Corfu, Greece, December 13, 2023
Photo: imcorfu.gr
The 4th-century Holy Hierarch and Wonderworker is greatly beloved in the Orthodox world, making the Greek island of Corfu, the home of his relics since 1453, a popular place of pilgrimage for all Orthodox Christians.
He is festively celebrated several times throughout the year, including with a three-day pilgrimage around his main feast day of December 12, which began with a pre-festival Sunday Divine Liturgy this year at the Church of St. Spyridon on the island, celebrated by His Eminence Metropolitan Nektarios of Corfu, the local Metropolis reports.
Photo: imcorfu.gr The church was packed with Orthodox faithful from throughout Greece and abroad. “Our saints, like St. Spyridon, became partakers of the knowledge of God,” Met. Nektarios preached, “and transcended all the pettiness and weaknesses that continue to bind man. So let’s reconsider in our lives the great benefits that Jesus has given to our lives, and let’s live the essence of faith, and let’s not stay in the form and letter of the Law, which kills.”
The three-day feast proper began on Monday morning with a paraklesis to the great Wonderworker. After the reading of the Holy Gospel, the reliquary of the saint was brought out and placed standing upright. The veneration of the relics continued day and night, as the church remained open around the clock.
At the Vespers for the feast itself, Met. Nektarios was concelebrated by Metropolitan Dorotheos of Syros, Tinos, Andros, Kea, and Milos.
In his homily, Met. Nektarios preached about how St. Spyridon “spoke the Christ-centered word in his episcopal ministry. He spoke with a heartfelt word, a word of Divine knowledge, aimed at building up and saving people.”
He continued:
His word was sanctifying, transforming the hearts of those who accepted it. As he was a co-celebrant with the angels, he calmed people, even those who thought evil against him, precisely because he exuded holiness. But his word was also miraculous. He spoke to the river and made it turn its current backward to pass and save people endangered by slander. He told the snake to become gold, to have mercy on his poor fellow man. He spoke to his daughter Irene in the grave and showed the resurrection, but also the love for the woman to whom he had entrusted the precious jewel. St. Spyridon showed people and continues to show all of us what it means to speak the words and the Word of God.
Photo: imcorfu.gr
In our days, “corrupt, slanderous, and barren words often come out of our mouths,” which wound people. Thus, we should take the example of St. Spyridon and begin speaking the word of truth.
The three-day pilgrimage culminated with the Divine Liturgy for the feast of St. Spyridon yesterday, presided over by Met. Dorotheos together with Met. Nektarios. The visiting hierarch offered the homily, emphasizing everyone’s joy in honoring the memory of a Holy Hierarch who was a shepherd both of irrational animals, as a herdsman, and of rational beings—the people whom God entrusted to him.
Met. Dorotheos spoke of how St. Spyridon shamed the heresiarch Arius and converted a pagan philosopher at the First Ecumenical Council, had a family but was not overcome by worldly matters, and “fought life’s challenges and temptations and emerged victorious” and thus “received the eternal gift of the incorruption of his body.”
Photo: imcorfu.gr
The Metropolitan preached:
The incorruption of the saint’s body gives us the opportunity, by venerating him, to experience the presence of the grace of the Holy Spirit. The saint continues the life of Christ in our own lives and shows it to all of us. St. Spyridon believed in Christ, and with his presence, he gives strength, hope, courage, and encourages us to stand upright. Things around us are crumbling and being destroyed, new things that seem strong come, but we need the presence of God to judge, endure, and stand upright on life’s difficult paths. God accompanies us, provided we have inner purity and our personal cooperation, so that we may ask him not to forsake us.
Following the service, the church again remained open around the clock as the faithful continued to flock to the church to venerate their beloved St. Spyridon.
The festival continued with Vespers that evening and later the All-Night Vigil and concluded with the Divine Liturgy celebrated this morning.
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