St Porphyrios Orthodox Mission is in Clayton, Ontario, west of Ottawa — a parish of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. It has a congregation. It does not have a church.
That sentence sounds smaller than it is. A mission without a building works around other people's schedules, sets up and packs away, and cannot simply be open. Everything else a parish is for waits on the room.
Where the book money goes
Every royalty from Come and See, Follow Me and Abide in Me goes toward the building fund. Not a share of them, and not the profits after costs — the royalties.
That line is printed on the back cover of each volume, where a buyer sees it before they decide, rather than only here where it reads as an appeal. It is set small and plain in the books on purpose: a fact, not a pitch.
Give to the mission directly
Buying a book is a slow way to help. If you would rather give straight to the parish, the mission takes donations through its own website — nothing passes through this one, and nothing is taken out along the way.
Who St Porphyrios was
He is not a saint from the distant past. Porphyrios of Kafsokalyvia reposed in 1991, and the Ecumenical Patriarchate glorified him as a saint on 27 November 2013. His feast is kept on 2 December. There are people alive who met him.
He went to Mount Athos as a boy and was tonsured a monk at fourteen. Illness sent him off the Holy Mountain, and he spent thirty-three years — from 1940 to 1973 — as chaplain to a polyclinic in Athens, which is where most people met him. He was known for an unnerving gift of discernment, and for refusing to make Christianity gloomy. He returned to his old cell at Kafsokalyvia to die.
A fitting patron for a parish that is still being built.
Visiting
The mission is at 2786 Tatlock Road, Clayton, Ontario. Anyone can come; nobody will make you do anything. Service times and the current calendar are on the parish's own site, which is kept up to date in a way this page cannot be.
Details on this page are the parish's to change — if anything here is out of date, tell me and it gets fixed.