John Kalaides

Father John Kalaides was a protopresbyter and spiritual father of Neochori in the diocese of Sidirokastro, near Serres, born on 8 May 1925 and fallen asleep in the Lord on 4 August 2009. He is honoured by the faithful as a spiritual father full of love, without synodal canonization; his memory is kept on 4 August.

Early life

He was born in the village of Kamaroto, Serres, to devout parents, Chrysostomos and Theodora, on 8 May, the feast of St John the Theologian, from whom he took his name. His mother, who came from Mount Olympus in Bithynia, lost with her family their wealth in the Asia Minor Catastrophe, but kept her spiritual wealth and guided him toward prayer and church. A serious child, he loved to stay in church and help the priest at the altar; he said he had asked God to make him worthy of being a priest, and that God heard the childhood prayer. At ten he saw, to his mother's amazement, three bishops in holy vestments entering the house and censing the twins of the family, George and Anastasia; that night his little sister Anastasia passed from this world.

He served in the army from 28 October 1947 until 20 March 1950, in the years of the civil war, which filled him with grief, and he was saved from danger several times. In a prayer for peace, in the chapel of his unit, he saw the Lord as the Pantocrator and heard a voice that comforted him. After the war he went back to the village, to his parents and to the church. He worked the land, but never missed church on Sundays, and read the Scriptures. In 1955, at thirty, he married Polyxeni, and had first three children with her: Theodora, Christos and Sophia. The villagers teased him for going to church with such zeal, and once, at work, he thought of cutting down on the services; he then heard, for the third time in his life, a command from above not to abandon his good habit. He wept bitterly, feeling like Peter. Until 1970 he served the church as sexton, churchwarden and chanter.

The priest

In the early 1970s, on 3 January, he dreamed that Metropolitan John gave him the Gospel and asked him to read the words "Go and teach all nations", and told him that before St John's day he would make him a priest. The dream came true a few months later: on 3 July he was ordained by Metropolitan John of Sidirokastro. His joy lasted all his life. He esteemed the priesthood above everything: "If God told me to choose between being a king or a priest, I would choose priest a thousand times." He urged priests to pray without ceasing, to keep a little Bible on them, to catechize the faithful with love and to beware of pride: "Humility makes men angels and pride makes angels demons." Of priests' wives he said that they do not make half a priest, but the whole priest.

He served in several parishes of the Metropolis of Sidirokastro, loved by the people wherever he went. At Sidirochori, in the church of St Kyriaki, his fourth child was born; when the child fell ill with acute leukemia, the doctors gave him three months to live, but at the father's prayer little Philip lived to the age of seven, dying at Kato Poria. There he built and completed the church of the Great Martyr Irene. He also served at Livadia, at St Demetrios, and at Neochori, at St George, where with the help of many pious people he built the church of Saints Raphael, Nicholas and Irene, whom he called "the doctors of our time". This became a pilgrimage place of the Metropolis, and Metropolitan Makarios of Sidirokastro, at its consecration, gave him the title of spiritual father and protopresbyter.

His end

He fell asleep on 4 August 2009 at Neochori, the last station of his priestly ministry. Weak for a long time, he waited in bed for the call of the Lord, enduring the last pains with patience; he stood up alone for as long as he could. The priests of the Metropolis came to prepare his body and noticed that his Cross was fragrant. His body stayed warm until burial. The next day Metropolitan Makarios officiated and gave the funeral address. He was buried behind the church of Saints Raphael, Nicholas and Irene, in the place he had prepared two years earlier. Fr Eusebios Vittis told his spiritual child: "My child, if you saw Papa John of Neochori, you saw a saint."