Saint Nektarios

08 February 1999 09:52

Derek Stone ( [email protected] ) forwards this item about a modern and Eastern Church saint – Nektarios. Vassula has said of St. Nektarios that he “opens doors for her”.

This article, reproduced from “The Orthodox Evangelist” Vol. 32 of Feb 1999, refers to the Pope (Patriarch) of Alexandria, who like his Western counterpart in Rome, has made a declaration concerning the year 1999 – not dedicating it to God the Father, but rather to a man, St. Nektarios, who on earth tried to image the love of The Father, that same love which Vassula records and relays.

In Jerusalem at last year’s True Life in God conference, Fr Theopil, Vassula’s Orthodox Confessor from Belgium, told me how he himself had been in submission to an earlier Pope of Alexandria (and All Africa), when he had worked as an Orthodox missionary in Zaire.

“Patriarch Petros of Alexandria has declared 1999 as the year of Nektarios.

One hundred years ago a godly Metropolitan of Pentapolis in Egypt, highly respected by his flock, was unjustly banished from his see by Patriarch Sophronius of Alexandria due to malice and envy. Today he is universally known as St Nektarios, to whose honour many churches have been built and whose ikon is visible in almost every church in Greece. In Greece he spent the remainder of his life in exile, obscurity and painful disregard.

His death remained unnoticed. He died in a welfare hospital ward virtually alone, attended only by two nuns who accompanied him from a convent in Aegina Island where he spent the last few years of his life as the priest and father confessor. A paralytic lying in the next bed was instantly healed when one nun casually laid one of his garments on him in preparation for Nektarios’s burial. Countless other healing miracles have been recorded in connection with St Nektarios and through the invocation of his intercessions.

On the occasion of the annual festival of the saint on 9 November, 1998, a solemn observance was held on the island of Aegina in the magnificent church newly built in his honour. The local Metropolitan, Hierotheos, Archbishop of Greece, Christodoulos, and Petros, Patriarch of Alexandria, were joined by several other members of the hierarchy.

There was something different about the festival this year. The patriarch did what should have been done long ago. He publicly confessed the offence the patriarchate committed against St Nektarios and formally asked for his forgiveness. A special official document was issued:

“… Invoking the mercy of God, we hereby restore the proper order of things and him, and we beg the forgiveness of our father among the saints, Nektarios, for us unworthy ones, and for those fathers and brethren of our most holy Patriarchal Throne who were opposed to the saint and for all these things our godly father endured because of their human weakness, deception and the influence of the Evil One.

“We make known to you that the coming year 1999 has been set aside by our Church to the holy and sacred memory of our Father among the saints, Nektarios, Bishop of Pentapolis, the Wonder-worker, on occasion of the completion of 110 years from the day of his consecration to the episcopate.”

What a stirring and dramatic expression of repentance on the part of the Patriarchate of Alexandria! If anything was missing, it was a statement to the effect that caution must be taken that no godly man or lay, be persecuted by the official Church, only to be honoured and venerated after death.

Derek Stone adds:

An Australian student of the life of St Nektarios once pointed out to me how this very human saint had once tried to ordain a woman priest. For this foolishness he was corrected by his peers. Nektarios was humble enough to accept correction and to repent of his error. Perhaps Western Christians many years on, still involved in this particular controversy, might be tempted by this unfortunate incident, to read in translation, one of the many histories of St Nektarios.