Section 01: Foundations

The foundational section of the St. Porphyrios reference guide, covering the life before the world knew him: the poor shepherd-boy of Evia who could barely read, the book about a hut-dwelling saint that set his heart on fire, the secret flight to Mount Athos as a child, and the two austere elders of Kavsokalyvia under whom — by their account and his own — he received, almost at the very beginning, the charism of grace and spiritual sight that would mark his whole life.

Tradition: Greek Orthodox / Athonite (canonized 2013)

Contents

File Topic
Evia and the Boy Who Fled to Athos Birth in 1906 at Agios Ioannis in Evia; the poor farming family and the two years of school; the shepherd-boy and the coal mines and the grocer’s shop; the Life of St. John the Hut-Dweller of Kavsokalyvia read on the hillside; the failed attempts and the secret flight to Mount Athos as a boy; arrival at the Skete of Kavsokalyvia
The Elders and the Gift The two elders of the Hut of St. George — Panteleimon the spiritual father and Ioannikios — and the severe obedience the boy embraced; the tonsure as the monk Nikitas; the old monk Dimas and the account, in the Elder’s own words, of how he received the charism of grace and of “clear sight”; his lifelong insistence that this is grace, never a skill that is learnt

How to Use

  • Read Evia and the Boy Who Fled to Athos for the origins: the poverty, the near-illiteracy, and the single book that turned a shepherd-boy toward the Holy Mountain.
  • Read The Elders and the Gift for the formation that received him and for the foundational account of the charism — told here as the Elder himself told it, and as it is attested in Wounded by Love, with its provenance and its theological framing kept in view.
  • The illness that broke this Athonite beginning and drove him back to the world is treated in Section 02: Illness and Return to the World.

Cross-References