By Fr. George Dorbarakis
Saint Nektarios is considered by all the faithful of the Orthodox Church as one of its most beloved saints. Not only because God performs numerous miracles through him every day – “healings flow forth everywhere” and “abundant healings of the sick flow forth miraculously every day with the grace of God,” according to the well-known late elder hymnographer Gerasimos Mikragiannanitis – but also because he is a Saint of our time, “the Saint of the twentieth century,” and indeed no less than the other great holy hierarchs of the Church who lived in earlier times. And this means that with Saint Nektarios, on the one hand, we feel the grace of God abundantly, mainly through his holy relics, which are understood as a “fountain of healings” and “diffusing a heavenly scent and a divine fragrance to all,” on the other hand, we receive an answer to the reasonable question that is posed: “why do we not have great saints today?” The old Hymnographer therefore points out this equality of Saint Nektarios with the previous great saints, even giving the explanation: Nektarios tried to follow in the footsteps of the ancient saints, with the purity of his life, that is, in reality to live according to the gospel of Christ. “By the light of your works, you manifest the light of the gospel, father, wondrously to all the people." “You followed, Nektarios, the footsteps of the ancient high priests of Christ, with the purity of your life, and you appeared equal to them and a partaker of their glory.”
The inspired Hymnographer, beyond the general reference he makes to the following of the ancient fathers by Saint Nektarios, focuses our attention on Saint Dionysios of Zakynthos. The Saint celebrated today followed him in an impeccable manner, because he too had Aegina as the place of his spiritual struggles, since he was its bishop. That is why, he notes, both Saints, the older and the younger, participate in the same glory of God, certainly praying for everyone, but above all for their island. “You followed impeccably, Father, in your virtuous ways, Dionysios, the divine shepherd of Aegina, with whom, sharing in the glory above, O Saint, you prayed that this island might always be saved.” The island of Zakynthos may boast that it possesses the holy relics of the divine Dionysios, but the island of Aegina also always receives the beneficial rays of his intercessions to God, which are multiplied by the intercessions of Saint Nektarios.
We all often turn to Saint Nektarios, especially on his feast day, because his heart, enlarged by the love of God, is full of love for us. And we especially turn to him when we are suffering from some problem, psychic or physical. His miraculous interventions are so numerous that there is, one might say, no person who invokes him with faith and does not receive a positive result. Characteristic in this regard are the words of the elder Father Ananias Koustenis, who, wanting to emphasize precisely the miracle-working of Saint Nektarios, notes in a graceful manner that after the appearance by Christ of the other great miracle-working Saint of our time, even more contemporary than Saint Nektarios, Saint Luke the Physician, the Russian, Saint Nektarios has someone to comfort him. “Saint Nektarios sends Saint Luke in his place many times, because he himself is tired of intervening in so many invocations of our tired and sick Christians.”
But what truly pleases Saint Nektarios is not only his invocation for the healings that God gives through him, but above all his invocation to intercede for us, so that we may follow his way of life. For this is always the proper feast of a saint: to imitate him. As the Sacred Chrysostom says: “To honor a martyr, is to imitate a martyr,” therefore “honor a saint, by imitating a saint.” And a hymn comes to remind us of what was the “secret” of Saint Nektarios’ holiness. “You became equal to the ancient fathers, because you imitated their way of life, their divine zeal and their other virtues, Nektarios, and you excelled in true humility and in a simple and unassuming disposition." If Saint Nektarios reached such a great height of holiness, it was not because he was a great preacher, a great teacher, a wise writer, but because he was humble. The path of humility was for him the path that very quickly led him to the glory of Heaven, the path of humility is always the one, together with the unassuming disposition, that opens the gates of Heaven for every Christian.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
