By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou
The two days of August 7-8 that we are passing through will mark forty years (1984-2024) since the final repose of a venerable Metropolitan, Saint Kallinikos the Metropolitan of Edessa, Pella and Almopia. He reposed late on the night of August 7th to August 8th and his canonization was done by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 2020.
Before his canonization, he was revered as a saint by many people. In fact, three Metropolitans of the Church of Greece bear his name. They are the Metropolitans Kallinikos of Arta, Kallinikos of Paronaxia, Kallinikos of Kastoria, and many others who knew him called him a saint and witnessed his miracles.
Today and tomorrow they will celebrate his memory in many parts of Greece and outside it, because they have personal memories, in many temples there are frescoes and portable icons and they have portions of his sacred relics, and many tell of his miraculous interventions with the energy of God, because "God is wondrous in His saints."
Saint Kallinikos was a rare Hierarch, as we got to know him personally and we can attest to that. He combined holiness of life with social life, great love for God with giving to people, hesychasm with missionary work, theological confession with a martyric phronema, patristic life in a modern way, holiness of life with administrative gifts, extraordinary genius with a kind heart, humility with a fighting spirit, among many other things.
In my life I met many gifted Hierarchs, but Saint Kallinikos was, indeed, a rare Hierarch in our days and I confess this with personal knowledge.
Saint Kallinikos was a saint from his youth. Those who knew him as a student, pupil, lay preacher, soldier, priest, chancellor and bishop, confessed that he had the imprints of holiness on him. He had purity of life, apostolic zeal, prophetic preaching, patristic phronema, hesychast life, and a martyr's ethos. At the same time, he also had many intellectual, administrative and pastoral gifts. He was no ordinary cleric.
I heard some clergymen and monks wonder: "What did this Bishop have that his name was entered into the Church's Hagiologion?" He had what the people of our time do not value, that is, the genuine prophetic, apostolic, patristic, hesychastic, martyric phronema. He was related in spirit to the new saints, such as Saint Paisios, Saint Porphyrios, Saint Ephraim of Katounakia, but at the same time he also had the gift of the High Priesthood and resembled Saint Nicholas, etc.
I notice that today the criteria of holiness have been changed and differentiated, and as long as these preconditions do not exist, people, even good clergy and monastics, cannot recognize those who are truly saints.
The commemoration of Saint Kallinikos (August 8th) on the 40th anniversary of his repose, of which I was an eyewitness, gives me the opportunity to publish a speech about him that I gave in Volos a few months ago, following the invitation of Metropolitan Ignatios of Demetrias and Archimandrite Father Epiphanios Oikonomos.
This speech is structured in eight sections: The Holy Balance, The Devout Liturgist, The Sweet and Eloquent Preacher, The Hesychast Pastor, The Administrative Intellect, The Smiling Despot, The Living Hagiography, The Laborious Man and "Sign-Bearer", which record briefly and vividly his holy life and his glorious state.
May we have his intercessions.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.