Venerable Nilus the Myrrh-streaming (XVII)

The Venerable Nilus the Myrrh-streaming was born in a small village in Greece. The saint’s devout parents died early, after which his uncle, the hieromonk Macarius, took on his upbringing. When he came of age Nilus was tonsured a monk. Soon he was ordained hierodeacon, and later hieromonk. For a time the Lord’s chosen one laboured with his uncle, and then they went to the Holy Mountain of Athos. With the blessing of the abbot Athanasius, uncle and nephew settled in a desolate, inaccessible and waterless place especially suited to stillness. The place was called the Holy Stones. The ascetics laboured hard there to set up a small church and cells, after which the blessed Macarius soon reposed. Left without his teacher, Nilus took up a still higher spiritual labour and shut himself up in a place inaccessible not only to people but even to beasts. Here too he set up a church and consecrated it in honour of the Meeting of the Lord. When the father well-pleasing to God departed this world, he was buried near his cave, and an inscription was fixed there which, according to the Venerable Nilus’s testament, forbade the opening of his tomb. But the Lord was pleased to glorify His chosen one with a miracle after death: fragrant myrrh flowed from his remains and seeped out through a small opening in the tomb. In the sight of all, the holy myrrh flowed in an unbroken stream down the steep rock to the sea (the vertical distance from the tomb to the sea is 128 metres). This wonderful phenomenon drew many of the Orthodox from all the lands of the East. Countless miracles were worked through anointing with the holy myrrh and prayers to the Venerable Nilus.

The name of Nilus the Myrrh-streaming became still better known after the heavenly father appeared several times in 1913–1919 to Theophanes, a monk of the Holy Mountain, and prophetically revealed the future to him. These divine visions are described in the book “The Posthumous Prophecies of the Venerable Nilus the Myrrh-streaming”. It speaks at length of the last times of our world. The venerable father foretold the terrible time of which the Lord says: “When the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?” Saint Nilus told those on Athos who seek salvation under the protection of the Mother of God not to be troubled or dismayed, not to lose faith, and not to leave the Holy Mountain until the Iveron icon of the Mother of God leaves it; to remain in repentance and hope of salvation, in stillness and obedience, so as to keep the little that will be left of the former lofty monastic life. Because of its vice the Holy Mountain will sink into the sea: this will happen when the Mother of God withdraws her protection from the land that is her lot. After the wonderworking Iveron icon of the Mother of God leaves the Holy Mountain, the monks must hasten to leave Athos.

The holy father describes in detail the universal anarchy that will precede the coming of the Antichrist; he foretells the time of his coming, the depravity of the last generation, the decline of people, the effect on the human heart of receiving the seal of the Antichrist, and the preaching of Enoch and Elijah against that seal. Many of the Venerable Nilus’s prophecies have already come true, and many are being fulfilled before our eyes. Today some of the holy father’s incorrupt relics rest in the church of All Saints near the cave sanctified by his labours, and others in the lavra of Saint Athanasius.