Elder Theodoros-Nilos, the ascetic

Elder Theodoros-Nilos, the ascetic
by Metropolitan of Nafpaktos Hierotheos

On Holy Thursday 2016, while Christ was crucified in the holy churches, Elder Theodoros Agiofaragitis (Crete) fell asleep in the Lord. Crucified for many years for the love of Christ, at the end of his life he became a monk and received the name Nile.

From time to time I had a telephone conversation with him and once I met him on the street and talked to him about his beloved desert. I also went to the cave where he lived a few days a year, near the Holy Monastery of Koudouma. Most of the time he lived in the caves and in the desert of Agiofarago, in cells that he built to protect himself from the cold, the rains and the winds and to escape from the attention of the people. Agiofarago, a hard, difficult and inhospitable place, a place of old and even "invisible" ascetics, according to the lore of the people of the area.

He was a rare hermit ascetic, who embodied the old hermit ascetics, who have disappeared today. His exercise was excessive, unbelievable, beyond human limits. It is difficult for man to endure such living conditions, with winds and cold, with heat and scorcher, with hunger and thirst, in the absence of people and the presence of reptiles and wild animals, in prayer and vigil, with angels and demons, with study and prayer, with human loneliness and a sense of universality and much more, which seem contradictory to rational people. He climbed the rugged Cretan mountains like a wild goat, he who was the innocent sheep of Christ, and who was familiarized with the wild nature and the treeless bare rocks.

He had loved to the end the foolishness for Christ, making many excesses, expressing the great privilege of "self-hatred".

Saint Gregory of Nyssa, speaking of the Apostle Paul, who ascended to the third heaven and knew the mystery of Paradise and lived very humbly for the glory of Christ, writes: "For this reason he was homeless and a banker, penny, bum (wandering the world) naked, I am hungry and thirsty». Fr. Theodoros longed and lived this life for the love of Christ. That is why from the Fathers the solitary life is characterized as an apostolic life.

Saint John Chrysostom presents Christ to say to man:  "I am destitute for you and a vagabond for you, on the Cross for you, on the tomb for you". In a way, the Hieromonk Theodoros-Nilos kept a strong and powerful rule for himself, harsher than the rules of men, to constantly say this word of Christ: My Lord and “I am destitute for you and a tramp for you, on the Cross for in, on the tomb for you". As a vagabond, that is, as a wanderer, he passed through all the caves of Agiofarago, living as a destitute for Christ, ascended to his own Cross, guarding "hard roads" and descended to his own grave, as a dead living, as a living dead, for the love of Christ and the thirst for eternal life.

The late University professor Athanasios Paliouras knew him and told me that when he approached him, he smelled a fragrance. What I understood when I met him was that he came out of his speech, his face, his existence a spiritual sweetness, which is the fruit of the fragrant desert, which he loved and would not leave, even when he was ill and had to be hospitalized. In the proposal to live his old age in a quiet Monastery and to accept the treatment of the monks, he said:  "I cannot leave the sweetness of the desert".

Its existence was transparent, sensitive. I told him about the value of the desert and his face shone. The desert became his home, his life, his love, his breath, his prayer, his sweetness, his hunger and thirst, his palestra.  He prayed for the whole world and the adversary, seeing the power of his prayer, fought him hard.  But the elder confronted him with courage, strength, but also inner peace of heart.

The blessed Elder, who was inspired by the Holy Spirit, had some holy idiosyncrasies, obeying the experienced fathers, living as a stranger and crucified, experiencing throughout his life the pain of the Cross of Christ.  And Christ called him to Him on the day of His Crucifixion, having previously received the blessing of his Metropolitan, the Rev. Metropolitan Gortys Makarios. He fell asleep and was buried on Holy Saturday, when the soul of Christ with His Divinity was in Hades and His body with His Divinity was in the tomb. Thus, the Crucified and Resurrected Christ loved His friend, the Hieromonk Theodore-Nilos, who lived as crucified and resurrected for Christ.

My dear Fr. Theodore-Nile, thank you for your love and support, for your holy delusion, for your fruitful desert life, for your foolishness for Christ, for the spiritual fragrance you received from the Holy Gorge (= Agiofarago). You incensed the whole world, and now you are a "fragrant flower" of Paradise together with your holy friends: the great ascetic and theologian Fr. Anastasios of Koudoumas and especially your beloved Christ. You showed us that the Canons of the Church are aphorisms of the Holy Spirit, through which one receives the Holy Spirit, according to the saying "give blood, receive Spirit". You taught us that the desert is also fragrant, fiery, and holy. The breath of the desert became for you the breath of Paradise. It filled your sore and wounded lungs with the love of Christ, with divine love. Pray for us.