Friendship with Paisios and Porphyrios

Orthodox tradition links St. Iakovos Tsalikis with the two most famous Greek elders of his time, St. Paisios the Athonite and St. Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia, as the “three great elders” of late-twentieth-century Greece, who held one another in mutual reverence. This file examines what the sources actually attest of those relationships — Paisios’ “we communicate spiritually,” Porphyrios’ visits “in a spiritual kind of way” — distinguishing the well-attested esteem from the natural devotional impulse to make three saints into close companions.

Tradition: Greek Orthodox (20th-c. elder; glorified 2017)

The “Three Great Elders”

It became common, in the devotion of the late twentieth century and after, to speak of three great elders of contemporary Greece together: St. Iakovos Tsalikis of Evia, St. Paisios the Athonite (1924–1994), and St. Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia (1906–1991) — three near-contemporaries, all now glorified, who are said to have held “great love and honor for each other” (the “three great elders” framing, and the mutual love among them, is standard in the devotional literature; see the account in full-of-grace-and-truth.blogspot.com, May 2016). All three were sought by multitudes, all three were credited with discernment, and all three reposed within a few years of one another (Porphyrios and Iakovos both in 1991; Paisios in 1994). The grouping is meaningful: Iakovos belonged, and belongs in the tradition, to a genuine flowering of elder-spirituality in modern Greece, alongside these two and others such as the Athonite fathers of the Josephite lineage (see St. Paisios, St. Porphyrios).

At the same time, the honesty the repository methodology requires means distinguishing the well-attested mutual esteem from the looser devotional tendency to picture the three as intimate friends who met often. In fact the sources attest deep mutual reverence and a small number of specific exchanges, largely at a distance — not a documented history of frequent meetings. What follows sets out what the sources actually say.

Iakovos and St. Paisios

The relationship between Iakovos and St. Paisios the Athonite is attested chiefly through accounts of mutual reverence and “spiritual communication” across distance, rather than of frequent physical meeting — which the geography (Evia and Mount Athos) made difficult. The sources report that Iakovos held Paisios in “great reverence,” calling him “a saint” and numbering him among “the saints who are struggling today,” and that Paisios in turn spoke of Iakovos with honor (full-of-grace-and-truth.blogspot.com, May 2016, citing orthodoxia-ellhnismos.gr, for what each said of the other).

The central and most-repeated account is a discernment-story. When a young hieromonk carried a gift from Iakovos to Paisios on Athos — and Paisios declined to take money for allowing the visitor to venerate in his chapel — Iakovos, on the hieromonk’s return to Evia, already knew what had passed between the two, and said: “We, my child, communicate spiritually” (full-of-grace-and-truth.blogspot.com, May 2016, citing orthodoxia-ellhnismos.gr; the account is transmitted from a hieromonk named Iakovos). The saying is offered by its transmitters both as evidence of the friendship and as an instance of Iakovos’s foreknowledge (see Clairvoyance and Counsel). The account also candidly notes the distance between them: “it is also a very far distance to meet him, and it requires struggle and much effort” — an admission, within the very source that attests the bond, that in-person meeting was rare and the communion was understood as spiritual (same source).

Iakovos and St. Porphyrios

The relationship with St. Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia is attested as especially close, and again largely in the register of “spiritual” rather than ordinary physical meeting. The best-known account comes from Porphyrios himself: asked how he visited Elder Iakovos, Porphyrios is reported to have answered, “In a spiritual kind of way,” and to have said that “at least once a week” the two would meet and speak — describing how they would sit together under a pine tree near the cemetery of the Monastery of St. David, “Iakovos sits on one stack and I sit on the other” (the account of Porphyrios’ spiritual visits and the pine tree by the monastery cemetery, preserved in the devotional literature; see the summary in otelders.org, “How Saint Porphyrios Traveled to Meet Saint Iakovos,” and full-of-grace-and-truth.blogspot.com). Porphyrios, himself renowned for clairvoyance and for a spirit that ranged freely, presents the visits as real communion, whatever their mode; the account is characteristic of the way the tradition understands the friendship of the elders as transcending physical distance.

What the Sources Attest, and What They Do Not

Applying the methodology’s caution about live devotional traditions, the honest summary is this. Attested: that Iakovos, Paisios, and Porphyrios held one another in high mutual reverence; that Iakovos spoke of Paisios as a saint; that the “we communicate spiritually” saying and the “in a spiritual kind of way” saying are transmitted in the devotional accounts and framed by the tradition as expressions of a real spiritual bond among the three. Not documented as ordinary fact: a detailed history of frequent in-person meetings among them; the exact words are transmitted through devotional accounts (blogs citing Greek-language sources such as orthodoxia-ellhnismos.gr, and the recollections of named intermediaries) rather than through the elders’ own writings, and are reported here with that provenance. [Disputed: the frequency and physical character of the meetings among the three elders. The devotional accounts emphasize “spiritual” communion — Porphyrios’ “in a spiritual kind of way,” Iakovos’ “we communicate spiritually” — and themselves note the geographical distance; the collection reports the mutual esteem as well attested and the “spiritual” meetings as the tradition’s own framing, without asserting a documented record of frequent physical visits.]

The Meaning of the Grouping

Rightly weighed, the linkage of the three elders is not diminished by this precision but clarified. What the tradition celebrates in grouping Iakovos with Paisios and Porphyrios is a genuine and important truth: that the late twentieth century saw, in Greece, a real renewal of the ancient charismatic eldership, and that these three — a Cappadocian-refugee Athonite, a nearly blind wonderworker of Athens and Athos, and a refugee abbot of a ruined Evian monastery — were recognized, by one another and by the faithful, as belonging to a single company of holiness. Iakovos’s place in that company is secure; the precise texture of the friendships is reported as the sources give it, esteemed and largely “spiritual,” and neither inflated nor dismissed.

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 “three great elders”; what each said of the others; “we communicate spiritually”; the acknowledged distance.)
“How Saint Porphyrios Traveled to Meet Saint Iakovos.” otelders.org. (Porphyrios’ “in a spiritual kind of way”; the weekly meetings; the pine tree by the monastery cemetery.)
The Garden of the Holy Spirit: Saint Iakovos of Evia. Monastery of Venerable David the Elder, Rovies, Evia. (Iakovos’s reverence for the contemporary elders.)
METHODOLOGY.md §4, this repository. (Both-sides reporting and the distinction of attested esteem from devotional inference.)