Venerable Niphon, Bishop of Cyprus (IV)
The Venerable Niphon, Bishop of Cyprus, was born in Paphlagonia and was educated in Constantinople. As a child he was gentle and kind and loved to attend church services, but in his youth he gave himself up to a dissolute and sinful life. From time to time the blessed one came to his senses, saw with the eyes of his soul the depth of his fall and was seized with horror; but he had no hope of receiving forgiveness from the Lord, and so he went back to his lawless life again. Once a friend met Niphon and looked at him for a long time in amazement. When the saint asked why, his friend answered: “I have never seen you like this before: your face is as black as an Ethiopian’s.” These words struck the Lord’s chosen one with horror; he realised that he had completely lost the image of God. All night he wept and begged the Saviour for forgiveness, and in the morning he went to church, stood before an icon of the Theotokos and prayed fervently. Suddenly the face of the Most Holy Virgin shone with an unearthly light, and a smile spread over it.
After this Niphon offered supplication to the Queen of heaven without ceasing. If he fell into sin, the Theotokos would turn her face away, but after sincere repentance and prayer she would look on him again with a merciful eye. At last the saint changed his way of life completely and spent his time in prayer and repentance. Once, when Niphon fell ill, he was miraculously healed with the help of the Theotokos, after which he received the Body and Blood of Christ, became a monk, and made his labours still stricter.
The demons fought the Lord’s chosen one relentlessly: they troubled his thoughts, conjured up various visions before him, and stirred up hunger and thirst in him; but with God’s help he overcame the temptations.
Niphon was already an old man when he came to Alexandria, where the patriarch, at God’s direction, consecrated him Bishop of the Cypriot city of Constantia. But the saint did not remain long in this rank. The blessed one learned of his own repose three days beforehand. Before his end the hierarch Athanasius the Great (commemorated 2 May and 18 January) visited him. On his deathbed the saint was counted worthy of an appearance of angels and of the Most Holy Theotokos.
