Glorification, 2018

The Holy and Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate glorified Amphilochios Makris of Patmos as a saint on 29 August 2018, appointing his feast for 16 April, the day of his repose. This file sets out the act of glorification, the feast, and the place of Amphilochios among the recently glorified elders of the modern Greek Church.

Tradition: Greek Orthodox (20th-c. elder; Ecumenical Patriarchate)

The Synodal Act of 2018

On 29 August 2018 the Holy and Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, meeting under Patriarch Bartholomew, resolved to enroll the Elder Amphilochios Makris of Patmos (1889–1970) among the saints of the Church (Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, Synodal Act for the canonization of St. Amphilochios of Patmos, 29 August 2018; reported in the Orthodox press, e.g. Orthodox Times and the Mystagogy Resource Center [J. Sanidopoulos], “The Canonization of Elder Amphilochios Makris by the Ecumenical Patriarchate,” 2018). The act was the Patriarchate’s own, and fittingly so: Patmos is a Patriarchal and Stavropegic island, the Monastery of St. John the Theologian answering directly to Constantinople, so that Amphilochios — monk, abbot, and confessor of Patmos — belonged in a special sense to the Ecumenical Throne.

The Patriarchate’s summary named the marks of his sanctity: a great defender of Orthodoxy who suffered under the Italian occupation; the founder of the women’s Monastery of the Annunciation (1937) and of other communities; the founder of orphanages and charitable institutions; and, above all, a man “noted for his many virtues, his love, humility, and fatherly concern for his spiritual children” (Ecumenical Patriarchate, Synodal Act, 29 August 2018). In canonizing him the Patriarchate ratified a veneration that had grown steadily among the faithful since his death in 1970 (see Repose 1970).

The Feast: 16 April

The feast of St. Amphilochios was appointed for 16 April, the day of his repose in 1970 — the ordinary Orthodox practice of keeping a saint’s principal commemoration on the day of his death, his dies natalis or birthday into eternal life (Ecumenical Patriarchate, Synodal Act, 29 August 2018; OrthodoxWiki, Amphilochios [Makris] of Patmos, giving the feast on 16 April). [Disputed: nothing of substance; but note a common point of confusion. The date 29 August 2018 is the date of the synodal act of glorification, not a feast day; the feast of the saint is 16 April. Some brief notices conflate the two and mistakenly give 29 August as a commemoration. His feast is 16 April.] Because 16 April frequently falls within Great Lent or the paschal season, his commemoration is often kept in the movable liturgical setting of those weeks.

Among the Modern Greek Elders

Amphilochios’s glorification in 2018 places him within a remarkable wave of recent canonizations by the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Church of Greece: the elders and holy figures of the twentieth-century Greek renewal, formally recognized in the 2010s and after. The company is distinguished. St. Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia was glorified in 2013; St. Paisios the Athonite in 2015; St. Iakovos Tsalikis of Evia in 2017; St. Sophrony of Essex in 2019; St. Amphilochios of Patmos in 2018 stands among them (Ecumenical Patriarchate glorifications of the 2010s; see St. Porphyrios, St. Paisios, St. Iakovos Tsalikis, St. Sophrony of Essex).

These glorifications express the Church’s judgement that the twentieth century — for all its catastrophes, and in Greece its wars, occupations, and displacements — was an age of genuine and abundant sanctity, and that the tradition of the Spirit-bearing elder was alive and fruitful in it. Amphilochios belongs to the gentler, more pastoral wing of that company — the elders of joy, warmth, and encouragement — and within it he holds a distinctive place as the elder of Patmos, the founder of convents, and the pioneer of an ecological spirituality (see Legacy and Assessment).

The Fittingness of the Patriarchate’s Act

There is a particular fittingness in Amphilochios’s being glorified by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Patriarch Bartholomew. Bartholomew is the “Green Patriarch,” the Church leader who has made the care of creation a signature of his ministry (see Care for Creation); and Amphilochios, decades before, had quietly practised on Patmos exactly the reverence for creation that the Patriarchate would later proclaim to the world — planting trees, teaching that whoever does not love the trees does not love Christ (see Whoever Plants a Tree). In glorifying the tree-planting confessor of Patmos, the Green Patriarchate canonized one of its own forerunners. The gentle elder who reforested a barren island as a work of repentance was recognized, in 2018, as a saint by the Church that had come to see the care of creation as inseparable from the Gospel — a recognition in which the strands of his witness, pastoral and ecological, are drawn together (see Legacy and Assessment).

See Also

References

  • Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. Synodal Act for the canonization of St. Amphilochios of Patmos, 29 August 2018. (The act of glorification; the marks of his sanctity; the basis for the feast.)
  • OrthodoxWiki. “Amphilochios (Makris) of Patmos.” (The feast on 16 April.)
  • Sanidopoulos, John (Mystagogy Resource Center). “The Canonization of Elder Amphilochios Makris by the Ecumenical Patriarchate,” 2018; Orthodox Times, “Saint Amphilochios Makris of the Holy Island of Patmos.” (Reports of the 2018 glorification; used to locate, not as terminal citation.)
  • On the wider wave of glorifications: the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s canonizations of Porphyrios (2013), Paisios (2015), Iakovos Tsalikis (2017), and Sophrony of Essex (2019).