05 — The Elder Among the Elders
St. Iakovos Tsalikis in his relationships: the mutual esteem between him and Ss. Paisios the Athonite and Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia — the “three great elders” of late-twentieth-century Greece — and his own spiritual fatherhood over a monastic community and thousands of pilgrims. These two files place Iakovos within the wider renewal of Greek elder-spirituality and describe the fatherhood he exercised at St. David’s.
Tradition: Greek Orthodox (20th-c. elder; glorified 2017)
Iakovos was not an isolated figure but part of a remarkable flowering of holy elders in twentieth-century Greece, and the tradition delights to link him with the two most famous of his contemporaries, Ss. Paisios and Porphyrios, who esteemed him as he esteemed them. This section examines those relationships with care — distinguishing what the sources actually attest from the natural impulse to make three saints into intimate friends — and then turns to Iakovos’s own spiritual fatherhood, the fruit of the discernment and humility treated in the previous section.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| Friendship with Paisios and Porphyrios | The mutual reverence between Iakovos and Ss. Paisios and Porphyrios; what each is reported to have said of the others; the “spiritual communication” and the visits “in a spiritual kind of way” — verified against the sources and their provenance. |
| Spiritual Fatherhood | Iakovos as spiritual father: the monastic community he formed at St. David’s, the thousands of pilgrims and spiritual children who came for confession and counsel, and the character of his fatherhood. |
See Also
- Clairvoyance and Counsel — the discernment exercised in his fatherhood
- St. Paisios the Athonite — the elder who said, “we communicate spiritually”
- St. Porphyrios — the elder who visited Iakovos “in a spiritual kind of way”
- Orthodoxy: Spiritual Direction — the elder–disciple relation in the Orthodox tradition
References
- “The relationship between St. Paisios the Athonite and Iakovos Tsalikis.” full-of-grace-and-truth.blogspot.com, May 2016, citing orthodoxia-ellhnismos.gr.
- The Garden of the Holy Spirit: Saint Iakovos of Evia. Monastery of Venerable David the Elder, Rovies, Evia.
- Bousias, Haralambos M. “Elder Iakovos Tsalikes, the Long-Range Star of Evia.” Trans. John Sanidopoulos. johnsanidopoulos.com, 20 November 2014.