Return to Kavsokalyvia

The deeply moving close of St. Porphyrios’s life: his lifelong longing for the Holy Mountain from which illness had driven him as a boy, and his return in 1984 to the very Hut of St. George at Kavsokalyvia to die there, as he had always desired; the blindness and grave suffering of his last years borne in prayer; and the account of his repose in the small hours of December 2, 1991 — the grave dug to his own instructions, the farewell letter he dictated to his spiritual children begging their forgiveness in boundless humility, his dying repetition of Christ’s high-priestly prayer “that they all may be one” and of the Apocalypse’s “Come, Lord Jesus,” and his hidden burial at the skete, his repose announced only afterward, exactly as he wished.

Tradition: Greek Orthodox / Athonite (canonized 2013)

The Longing for the Mountain

St. Porphyrios never, in his heart, left Mount Athos. The boy who had fled there to be a hidden hermit, and who had been torn away by pleurisy while still young (see Forced Back from Athos), carried the longing for Kavsokalyvia through every decade of his life in the world — the hospital chapel, the spiritual children, the founding of Milesi. The Holy Mountain was the home of his soul, and to return there to die was the deepest desire of his old age.

The opportunity came in 1984. Learning that the last resident of the Hut of St. George at Kavsokalyvia — the very hut where he had lived as a boy under his elders Panteleimon and Ioannikios — had departed, he requested it from the Great Lavra of St. Athanasios (the ruling monastery of that part of Athos), which granted it to him on September 21, 1984 (Elder Porphyrios: A Short Biography, OrthoChristian.com). The hut of his youth was his again. He sent disciples to settle there, and gradually prepared for the return that would be his last.

The Suffering of the Last Years

His final years were years of grave and accumulating suffering. The long catalogue of his illnesses reached its climax: after an eye operation destroyed the sight of one eye, and complications followed, he became, by 1987, completely blind (Porphyrios of Kafsokalyvia, Wikipedia; Elder Porphyrios: A Short Biography, OrthoChristian.com). He suffered continuous stomach hemorrhaging that required many blood transfusions, alongside the residue of pleurisy, kidney disease, and a heart already weakened by the heart attack of 1978. He bore all of it, the accounts uniformly attest, in prayer and without complaint — confessing for shorter periods as his strength failed, and giving himself increasingly to silent, hidden intercession for the world (Elder Porphyrios: A Short Biography, OrthoChristian.com). The blind, hemorrhaging old man who could no longer do much else could still pray, and he prayed.

There is a note here of attested foreknowledge concerning his death, reported among the accounts of his charism (see Accounts of Clairvoyance): witnesses recount that, some three years before, he had cryptically mentioned a number of disciples at the hut as somehow indicating the year of his death — a remark his followers understood only afterward (Elder Porphyrios: A Short Biography, OrthoChristian.com). It is reported, per this collection’s methodology, as the witnesses’ testimony, not as adjudicated fact.

The Last Journey and the Farewell Letter

In 1991, around the eve of Pentecost, after hearing confessions one final time in Athens, St. Porphyrios traveled to his hut on Mount Athos, intending never to return (Elder Porphyrios: A Short Biography, OrthoChristian.com). He had the monks dig his grave according to his own instructions. And he dictated a farewell letter to his spiritual children — a document the biographies single out for its “boundless humility” (Elder Porphyrios: A Short Biography, OrthoChristian.com; dated, in the accounts, June 4 Old Calendar / June 17 New Calendar 1991). In it, the elder whom thousands revered as a saint begged the forgiveness of his children for his sins and failings, asked their prayers, and entrusted them to Christ. That a man so venerated should, at the end, ask the forgiveness of those he had guided is the perfect seal of his whole teaching: humility above every gift (see The Warnings). He died as he had taught others to live — not displaying holiness, but asking pardon.

Twice in those last months he was briefly forced back to Athens, but each time he hastened back to the Mountain, longing, as the accounts say, to die in prayer and repentance on the holy soil he loved (Elder Porphyrios: A Short Biography, OrthoChristian.com).

The Repose (December 2, 1991)

On the night of December 1–2, 1991, surrounded by his disciples at the Hut of St. George, St. Porphyrios came to his end. He underwent confession a final time and the monastic prayers were read over him. As he lay dying, the disciples heard his lips whispering his last earthly words — not words of his own, but the words of Christ’s high-priestly prayer at the Last Supper: “that they all may be one” (John 17:21) (St. Porphyrios’s dying words, reported in Elder Porphyrios: A Short Biography, OrthoChristian.com). It was the prayer that summed up his deepest desire — the unity of all in the love of Christ, the goal of his whole teaching of love (see Wounded by Love). After that, the accounts say, he repeated only one word, the final word of the Apocalypse: “Come” — “Yes, come, Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20) (Elder Porphyrios: A Short Biography, OrthoChristian.com). With the Church’s last prayer on his lips and his soul straining toward the Christ he had loved with such eros, he reposed at 4:31 a.m. on December 2, 1991, aged eighty-five.

A Death That Summed Up a Life

The manner of St. Porphyrios’s death is so consistent with the manner of his life that it reads almost as a final summary of his teaching, and it is worth drawing the threads together. Every distinctive note of his spirituality sounds in his repose.

His lifelong humility sounds in the farewell letter begging forgiveness and in the hidden, dawn burial that he insisted upon — the saint refusing, even in death, to be made a spectacle, asking pardon of those who venerated him, slipping away unannounced. The man who had spent his life deflecting attention from his gifts (see The Warnings) deflected it one last time, from his own dying.

His teaching of love and unity sounds in his dying words — not a saying of his own, not a final pronouncement, but Christ’s own prayer “that they all may be one,” the prayer that had been the secret desire of his whole ministry of love. He died praying for the very thing he had spent his life teaching: the gathering of all into the one love of Christ.

His eros for Christ sounds in his last word, “Come” — the Church’s and the Bride’s cry to the Bridegroom from the close of the Apocalypse. The soul wounded with love for Christ, at the very end, simply called for Him: Come, Lord Jesus. It is the natural last word of a man whose whole teaching had been that Christ is everything and that the spiritual life is a being-wounded by His love.

And his Athonite vocation, broken by illness at the beginning, was healed at the end: the boy who fled to Kavsokalyvia, was torn away, and longed for it for sixty years, came home to its very soil to die. The circle closed. A life that had looked, in its great middle stretch, like an Athonite vocation thwarted and rerouted into the world, was revealed at its close as a single unbroken arc from Kavsokalyvia to Kavsokalyvia — the whole detour through Evia and Athens and Milesi gathered up and returned, at the last, to the Holy Mountain where it began.

The Hidden Burial

His humility governed even his burial. Following his own detailed instructions, the fathers laid his body in the main church of Kavsokalyvia and read the Gospel over it through the day, keeping an all-night vigil; and at dawn on December 3, they buried him at the skete in the presence of only a few witnesses — and announced his repose only afterward (Elder Porphyrios: A Short Biography, OrthoChristian.com). He had wanted no crowds, no spectacle, no veneration of his dying — only to slip away quietly into the soil of the Holy Mountain he had loved since boyhood. The hermit who had fled to Athos as a child to be hidden for Christ was, at the last, hidden in its earth, exactly as he wished.

It is one of the most moving closings in modern hagiography: the boy driven from the Mountain by illness returns to it, blind and suffering, more than sixty years later; asks the forgiveness of all; dies whispering Christ’s prayer for unity and the Church’s cry “Come, Lord Jesus”; and is buried in secret at dawn. The glorification that the whole Orthodox world would give him twenty-two years later (see Canonization 2013) only confirmed what the manner of his death had already revealed.

References

Elder Porphyrios (Bairaktaris): A Short Biography. OrthoChristian.com (orthochristian.com/66300.html). The 1984 grant of the Hut of St. George by the Great Lavra (Sept. 21, 1984); complete blindness by 1987; the hemorrhaging and transfusions; the last journey of 1991 and the grave dug to instruction; the farewell letter of “boundless humility”; the dying words “that they may be one” and “Come”; repose at 4:31 a.m., December 2, 1991; the hidden burial at dawn on December 3, announced only afterward.
Porphyrios of Kafsokalyvia. Wikipedia. Loss of sight from a botched eye operation (1987); return to Athos in 1984; death December 2, 1991, aged 85.
Wounded by Love: The Life and the Wisdom of Saint Porphyrios. Translated by John Raffan. Limni, Evia: Denise Harvey (Publisher), 2005. His longing for Athos and the desire to die there in prayer and repentance.
Scripture: John 17:21 (“that they all may be one”); Revelation 22:20 (“Come, Lord Jesus”) — the words of his repose.