Thirty-Three Years in Athens (1940–c. 1973)

The institutional heart of St. Porphyrios’s earthly ministry: his appointment in 1940, through the canon-law professor Amilkas Alivizatos, as chaplain of the Chapel of St. Gerasimos in the Athens Polyclinic, on the corner of Sokratous and Piraeus streets near Omonia Square; the conditions of a poorly paid post that he held for roughly thirty-three years; and the extraordinary fact that this hidden Athonite hesychast supported himself, his aged parents, and his pastoral work by his own hands — keeping poultry, running a small weaving shop, and devising the aromatic incense and slow-burning charcoal for which he was quietly known — while making a hospital chapel in the middle of the modern city into one of the spiritual centers of twentieth-century Greece.

Tradition: Greek Orthodox / Athonite (canonized 2013)

The Appointment (1940)

In 1940, the Archimandrite Porphyrios came to Athens and was appointed chaplain of the Chapel of St. Gerasimos, which served the Athens Polyclinic (the Polykliniki), a hospital on the corner of Sokratous and Piraeus streets, near Omonia Square — the dense, working, somewhat shabby commercial heart of central Athens (Wounded by Love, trans. Raffan, Denise Harvey, 2005, “Chaplain at the Polyclinic”; Elder Porphyrios: A Short Biography, OrthoChristian.com; Saint Porphyrios: The Saint of Omonia, athens-times.com). The accounts agree on the human link that brought him there: it was through the professor of canon law Amilkas (Hamilcar) Alivizatos — a prominent figure in the Church of Greece and the University of Athens — that the unknown monk-priest from Evia was assigned to the chapel (Saint Porphyrios: The Saint of Omonia, athens-times.com; Wounded by Love, “Chaplain at the Polyclinic”). The specific date most often given for the start of his service is October 12, 1940 (Elder Porphyrios: A Short Biography, OrthoChristian.com).

The timing is worth noting: October 1940 is the very month of Greece’s entry into the Second World War. St. Porphyrios began his Athens ministry as the country plunged into war, occupation, and the catastrophic famine of occupied Athens — and the hospital chapel he served stood in the middle of all of it. The hidden hermit who had been driven from Athos by illness now took up his post in a city about to be filled with the sick, the dying, the starving, and the grieving. It was, providentially, exactly where such a confessor was needed.

A Hesychast in the Heart of the City

The deep paradox of these decades — and the thing that makes St. Porphyrios distinctive among modern saints — is captured in the title of A. N. Papathanasiou’s study: A Hesychast from the Holy Mountain in the Heart of a City (Denise Harvey, 2014). St. Porphyrios did not cease, in Athens, to be what Kavsokalyvia had made him. He kept the Jesus Prayer; he kept the inner watchfulness and the asceticism; he remained, in his interior life, an Athonite hesychast. But he lived this hidden life not in a quiet skete above the sea — he lived it amid the clamor of Omonia, in the corridors of a busy hospital, in a small chapel that anyone could walk into off a noisy street.

This is the model St. Porphyrios offers and that his teaching insists upon: that the inner life is not the property of the desert, that one can live the deepest prayer and union with Christ anywhere, in the middle of the modern world, in the heart of a city. “You can become a saint anywhere,” runs the title under which one collection of his life appears (obitel-minsk.org). The hospital chapel at the Polyclinic was the proof of it. The man whom Greece would come to revere as one of its greatest modern saints spent the central decades of his life as an obscure, poorly paid hospital chaplain whom the passing crowds of Omonia never noticed at all.

How a Penniless Monk Sustained the Work

One of the most striking and frequently emphasized features of these years is that St. Porphyrios supported himself by his own labor. The chaplain’s pay was minimal — barely enough to live on, and certainly not enough to support the aged parents and relatives he cared for, or the pastoral works he wished to undertake. Rather than beg or rely on donations, he worked, with the practical ingenuity of the Evia shepherd-boy he had been (Elder Porphyrios: A Short Biography, OrthoChristian.com; Wounded by Love, “How I supported myself”).

The accounts record a remarkable range of enterprises. He kept poultry and farmed; he ran a small weaving shop; and — most characteristically — he became known for devising aromatic incense formulas and, in the 1970s, a distinctive slow-burning charcoal for church censing (Elder Porphyrios: A Short Biography, OrthoChristian.com). From 1955 he also leased the small Monastery of St. Nicholas at Kallisia, on the slopes of Mount Penteli north of Athens (belonging to the Monastery of Penteli), and threw himself into developing its neglected land — irrigation, tree-planting, soil cultivation — all alongside his full-time chaplaincy (Elder Porphyrios: A Short Biography, OrthoChristian.com). His delight in this manual and agricultural labor was real and is inseparable from his teaching on the beauty of creation (see Nature, Poetry, and Science): he loved the soil, the trees, and growing things, and he saw God in them.

This self-supporting labor is not a footnote. It is part of the saint’s witness: a hesychast who fed himself by the work of his hands, owed nothing to anyone, and gave his spiritual gifts entirely free of charge. The man who could read souls by grace also knew how to make charcoal and raise chickens, and he saw no contradiction.

The Length of the Chaplaincy

How long did the Polyclinic chaplaincy last? The sources give it as “roughly thirty-three years,” and the round figure has become standard, but the precise span is reported variously.

[Disputed: the length of the Polyclinic chaplaincy is given variously. Many accounts say “about thirty-three years,” 1940–1973 (so the popular Lives and the parish summaries); the OrthoChristian Short Biography dates his service 1940–1970 and elsewhere calls it “thirty-five years,” counting his continued attachment to the chapel beyond his formal duties; the common shorthand “thirty years” also appears. All agree he began on (or about) October 12, 1940, and served for roughly three decades into the early 1970s. This collection uses “thirty-three years” as the conventional figure while noting the range 1940–c. 1970/1973.]

What is not in dispute is the magnitude of the thing. For roughly a third of a century, in one small chapel beside a hospital in central Athens, St. Porphyrios heard confessions, comforted the sick and dying, and guided a slowly growing circle of spiritual children — and that long, hidden labor is the human ground from which the whole of his later teaching, and his eventual fame, grew (see Reading Souls in the City).

The Witness of Hidden, Self-Supporting Labor

The picture of a saint who raised chickens, ran a weaving shop, devised incense, planted trees, and made charcoal — all while serving as a hospital chaplain and hearing confessions for hours a day — is so unusual that it is worth pausing on its meaning, for it was not accidental to St. Porphyrios’s holiness but expressive of it. Three things stand out.

First, the self-support was a form of evangelical poverty and freedom. By feeding himself and his dependents through the work of his own hands, St. Porphyrios kept his spiritual ministry entirely free of charge and free of obligation. He owed nothing to any patron; he could not be bought, flattered, or pressured; and no one who came to him for confession or counsel ever had to wonder whether the priest’s advice was shaped by what the priest hoped to receive. The hands that made charcoal kept the heart that read souls clean of avarice. This is the apostolic pattern — St. Paul, who supported himself by tentmaking so as to preach the Gospel “free of charge” (1 Corinthians 9:18) — lived out in twentieth-century Athens.

Second, the manual and agricultural labor was, for St. Porphyrios, not a distraction from the spiritual life but a part of it. He genuinely loved the soil, the trees, and growing things, and he found God in them; the labor at Kallisia was of a piece with his teaching that creation is a “secret Gospel” and its creatures “little loves” leading to the great Love (see Nature, Poetry, and Science). The man who could perceive underground water and discern the hidden life of plants was no reluctant gardener; he delighted in the work and saw the Creator in it.

Third, the whole arrangement preserved his hiddenness. A famous elder maintained by donations is a public figure; an obscure chaplain who makes his own living by farming and crafts is invisible. The self-support was part of the same instinct that governed his whole life — to remain hidden, to refuse the role of the celebrity holy man, to do the work of love unseen. He could be the “saint of Omonia” for thirty years precisely because he asked nothing and lived by his own labor, indistinguishable to the passing eye from any other poor, hardworking priest of the city.

The End of the Polyclinic Years

By the early 1970s, age, accumulating illness, and the wish to give himself more fully to his spiritual children and to the monastic foundation he was contemplating drew St. Porphyrios away from the formal chaplaincy. He retired first toward his retreat at the Monastery of St. Nicholas at Kallisia, and his ministry of confession and counsel continued there and, increasingly, at the new foundation he would establish at Milesi (see The Monastery at Milesi). But the Polyclinic years remained the spine of his life — the long, obscure, faithful labor out of which the elder of Athens was made.

References

Wounded by Love: The Life and the Wisdom of Saint Porphyrios. Translated by John Raffan. Limni, Evia: Denise Harvey (Publisher), 2005. Chapters on the Polyclinic chaplaincy and on how he supported himself by his own labor.
Elder Porphyrios (Bairaktaris): A Short Biography. OrthoChristian.com (orthochristian.com/66300.html). Appointment via Prof. Amilkas Alivizatos; the Chapel of St. Gerasimos at the Athens Polyclinic; start on October 12, 1940; the minimal pay and self-support (poultry, weaving, incense, the 1970s charcoal); the lease of St. Nicholas, Kallisia, from 1955; the dating 1940–1970 / “thirty-five years.”
Saint Porphyrios: The Saint of Omonia. athens-times.com. The Polyclinic on the corner of Sokratous and Piraeus streets near Omonia Square; the link through Professor Alivizatos.
Papathanasiou, Athanasios N. A Hesychast from the Holy Mountain in the Heart of a City. Limni, Evia: Denise Harvey (Publisher), 2014. The hesychast living his hiddenness in the modern city.
The Life and Words of Venerable Porphyrios Kavsokalivite (“You Can Become a Saint Anywhere”). obitel-minsk.org. On the city as the place of sanctity.