Nectaire d'Égine
1846-1920 19th century Feast day: November 9
Gentleness in the face of injustice; prayer held as a conversation that is never broken off.
Who was Nectaire d'Égine?
The son of poor parents in Thrace, a shop boy in Constantinople at fourteen, he became a monk, then a bishop in Egypt, where slander had him driven out within a year without his ever being told the charge. He returned to Greece, preached from village to village, ran a theological school in Athens and cleaned the latrines himself to spare a sick caretaker. He ended his days in a women's monastery he had founded on Aegina, still pursued by rumours, and died in a public hospital ward.
In their own words
Prayer unites each person to God, being a divine conversation and a spiritual communion with the being who is most beautiful and most high.
The pure heart perceives God and finds him, while the crooked heart does not see him even when he is pointed out.
The efforts made to acquire godliness bring spiritual joy.