in Alexandria, Egypt. There other clergy took a disliking to him for some reason – probably because he was so young and bright and capable and had been made a bishop so quickly. They stirred up trouble for him, finally convincing the Patriarch of Alexandria to send him back to Greece, where the rumors followed him. A humble man, he never responded in kind. Eventually he found a position as headmaster of a theological school in Athens, where he flourished. He lived a life of great wisdom, patience and forbearance, writing quite a number of books *. Finally, at the request of some young women, he founded a monastery on Aegina, an island just off the coast of Athens, where he remained as spiritual father and confessor for the rest of his life.

• easily available. For example, just go to Amazon books or Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Bookstore or Thriftbooks and search “Saint Nektarios”.

His life seemed to be nothing very extraordinary until the day he died, and the miracles began. Many wonders have followed, too many to tell here. He seems to have a special concern for cancer patients – and I have my own story to tell you about that, but not yet. There are many accounts of Saint Nektarios appearing to people, especially in dreams but occasionally in person, and far more about miraculous healings. He has become certainly one of the most revered Orthodox saints of the Twentieth Century. I don’t think I ever found a church in Greece without a large icon of him, and there are now many Orthodox churches and chapels dedicated to him all over the world.

Now to my story: I had read many accounts of saints’ lives, but for some reason as I read of Nektarios’ first miracle, I got the holy chills. I wanted to visit him.

So I did.

Off to see Saint Nektarios

After my four days on Mount Athos, I took the train from Thessaloniki down to Athens – a beautiful trip past Mount Olympus, through the plains of Thessaly, then up and over the mountains into Athens. (Why do people fly and miss all this?) After spending a day in bed recovering from Mount Athos, Tuesday September 24 was my day to go to Aegina. It was an amazing day.

I was to take the ferry to Crete that night, so I left my backpack at the hotel in Athens, took the Metro (the Athens subway, though some of it is above ground) to Piraeus, the port of Athens, and planned to catch the 9 o’clock ferry to Aegina, about a one hour voyage. However, I had some business to tend to and missed the 9 o’clock boat. “No problem”, as the Greeks say in all circumstances. I had been assured that ferries run every hour. But not that day. No 10 o’clock boat. The next one was at 11. I wondered if I should give up on the visit. I didn’t know the island.

Now, for reasons I cannot explain – I’m always very careful about planning my travels – I hadn’t looked up anything about the trip: how long the ferry ride would take, where the monastery of Saint Nektarios was or how to get there. Would there be time to get to Saint Nektarios, then back to the mainland and to the hotel, then return to Piraeus again to catch the evening ferry? But I so much wanted to go. So sitting at the dock, I heard myself saying, “Aghios Nektarios, Saint Nektarios, I want to visit you. Please, you’ve got to work this out.”

Well…! My request was definitely answered.

A series of “coincidences” (?)

I should tell you that, since I was not on official business, I was not dressed as a priest,  so little of what followed was the result of “clerical privilege” *.

• Clergy always get special treatment – some positive, some negative, rarely normal. On my travels I wanted to be an ordinary person, so I could get to know ordinary people.

Sitting at the front of the 11 o’clock ferryboat was a young priest. Perhaps, I thought, he was going to visit Saint Nektarios. Maybe I could follow him, or at least he could tell me how to get there. So I went up and asked, “Do you speak English?” “Not very well,” he answered. When I began to mutter in my primitive Greek, he said, “I speak Greek even less.” It turned out he was Russian, a priest monk, Father Kallistratos, from Trinity St. Sergius Monastery outside Moscow, an extremely pleasant and very godly young man of 28 years, who in fact spoke good English. He also had just been to the Holy Mountain, and had climbed the 6500 feet to the top of Mount Athos so he could preside at Divine Liturgy at the little chapel up there at dawn. He was indeed going to visit Saint Nektarios, for the second time. He was to be met by a friend, a retired Greek man whom he had met on his previous trip, who would take him out to the shrine. Father Kallistratos said, “Please come along.”

So I got a free ride to the monastery of Saint Nektarios and, thanks to Father Kallistratos, a tour and explanation of what it was all about from the inside – things I would never have found by myself. The resting place of Saint Nektarios (except that he doesn’t seem to be resting much!) is a beautiful, light-filled, airy women’s monastery – the one he founded – up in the hills, with a great sense of peace about it. When I came before Saint Nektarios’ tomb I was just overwhelmed, and I (Father “Cool”, always in charge of my emotions, at least in public) started to cry – not for sorrow, not at all. There was a woman clinging to the tomb and crying the whole time I was there – in her case, I’m sure, out of sorrow. She was hurting so badly. Pray for her. Even today, twenty four years later, pray for her, be she now alive or dead.

I lightcd candles and prayed for all the people whose names my parishioners had given me and for others too. It was then that Father Kallistratos asked, “Do you want your names to be put on the monastery’s Proskimidi list? Just give the list to that woman there.” Yes, I certainly did! So we were prayed for at Divine Liturgy before Saint Nektarios – again, something I never could have arranged by myself. And then I met some of the nuns and saw the inside of the house where Nektarios lived, and the icon which inspired his popular Orthodox hymn “Rejoice, O Unwedded Bride”. Father Kallistratos stood there and sang that hymn to the Theotokos in Russian, while I stood there frustrated because I couldn’t remember it in English. I came home and corrected that.

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Father Kallistratos was also much devoted to Saint Nicholas. He said about every second church in Russia is dedicated to Nicholas, and he was pleased to know that ours also was Saint Nicholas Church. He was traveling next to Bari in southern Italy where the body of Saint Nicholas lies. A Russian priest there has permission to celebrate Divine Liturgy at the tomb of Saint Nicholas. Father Kallistratos was going to do the same, and he said he would pray for us, so we were prayed for at Divine Liturgy at the tomb of our patron Saint Nicholas! which, by the way, is another very holy place, as I later was to discover. Sometime I’ll tell you in another Post about my visit there in 2005.

Father Kallistratos was staying, so I moved on. I looked through the gift shop and bought an icon, and went down the hill and checked out the big Saint Nektarios church which was not yet completed.

Then I thought maybe I should start planning how to get back to the dock and the ferryboat. I didn’t know how often the bus ran, so I went down to the road to find out. There stood a couple about my age and a young woman, so I attempted to say in my primitive Greek, “Pou einai to leoforio pros Aegina;” “Where is the bus to Aegina?” The man answered, “We speak English.” Finding anyone at Saint Nektarios who speaks anything but Greek is a rarity. It was a Greek-Canadian family from Montreal. He said “Why don’t we get a taxi?” So we did. When he found out I was a priest, he wouldn’t let me pay. So I also got a free ride back from the monastery of Saint Nektarios. I looked at my watch and couldn’t believe it: I had seen so much and prayed so much and hadn’t felt I was hurrying at all. Yet scarcely two hours had passed since I had arrived on Aegina. It was as if someone had been just carrying me along. “As if…?”

There were still about forty five minutes till the next boat to Piraeus, so I decided to get a snack. I walked into an ice cream shop. They had four flavors: “vanilla, strawberry, pistachio, chicago”. Chicago: A sign of home! “But what kind of ice cream”, I asked, “is chicago?” “Oh, very good”, said the waiter, “very good.” Not having any idea what I was getting, I said I’d take it. What was “chicago” ice cream? It was “chocolate” – two scoops with chocolate fudge on top! Those who know me know of my passion for chocolate.

I had asked Saint Nektarios to give me a quick trip, and I got exactly what I asked for, with free transportation and many added gifts including a double chocolate sundae!  I returned to the city, had time for a nice walk through the Athens Plaka and past the Acropolis, got my backpack at the hotel, and went back to Piraeus harbor. The whole adventure had taken less than four hours, and I had over three hours to kill before the boat left for Crete.

Now, you can explain all that happened that day as coincidence, if you wish, but really…? It felt as if it had all been arranged. I felt sure within me I had just met a saint who is alive and responds when you ask him, and even has a mischievous sense of humor. I caught myself grinning for days afterwards as I thought of it. I kept repeating,”Thank you, Saint Nektarios!”

Saint Nektarios is famous for curing diseases, but beginning that day I also made him my patron for travel – in addition to our Saint Nicholas, of course, who guides those who sail by sea and air. I asked Saint Nektarios’ prayers all the way home to Milwaukee, and “Holy Nektarios, pray for me” has been an integral part of my daily prayer life ever since. A large original icon of him now hangs on a wall at our Saint Nicholas Church, with candles burning before him.

This was only the first of a series of  “coincidences” – some subtle, some very startling but delightful – involving this saint on succeeding trips to Greece. In time I became convinced that they definitely could not be coincidences. However I could n0t figure out why Nektarios was playing these tricks on me. I mean, after all, he is a saint known for serious business, especially healing cancer.

Eventually I came to understand what it was all about: I’m very slow to catch on sometimes. When God has wanted something of me, in order to get my attention He has had to shake me up, startle me in one way or another – sometimes using His saints to do so.

The story will continue later this summerNext Week: 250 Years USA