How Saint Nektarios Became a Saint

Father George Dorbarakis | November 6, 2025

 

 

"At forty-four years of age, God revealed to me that which would keep me steadfast until the end of my life on the narrow and afflicted path I had chosen:

The 'cleansing draught of dishonor'—[to be subjected to dishonor is a drink that cleanses you spiritually], as Saint John of Sinai says. From then until my last breath, not for a moment did slander, insult, and contempt abandon me. I do not wish to speak to you of incidents or persons. I might scandalize you, giving rise to thoughts of indignation and judgment. You would not be able, in that way, to understand that I came to love both the slander, and the insult, and the contempt.

Are you surprised? Yet I learned to see them as the nails of my cross. This was the path of my resurrection. Blessed be they. They taught me to love, freed from the anxiety to please, to charm, to be honored. They taught me to turn my gaze to the humble and despised, the simple, everyday, and anonymous people, the gold of the earth."  (From a letter of Saint Nektarios, Bishop of Pentapolis the Wonderworker, to one of his spiritual children).

What is a Christian? “An imitation of Christ, as far as is possible for man” (Saint John Climacus). That is, a person whose thoughts, words, dispositions, and entire behavior reflect the life of Christ—who extends His life through their own personal life. As the Fathers of our Church habitually teach: the Christian is Christ “in another form.” You see the Christian—that is, the saint—and it is as if you are seeing the Gospel incarnate, the Lord Himself continuing to walk in this world—precisely as the Apostle Paul says of the believer: he is a “letter of Christ, known and read by all men.”

How is such a thing possible? It is not a capability that man acquires on his own. This possibility is given to him from the moment he responds to the call of God and is incorporated into Christ within the Church—becoming a member of Him through holy Baptism and holy Chrismation. That is, the grace of the Holy Spirit, by the good pleasure of God the Father, will make man one with the Lord Jesus Christ—the grace of the Triune God will “take up residence” in the depths of man’s heart, expelling the dominion of the Evil One, who will continue to act, by divine concession, on the “edges” of the heart. And is this enough? Certainly not. We are called at the same time to be “fellow workers with God,” and so the gift that was given and continues to be given to us requires the full, utmost activation of man’s will—man must demonstrate that he wants Christ in his life. And how does he demonstrate this—that is, how does he return the love of God toward him? Only in the way that the Lord Himself has determined: by keeping His holy commandments. “If ye love Me, keep My commandments.”

(Let it be permitted to remind what Scripture cries out from beginning to end: “As the Father hath loved Me,” said the Lord to His disciples, “so have I loved you: continue ye in My love. If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love.” I live in you and you in Me, says the Lord, for this is how the love of God operates. Therefore, I beseech you to remain steadfast in this love. And the only way? To keep My commandments. Thus, at the very moment when the Christian—that is, the one who has become a member of Christ through holy baptism—keeps His holy commandments, at that very moment he communes with Him, he is in Him and He in him. Saint John the Theologian, in his First Catholic Epistle, expresses it in another way: “He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked”—he who claims to be united with Christ is obliged, just as He lived in this world, to live likewise himself.)

What life did the Lord live in this world, such that the believer likewise is to live the same life? Certainly not a life of wealth and “luxury,” not one paved with rose petals, as we say, but a life characterized by a single word: “Passion.” The entire life of the Lord, from beginning to end, was a Passion—His Sacrifice on the Cross was merely its culmination. Temptations, insults, slanders, persecutions, denials, murderous intents, even death itself in its most dreadful form—these were what He encountered at every moment of His life. And what did He promise His disciples in this way? That what I suffered, you too shall suffer. “If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you.” His narrow and afflicted path became and remains ever since the only path for every Christian. The Christian who is aware of this knows: from the moment he desires to follow Christ, countless passions, afflictions, and trials await him. As the Apostles expressed it in their preaching: “Through many tribulations must we enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”

This is why the Christian constitutes a “paradox” for the world, fallen into sin. He overturns its criteria and expectations: instead of indulgence, he lives in self-restraint; instead of avarice, he lives in poverty and in offering to his fellow man; instead of ambition, he lives in humility—and thus, instead of egotism, he experiences true love—where he becomes attuned to God Himself, Who is Love. And this constitutes the logic of his so-called “irrationality.” For by transcending all that is worldly and sinfully human, he lives—already in this life—the presence of the Risen Jesus. It is simply a path that is not outwardly visible; one must live it in order for it to be revealed.

The experience of the Apostle Paul uniquely illuminates this mystical reality: “I am crucified with Christ,” he testifies. “Nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” I am one with Christ; my self no longer exists—He is my self-awareness, because I am a member of Him. But for this to be so, I am crucified with Him. And this co-crucifixion is precisely the believer’s decision—unto death—to live according to His commandments: sacrificial love, humility, obedience—everything that constitutes the mind of the Lord Jesus. “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.”

But all these things reveal the world of every saint—the world also of the beloved Saint Nektarios the Wonderworker. What he writes about his life in his letter constitutes, in a natural and simple way, a commentary on the words of the Lord and the life and preaching of the Apostles. He too feels co-crucified with Christ, His follower, because he “bears” his own cross by enduring injustices, insults, humiliations, and contempt. “They are the nails of my cross,” he notes. But these also signify “the path of my resurrection,” and so “I love them”—another way of expressing “Christ liveth in me!” And thus we learn, too, from the great contemporary saint that the secret of life in Christ is not found in gazing upon our problems—bodily or spiritual—but in gazing upon Him, the Author of faith, Who through the midst of problems brings Resurrection and Life!

It is striking when one studies the martyrdoms of many holy martyrs of the faith. There is often the observation that the sufferings they endured were as if being experienced by someone else—“as though another were suffering in his body.” The same is true of Saint Nektarios: the defined torments he endured, both spiritual and bodily—though they were nails—did not break him, because he regarded them as a sweetness of resurrection. Through them, the Lord Himself was revealed in the highest possible way—“when I am weak, then am I strong,” according to the word of the Apostle. And the phrase he uses reveals his divine mindset: “blessed be they!”—a mindset of humility, with obedience as its chief characteristic, just as it was with Jesus Christ.

And this experience of humble obedience, which enables him to live already in this world a Paradise—because he has learned “to love”—transforms his criteria; he sees with the eyes of the Lord. And what does he see? Not what appears great and important and “golden” in the eyes of the world, but the true “gold of the earth”—none other than those people who attract the grace and light of God: the humble and the despised, the simple and anonymous people—a repetition of the words of the Apostle Paul, who spoke of the truly great people, those who do not appear, who do not “shine”: “the base things of the world, and the things which are despised,” “the things that are not,” who precisely because of the grace of God “put to shame the things that are mighty”—a continuation of the Cross of the Lord. (Unique and deeply moving in this regard is the comment of the late great Elder Vasileios of Iveron, in his homily on Saint Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia, titled “Ode to the Nonexistent!”)

But there is yet another paradox: at forty-four years of age, Saint Nektarios—this greatest of saints—learns through a revelation from God that the Christian life is a sorrowful and narrow one. But this is the Alpha and the Omega of what one learns from the very beginning of the Gospel! What was it that the saint did not know and then came to learn? Certainly, it was something he already knew, preached, and partially lived. But God permitted this knowledge of his to be transformed through actual events into a continual, lived experience. Nektarios had from his youth oriented himself toward Christ and His crucified life. And this "inclination" of his heart—according to “My heart is ready, O God”—brought him the great grace to endure the continual and powerful waves of temptations, so that from then on he became steadfast in the cruciform elements that lead to a permanent resurrection of life. This recalls what the great contemporary saint Ephraim of Katounakia used to emphasize: “Tell me what temptations you are undergoing, and I will tell you what spiritual state you are in”—that is, how much grace of God you have! Saint Nektarios underwent great temptations in order to receive even greater grace. And we learn: the greater the grace a saint possesses—let us think of our All-Holy Lady here—the greater also are the temptations he has endured in his life. Or, put differently: when someone undergoes temptations, and even temptations considered great, God is preparing for him a great outpouring of grace; He is raising him to a higher spiritual level (Saint Isaac the Syrian).

The image that Saint Nektarios recalls from Saint John of the Ladder—that every insult and dishonor is in reality a gift from God, a “draught” that purifies a person from his sins because it leads him to humility—would be good for us also to keep frequently before us. When we are insulted, questioned, scorned, slandered, our response ought to have a spiritual character. Ideally, we should regard these assaults as “shots” of the Lord’s grace, which smooth out the heart so that it may become a place of rest for Him. Otherwise, our rebellious reaction will reveal our spiritual condition, which will likely be below the mark.

 

Greek source: https://pgdorbas.blogspot.com/2025/11/blog-post_6.html