He was originally from Athens
and came to the Holy Monastery of Iviron first at the age of 18.
Dissatisfied with the idiorrhythmic life, he moved to the Holy Skete of
Saint Ann’s and from there to Katounakia, to live with the virtuous spiritual
guide Papa Daniïl, where he also learned the art of wood-carving.
From the beginning of the 20th century,
he was already proficient in the prayer of the heart and vigilance. But because
of this, he rejected anything that was not conducive to obedience, submission
and the other practical virtues and used to say that vigilance was a gift from
God and that, just as God first made people and then breathed their living
souls into them, so a monk should first purify himself bodily through the
practical virtues and then he will receive from God the gift of prayer of the
heart and vigilance proceeding, like the Niptic Fathers from practice to the
support of contemplation.
He was not fortunate enough to
enjoy a systematic education, but he was extremely studious, and, with a very
sharp mind, was able to delve into the more profound concepts of the Scriptures
and provide the most correct solutions to questions.
When, in 1913 the heresy of
the “worshippers of the name”* arose among the Russian and Romanian monks on
the Holy Mountain, concerning the name of Jesus, he was the first to go to the
Holy Community and point out the unsound and unorthodox nature of the theory,
pointing our most appositely that “they’ve left the head and are worshiping the
hat”.
The timely intervention of
this blessed man and the insistence of the Holy Community on Orthodox views
prevented other monks from becoming involved, especially those who were Greek,
and so this dreadful upheaval was restricted to the Russians, of whom those who
persisted in this senseless heresy, by common consent of the Ecumenical
Patriarchate and the Russian Church, were taken away on a special ship and
confined to the Caucasus. Thus, peace was re-established in this holy place and
it was relieved of about 1/3 of its population of Russian monks.
The blessed monk lived for
some 55 years in the desert dwelling of Saint Yerasimos the Younger and entered
upon the sleep of the just there at the age of 77, in the year of our Lord
1930. It was through him that Yerasimos Manayias from Kefalonia, a graduate of
the University of Zurich, became a monk.
* Worshippers of the name: a
movement with heretical dimensions. It was begun in 1907 by the Russian
Athonite Ilarion. Its adherents claimed that “the name of God is God Himself in
His essence”. The movement upset the Holy Mountain greatly and was condemned by
the Holy Community, the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Synod of the Russian
Church. The centre of the worshippers of the name was the Skete of Saint Andrew
in Karyes (the Seraï), where various acts of violence occurred. With the
intervention of the Russian Army, about 1,000 worshippers of the name were
taken forcibly to Russia in the summer of 1913. At the same time, the
Ecumenical Patriarch forbade them ever to return to the Mountain and so the
turmoil ceased.
Source: Archimandrite Gavriïl
Dionysiatis († 1983), Λαυσαϊκόν του Αγίου Όρους, (Lausaikon of Holy Mountain)
2nd ed. Holy Mountain 2002.:
http://pemptousia.com
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