Why people ask St Nektarios of Aegina
Cancer
The Orthodox Church in America speaks of thousands of miracles through his prayers, in his life and after his death, “especially for those suffering from cancer”.
Saint Nectarius Kephalas, Metropolitan of Pentapolis, Orthodox Church in America
His feast day
9 November: His feast in the Orthodox churches on the new calendar. Those on the old calendar keep it on 22 November.
Saint Nectarius Kephalas, 9 November, Orthodox Church in America
When it is said
It is the main hymn of St Nektarios’s feast on 9 November.
It is short enough to say at a hospital bedside, or wherever his prayers are asked for someone who is ill.
Where it comes from
No author known
Who was St Nektarios?
Nektarios was born to a poor family in 1846, in the town of Selymbria in Thrace. He became a bishop with the title Metropolitan of Pentapolis. In 1904 he began a convent for nuns on the Greek island of Aegina. From 1908 he lived there for the rest of his life, and he served as the nuns’ confessor.
Orthodox Church in America, Saint Nectarius Kephalas; Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, Nektarius the Wonderworker
A patient in a hospital for the poor
In September 1920 a nun brought Nektarios to a state hospital for the poor in Athens. He was plainly in pain. He stayed there for two months and died on 8 November, 74 years old. One account of his life names his illness as a disease of the bladder, and another as prostate cancer.
Orthodox Church in America, Saint Nectarius Kephalas; Wikipedia, Nectarios of Aegina
Why the sick ask his prayers
Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople declared him a saint in 1961. The Orthodox Church in America’s life of him speaks of thousands of miracles, in his life and after his death, “especially for those suffering from cancer”. It tells how, when he died, his sweater was laid on the bed of the paralysed man beside him. The man got up at once, glorifying God.
Orthodox Church in America, Saint Nectarius Kephalas; Wikipedia, Nectarios of Aegina; Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, Nektarius the Wonderworker
In Greek
Σηλυβρίας τὸν γόνον καὶ Αἰγίνης τὸν ἔφορον,
τὸν ἐσχάτοις χρόνοις φανέντα,
ἀρετῆς φίλον γνήσιον,
Νεκτάριον τιμήσωμεν πιστοί,
ὡς ἔνθεον θεράποντα Χριστοῦ·
ἀναβλύζει γὰρ ἰάσεις παντοδαπὰς,
τοῖς εὐλαβῶς κραυγάζουσι·
δόξα τῷ σὲ δοξάσαντι Χριστῷ,
δόξα τῷ σὲ θαυμαστώσαντι,
δόξα τῷ ἐνεργοῦντι διὰ σοῦ,
πᾶσιν ἰάματα.