Painted by Pantelis Zografos
I heard this story during my memorable trip to the Holy Mountain in December of 2018. I was then able to venerate two Greek saints who were of great importance to me. I had this feeling as if they took me by hand and walked me all the way from Athens to Mount Athos, helping me reach my destinations, always sending people I needed the most at that particular moment. My visit to St. Nectarios of Aegina at the beginning of my journey was accompanied by a few minor and unremarkable miracles and acts of blessed help. It was quite late when I arrived on the island, so public transportation had stopped running. When I managed to finally get to the monastery by hitching rides and walking, the gates were already closed. I was able to find a wicket gate left open at the back of the monastery and I stepped inside the backyard, when a monastery worker spotted me there through the fence. Having learned that I was a pilgrim from Russia, he called a nun who settled me in a nice and empty pilgrim house for the night and even brought a packed meal to eat. Next morning, I went to liturgy and venerated the relics of St. Nectarios, thanking him for not leaving me without shelter late in the evening in an unknown place.
None of them have seen St. Nectarios alive, but each of them had a relative who personally knew the saint
After Liturgy, we had coffee with local Greeks in the monastery guesthouse, a really touching and family-style experience. They spoke about St. Nectarios as if they spent all their lives near him. None of them, of course, saw him alive, but each and every one of them had a relative who knew the saint in person. So, they’d reminisce about their loved ones—someone had a father, another an uncle or a relative who labored in the monastery during the life of the saint or who simply visited the monastery to see him. Among those family members, the name of St. Nectarios was pronounced in such a way as if he were one of them—and also someone truly special and dear to them, who infused their lives with prayer, blessing, and protection. Having learned that I was traveling to Mount Athos, they gave me prayer lists filled with the dear names of their loved ones who had passed away long ago—fathers and mothers, uncles and cousins, whom they asked to be remembered in prayer on Mt. Athos, along with the still living members of their families. It was as if I recieved a pocketful of fragments of life from several generations on Aegina, near St. Nectarios, a fruit of his prayers that I was about to deliver and share with Athos.
I planned to visit St. John the Russian on Euboea and then go up north along the eastern coast of Greece towards Macedonia. But, this being said and as it typically happens, I had only a limited amount of time and barely enough money. I had at best around a hundred euros, and I had to arrive to the Holy Mountain on Saturday morning in order to make it to the cell and serve a Liturgy there on Sunday. It meant I had to make use of a method so well-tried and so well-tested from youth called hitchhiking—because waiting for all those sloth-like buses that lazily crawled out of the bus stations once every two hours was a sure guarantee that I would never make it anywhere on time. Therefore, once I reached Chalcis, I walked to the outskirts to catch a ride while praying to St. John the Russian to send someone to help me out. It was getting darker and my adventure began to look more and more risky. Then, some time later, a well-worn dark green pickup truck with a folding ladder in its bed drove out of a side lane not far from me. It slowed down and the people inside the truck waved me in.
Georgios and Ioannis, a father-son duo, were heading home after just finishing their work as builders somewhere in the area. Having learned that I was planning to go to St. John the Russian, they said that they can only take me to their home and from there I would have to travel by myself. It was December and darkness descended early, so, when we drove up to their house, twilight died into dark. After talking it over, they stepped inside and I was told to wait for them inside the truck. When they soon returned, they said their family was aware of their plans and they were ready to take me to St. John. It was getting dark fast and the narrow winding road straggled among the hills overgrown with thick pine groves—but before we reached Prokopi, we still had to travel across the large island stretched along the coast of the Peloponnese. During our ride, they told me that their ancestors were among those who, according to a 1920 treaty, came here from Proconnesus in Turkey. Like their most sacred treasure, they carried with them the holy relics of their saint and intercessor John the Russian. Ioannis, whose birth was a miracle attributed to prayers to this saint, was named after him. That’s why the church in Prokopi was like a native home to them and they’d come there at every opportunity, as if paying a visit to their beloved family member. When they venerated the reliquary with the relics, they did so with such reverence and without any fuss, as if they were hugging a living person. It all looked as if Ioannis simply really wanted to see his godfather and they finally met after a brief time apart.
Georgios and Ioannis left, but I was unable to walk away from the relics of St. John the Russian, despite having already read the akathist a long time before and venerating his relics more than once. I was simply standing there for about two hours, and I was feeling so warm inside; I so wanted to stay right there, and nowhere else. I watched other people coming to pray to the saint, who also venerated his relics and asked of him some favor. Some were old, others middle-aged, some with children. Schoolchildren, who had just begun their Christmas break, filled the church as entire classes—the following morning they were to attend a special Liturgy for children, when almost all of them were to partake of the Holy Mysteries. Then there came some local punks, looking totally unbothered about their appearance, no one inside the church actually minding their presence, and they venerated the tomb of the saint just as habitually and devoutly as everyone else. This sight aroused a particularly heartwarming feeling—because for the saint, all of these people were like his family, his kin. He knew their grandmothers and grandfathers in their youth, and then many others among their remote ancestors who grew up before his eyes and with his prayers. This alliance of the people and the saint made me feel happy for all of them, who are so fortunate to live under his grace-filled protection.
Then came a priest who made arrangements for me to stay in a comfortable pilgrim house right across the road from the church. It was late and I was hungry, so I went to find something to eat. It is actually a problem for small Greek towns lying some distance away from tourist routes. They have an abundance of coffee houses, where the locals while away the evenings sipping coffee and homemade, milky white, cloudy anise ouzo mixed with water and eating bits of tiny cakes and Turkish delights. They lazily argue with one another, share news and gossip, watch soccer on some prehistoric TV, or listen to traditional music in those family-owned taverns that see the same visitors year in, year out. However, if you need to eat, especially if you are there during a Nativity fast, you can’t count on having anything else but coffee, ouzo, soccer and Turkish delights. I had to pop into one of those bakeries, or “artopoio,” that was still opened. Its owner, an elderly Greek woman, was excited to see me, a Russian “pateras,” and called for her Russian daughter-in-law. Katya, a beauty from Siberia who married a Greek and made him a father of four sons, was also extremely happy to see a compatriot and asked me to stop by again before my departure. I did as she requested and she gave me a whole bunch of homemade breads and cookies, as well as prayer lists and money to commemorate her family on the Holy Mountain. And that’s how I looked for the rest of my trip—bedecked with all sorts of bags, like a petty shuttle trader from notorious late 1990s in Russia.
The saints continued to take me by the hand as if I were a child, on my way to Mt. Athos
At this point, my readers must have already asked a legitimate question: What am I talking about here? Where is that German mentioned at the title, and his wondrous story? Well, there is neither a mistake nor coincidence that I bring out all those kind-hearted Greek people that the Lord has sent on my way through the intercession of saints so intimately connected with them throughout their whole lives. As if I were a child, the saints continued to take me by the hand on my trip to Mt. Athos. Again and again, they’d send me someone who would gladly and freely pick up a strange hitchhiker from the edge of the road and drive him for some distance in their car. That’s how I ended up in Larissa, and once I came to the city’s bypass road, even before I raised my hand, a car that just whizzed by me suddenly backed up and its door was cordially swung open to let me in.
Inside were a married couple, George and Joanna, and their children—Silouana, named in honor of our venerable Athonite saint, and Michael. They were driving to Thessaloniki to spend the Christmas holidays together. “Just think of it!” George wondered. “We always take another road, a faster one, but today for some reason we decided to take this one. It must be because we had to meet you!” These kind-hearted and deeply religious people took care of me and we drove right up to the bus station in Thessaloniki, where I managed to catch the last bus traveling to Ouranoupolis. Thanks to them, I was able to reach the Holy Mountain with all of those piles of bread offerings and serve a Sunday Liturgy in the kaliva where I was expected to arrive.
On the way from Larissa to Thessaloniki, my friendly fellow travelers and I talked about all kinds of things. Among other things, it turned out that George and Joanna live in London where he works in a banking sector, and that they came here to visit his parents and children from his first marriage. He said that he is German on his paternal side, but he always felt more like Greek—his mother’s native tongue and her faith were closer to him, even if German has always been his second native language. His father, also a very kind man, also loved Greece, and would eagerly visit the country, but he preferred to reside in Germany. However, a few years ago he was diagnosed with a devastating illness—doctors discovered a massive tumor in his brain. He had complex surgeries, underwent all the necessary treatment and then started a lengthy recovery period. As it turned out, after all those interventions in the brain area, he suffered a loss of self, and in so many ways, George’s father practically became like a child again. He did remember his family, his wife and the son, but he had to once again learn to be himself. He also had to learn how to speak again, to get immersed in culture and society, and to become a new person. His family, who took him to Greece to spend this recovery period and make it more convenient to care for him, did everything they could to help him recover. But, under these circumstances, he returned to a meaningful life not as a German, but a Greek, because his family couldn’t make him someone they weren’t themselves. Thus, in his rather advanced years, George’s father was wondrously reborn as another person, starting life practically with a clean slate.
“We don’t just believe in saints—we live next to them.” The saints are the Greeks’ most precious treasure
So, despite all the hardships and sufferings he and his family had to endure during his illness, it seems as if the Lord bestowed upon him the greatest and priceless gift. It’s true that Greece may be inferior to Germany in certain things. It may have never had a “miracle economy” or it isn’t as well developed in terms of economy and the quality of life, just as it can’t boast of having the universally recognized brands such as Mercedes or BMW, or even Volkswagen. Still, with all due respect to the German people and other nations, the Greeks possess something far more precious; something that has been long dead in other countries. As they themselves express it: “We don’t just believe in saints—we live next to them.” The saints are the most precious treasure they possess. They are the fruit of the two millennia of Christian history of this land, its spiritual “capital.” Their country is still nurtured by that grace-filled “interest” acquired from that wealth. It is the blessed fragrance that fills the air in this country, transforms the hearts and illuminates the people’s faces. It is possible that not everything is perfect and beautiful in Greece, or with the Greeks, and there are things that one would want to change or fix there. But all of that will ultimately belong to the past, while the life next to the saints will last forever. And this is the priceless gift this German man received by becoming a Greek.
But I also think: Doesn’t this also happen to all of us, albeit minus the agonizing lobotomy and a poisonous chokehold of chemotherapy sessions? Because we also undergo the process of gradual replacement of one identity with another. Because of this change, we become a part of a new nation that has neither foreign languages nor borders. With the surgery that skillfully surpasses anything known to the mind of man, the Lord gradually removes from us the tumors of abomination and the metastases of filth, heals the glaucoma of ignorance and impassable stupidity, thus making us who we can and should become—citizens of the Heavenly City, where the only passport necessary is our participation in holiness. Basically, this is what will be our shared nationality in a place where it no longer matters whether you are born into this world as a Hellene or a Scythe. What matters is our rebirth as “new man” in Christ.
