Nilus the Myrrh-⁠streamer

Saint Nilus the Myrrh-⁠streamer, or Nilus of Athos (1601-1651), was an ascetic of Holy Mount Athos, a monk of the Great Lavra, who lived as a hermit in the southern part of the peninsula and from whose relics healing myrrh flowed. He is commemorated on 12 November, and according to some sources also on 7 (20) May and 8 (21) June.

Life

In the world Nikolaos Terzakis, he was born around 1601 (the Russian source places him in the sixteenth century) in a village called Saint Peter in Kynouria, in the Morea, in the Peloponnese, in the diocese of Zaconia. His parents were pious and Orthodox but he lost them early, and the boy was raised by his uncle, Hieromonk Macarius. Nilus had fine natural gifts and, with his uncle's untiring and sincere care, made rapid progress in mind and morals. Having come of age, he received monastic tonsure and was deemed worthy of ordination first as hierodeacon, then as hieromonk, according to the Serbian source in the monastery of the Dormition of the Mother of God at Malevi. Thus the honored uncle and his worthy nephew struggled together in a life of fasting, in agreement.

Desire for greater labors in monastic work led the blessed uncle and his holy nephew to Holy Mount Athos, where Macarius and Nilus struggled at the place called the Holy Stones. After the death of Macarius, Nilus ascended to higher spiritual struggles and settled in a rocky cave, in a high place almost inaccessible to any living creature. There he built a small shelter, a hut (kalyvi), on a cliff overlooking the sea at the southern tip of the Athos peninsula, and lived there for the rest of his life. The place today, about halfway between Katounakia and the skete of Prodromou, is called Agios Nilos. He was a monk of the Great Lavra. He reposed on 12 November 1651.

The myrrh

Toward the end of his life, say the English and Serbian sources, myrrh flowed from his body in such abundance that it ran from the top of the mountain into the sea. The Russian source says instead that after his repose he was glorified by an abundant flow of healing myrrh, which came out of the very rocky cave where his relics lay. The miraculous myrrh drew people from everywhere and was used to heal bodily and spiritual illnesses, and Christians from the farthest lands of the East came for it, so that his name became known throughout the Christian world, and for this he was called Myrrh-⁠streamer.

Relics and veneration

His holy relics were found in 1815 and are kept at the Great Lavra. Today the holy cave of Saint Nilus can be visited by pilgrims to Athos. The Serbian source adds that after his repose the venerable one appeared several times to the Athonite ascetic Theophanes, between 1813 and 1817, and at the last appearance, which lasted eighteen hours, revealed to him spiritual truths and events to come and commanded him to write them down for the instruction of people and monks. Theophanes, who had little schooling, dictated them to his friend Gerasimus.

The so-⁠called prophecy

The "prophecy" attributed to Saint Nilus was, according to the English source, published in 1912 on Athos under the title "Posthumous Predictions of Saint Nilus the Myrrh-⁠streamer"; the Serbian source says the text was written in Greek in 1819 and translated into Russian in 1910. The same source calls it an apocryphal work of uncertain origin, often called the Prophecy of Pseudo-⁠Nilus, which foresees the apocalypse in the nineteenth or twentieth century depending on the version, with a date of composition that cannot be verified. It cannot be said with certainty whether it was truly written by Nilus of Sinai of the fourth century or by Nilus the Myrrh-⁠streamer of the seventeenth, or whether someone in the twentieth century gave them as authors. For this reason we do not use it as a source for the saint's life.