On July 12, the Orthodox Church commemorates Saint Paisios the Athonite, one of the most beloved spiritual fathers of the twentieth century. On this day in 1994, the venerable elder surrendered his soul into God’s hands at the Monastery of Saint John the Theologian in Souroti, near Thessaloniki. On January 13, 2015, the Ecumenical Patriarchate enrolled him among the saints and appointed the day of his repose as his feast. Yet those who had known him understood much earlier beside whom they had stood: from the third day after his burial, people began to stream continuously toward his grave. The life that follows is drawn from the book written by his disciple, Hieromonk Isaac, with page references to the Romanian edition.
The Infant Baptized by a Saint
Saint Paisios was born on July 25, 1924, the feast of Saint Anna, in Farasa of Cappadocia, a village of Greek Christians in the heart of Asia Minor. His parents, Prodromos and Evlogia Eznepidis, had ten children. At his baptism, they wanted to name the infant after his grandfather, Christos. The priest who baptized him, however, was Saint Arsenios of Cappadocia, the pastor and wonderworker of Farasa. The elder told the parents: “If you wish to leave the grandfather’s name to one of his descendants, should I not also wish to give my name to a future monk?” Turning to the godmother, he decided: “You shall call him Arsenios” (p. 27). The saint gave him his name together with his blessing, for he had foreseen what the infant would become.
That same year, during the population exchange between Greece and Turkey, the Greeks of Asia Minor were uprooted from their ancestral homes. The people of Farasa set out as refugees together with their priest. On the ship, amid the crush of people, someone accidentally stepped on the forty-day-old infant. His parents believed him dead, but God preserved His chosen one (p. 28). The elder would later say, with the humorous humility that accompanied him in everything, that had he died then, newly baptized, they would have cast him into the sea, some little fish would have thanked him, and he would have gone to Paradise (p. 28). Saint Arsenios had foretold that he himself would live only forty days on Greek soil and would die on an island. The prophecy was fulfilled on Corfu. The Eznepidis family eventually settled in Konitsa in Epirus, and the child grew up nourished by stories of the life and miracles of his godfather. From an early age, he longed to become a monk and imitate Saint Arsenios.
The Vision of Christ at Fifteen
From the age of eleven, he read the lives of the saints, fasted, and kept vigil. His older brother would hide the books, but Arsenios would run into the forest and continue reading (p. 38). One day a friend of his brother named Kostas boasted that he would make the boy abandon all these things. He presented Darwin’s theory to him in an attempt to undermine his faith. Young Arsenios was not shaken, yet he sought assurance: “I will go and pray, and if Christ is God, He will appear to me so that I may believe” (p. 38). He prayed for hours, making prostrations, but received nothing. Exhausted, he stopped. Then he remembered what Kostas himself had admitted: even if nothing more, Christ had been a righteous and virtuous man, hated out of envy and unjustly condemned by His own people. “Since that is so, even if He were only a man, He deserves that I love Him, obey Him, and sacrifice myself for Him,” the boy thought (p. 39).
This good thought opened heaven. “After this, Christ Himself appeared to me in an ineffable light. I saw Him from the waist upward. He looked at me with great love and said: ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life; he who believes in Me, though he may die, shall live.’ These words were also written in the Gospel that He held open in His left hand” (p. 39). Thus, as his Life recounts, the fifteen-year-old was assured not by a man or by books, but by the Lord Himself (p. 39). Yet a warning is needed: the vision was not a method for acquiring faith, nor is it an encouragement to ask for signs. It was an unrequested gift, given after the boy had already chosen, through a sacrificial thought, to love and follow Christ even without visible assurance. The good thought opened heaven, not the demand for a miracle; upon this foundation his whole way of life was built.
The Vow and the Years of War
As the clouds of war gathered over Greece, the young man, awaiting his call to military service, went to the little Church of Saint Barbara near the village and prayed to the Mother of God: “I accept being tormented and placed in danger, if only I do not kill another person, so that I may be found worthy to become a monk” (p. 47). He also vowed that if the Mother of God preserved him during the war, he would serve for three years at her Monastery of Stomio, which the Germans had burned, and help rebuild it (p. 48).
He was called up in 1945 and assigned as a radio operator during the harsh years of the Greek Civil War (p. 49). His fellow soldiers remembered Arsenios for his self-sacrifice. Whenever someone had to be sent on guard duty in a dangerous place, he would ask, “Do you have a family?” If the man had a wife and children, Arsenios would go to the officer of the watch and ask to take his place (p. 55). Once, during a battle, he gave the shelter he had dug with his own hands to two other soldiers and went out under fire. A shell passed directly over his head, cutting away a strip of hair six centimeters wide without leaving even a scratch (pp. 55-56). Later, as a monk, he measured those years by a single standard: “I did nothing for Christ. If I had undertaken that struggle as a monk, I would have become a saint” (p. 54).
A Monk in the Garden of the Mother of God
After completing his military service and putting his family’s affairs in order, Arsenios entered the Holy Mountain in March 1953. He was first forged in cenobitic life. At Esphigmenou Monastery, he served as a carpenter, embraced the strict rule of a novice, and was tonsured a rassophore with the name Averkios. The abbot had proposed the Great Schema from the beginning, but the young man considered himself unworthy of it. At Philotheou Monastery in 1956, he received the Small Schema and the name Paisios in honor of Metropolitan Paisios II of Caesarea, who, like him, came from Farasa.
In 1958 he fulfilled the vow of his youth. He returned to Stomio near Konitsa and raised the monastery from its ruins. There, one night, the iron semantron sounded by itself. Two devout women who helped with the monastery’s work saw a woman entering the church, though they caught only a partial glimpse of her garment: it was the Mother of God visiting her house. The elder called them at midnight to chant the Paraklesis with him and ordered them not to tell anyone what they had seen (pp. 130-131). He then struggled for almost two years in the Sinai desert before returning to the Garden of the Mother of God.
In 1966, a longstanding lung condition brought him to the operating table. Part of his lungs was removed, and he carried the consequences for the rest of his life. Yet God brought fruit even from this. The devout young women who cared for him in the hospital and donated blood for the operation received from him, in return, guidance toward the monastic life. His Life says that he received blood from the sisters and gave them spirit in exchange. Thus began the sisterhood of Saint John the Theologian at Souroti, which the elder guided until the end and where he left his much-suffering body (pp. 177-178).
Seeking greater stillness, he departed with a blessing for the wilderness of Katounakia in 1967. The following year, he was called to assist in the renewal of Stavronikita Monastery. There he lived near his spiritual elder, Papa Tikhon, the Russian hermit of the Cell of the Precious Cross in Kapsala, from whom he received the Great Schema. During the elder’s final ten days, Paisios did not leave his side. Papa Tikhon called him “sweet Paisios” and left him, together with his blessing, a promise: “My child, you and I will have precious love throughout all eternity” (p. 190). After the elder’s repose on September 10, 1968, Saint Paisios settled in his cell on March 2, 1969, considering it a great blessing to struggle where his spiritual father had struggled (pp. 190-191). From 1979 until near the end of his life, he lived at the Panagouda Cell of Koutloumousiou Monastery.
The Hidden Mystery of His Holiness
Miracles and visions were not the center of this life; they were fruits, not shortcuts. The foundation remained unseen: repentance, obedience, self-denial, and the virtue the elder called nobility of soul — philotimo — “the fragrant essence of goodness, the pure love of the humble person,” whose heart is filled with gratitude toward God and neighbor (p. 434). Everything done beyond duty, without being requested, out of selfless love: this is nobility of soul. His Life testifies that all his deeds bore its seal, from his self-sacrifice during the war to ascetic labors that exceeded his strength (p. 434). He himself put it plainly: “The heart is not cleansed with detergent, but with nobility of soul” (p. 435).
His second hidden labor was watchfulness over thoughts. Within himself, he said, he had built “a factory that produced good thoughts” (p. 465). Through unceasing vigilance, his mind transformed passionate thoughts into good ones. He also taught the stages of this work: first a person struggles not to judge; then he brings a good thought against the judgmental one; finally, once purified, he sees everything in a good light, because humility and love have entered him (p. 465). For the elder, a good thought was not a sweet expression. It was the very thought that, when he was fifteen, had opened heaven. From a purified heart arose his pain for the world: he did not observe people’s sufferings from outside but drew them into his prayer, fulfilling the Apostle’s word, “Bear one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2).
The Father of the Multitudes
At Panagouda, one of the visible wonders of twentieth-century Orthodoxy unfolded: a sick hermit, withdrawn into a poor cell, became the father of thousands. The path to his cell was never empty from dawn until night. He gave the day to people: he received each one, listened, comforted, resolved perplexities, and rebuked where necessary. His Life says that even his rebuke was a work of love, like the correction of a mother from whom the child does not run away (p. 499). He gave the night to God, carrying in prayer the sorrows of everyone who had crossed his threshold during the day. He gave away everything he possessed, even what was dearest to him: the cross worn around his neck with a fragment of the Precious Wood, the little case containing a tooth of Saint Arsenios with which he blessed the sick, and particles of holy relics (pp. 498-499). People departed relieved; he remained with their burdens.
Visited by Saints
God allowed several signs to reveal the measure of his hidden life. The best known occurred at the Cell of the Precious Cross on February 27, 1974, according to the old calendar kept on the Holy Mountain, on a Tuesday morning. The elder was reading the Hours when he heard knocks at the door and a woman’s voice saying, “Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers…” He was troubled: how could a woman have entered the Holy Mountain? He asked who it was and received the answer, “Euphemia.” At the third knock, the door, bolted from within, opened by itself. Before him stood a woman with her head covered, accompanied by someone who resembled the Evangelist Luke and who immediately disappeared (pp. 210-211).
“The Martyr Euphemia,” she identified herself. The elder invited her to worship the Holy Trinity with him, and the saint made the act of worship together with him. She then resolved a perplexity that troubled him concerning an ecclesiastical matter and recounted her life and martyrdom. “I did not merely hear her; it was as though I saw and lived through it. I was terrified,” he later testified (p. 212). He then asked how she had been able to endure such torments, and received an answer that the Church preserves as a treasure: “If I had known what glory the saints have in heaven, I would have done all I could to endure even greater torments” (p. 212).
With humility, the elder said that the saint had appeared not because of his worthiness, but because he was then deeply troubled by a problem concerning the situation of the Church (pp. 212-213). In a letter he later confessed: “Throughout my life I will never be able to repay my great debt to Saint Euphemia, who, although she did not know me and owed me nothing, did me this great honor…” (p. 212). In a hymn composed in her honor, he prayed: “Most glorious Euphemia, great martyr of Christ, I love you very much, after the Mother of God” (p. 213). He carried this love to the point of sacrifice. The particles of the saint’s relics that God arranged for him to receive miraculously, and not only once, he gave away to others, depriving himself of what was most precious to him (pp. 498-499).
We wrote about this saint’s miracle at the Fourth Ecumenical Council on the eve of her feast: the martyr who held the definition of the right faith in her hand at Chalcedon is the same one who, in our own age, knocked at the door of the monk in Kapsala.
His Final Martyrdom
The elder’s body, worn out by ascetic struggle, had long borne the consequences of the lung operation and unceasing pain. In the autumn of 1993, while attending the vigil of Saint Arsenios at the monastery in Souroti, illness kept him there: cancer. He underwent surgery in February 1994 and wished to return to die on the Holy Mountain. The worsening disease, however — and, as his Life says, a dispensation of God — kept him where he was. He would remain and be buried at Souroti, beside the Church of Saint Arsenios, the godfather who had given him his name, so that the world, which had needed him so greatly during his life, could find him after his repose as well (p. 332).
His final pains increased, according to his Life, to the measure of a martyr’s torments. When someone proposed that the priest come to give him Holy Communion in his cell, he refused: “I must go to Christ, not Christ come to me” (p. 333). This was an austerity he demanded only of himself, while his legs could still carry him. He received Communion frequently, walking alone to church even when he could barely stand. Of illness he said, “Diseases have benefited me more than all the ascetic struggles I undertook as a monk” (p. 333).
Repose Between Two Feasts
On Monday, July 11, 1994, the feast of the miracle of Saint Euphemia, he received Holy Communion for the last time, kneeling on his bed because he could no longer walk to church (p. 333). Amid the suffering of his final night, he called upon the Mother of God: “My sweet Mother!” (p. 333). After two hours of unconsciousness, he came to himself and uttered his final words in a faint voice: “Martyrdom, true martyrdom…” Then he reposed in peace. It was Tuesday, July 12, 1994, at eleven o’clock. According to the old calendar of the Holy Mountain, it was June 29, the feast of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul (p. 334).
They buried him secretly, without anyone knowing, behind the Church of Saint Arsenios, as he had wished (p. 334). When news of his repose became known three days later, a flood of people began to stream toward the grave from every direction. Some called upon him in prayer as a saint. Others reverently took soil from the grave. Pilgrims who reached Panagouda carried away anything that remained from him — a cup, a rope, a stump on which he had sat — as a blessing (p. 334).
The Saint Whom the People Recognized Beforehand
For twenty years, the grave at Souroti remained a place of unceasing pilgrimage, and the elder’s miracles multiplied after his repose even more than during his life. The very book of his Life ends with a chapter whose title says everything: “He Has Not Left Us…” It is the disciples’ testimony that his help did not cease but increased (p. 336). Many who had known him had long been convinced of the holiness of his life, and devotion to him spread rapidly throughout the Orthodox world.
When the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate enrolled him among the saints on January 13, 2015, its decision did not produce the elder’s holiness. It recognized that holiness and gave the whole Church a firm basis for his liturgical veneration. His life, witnessed by those who knew him, its fruits, his miracles, and the devotion that arose spontaneously among the people prepared this recognition. Synodal discernment then examined it and placed it within the Church’s order, for God reveals holiness and the Church bears witness to it with judgment rather than ratifying every wave of popular devotion. In Saint Paisios, both unfolded before our eyes, step by step, and the local Churches entered him into their calendars one after another.
A word of caution is also necessary. The very love of the multitudes caused countless “prophecies” about wars, borders, and the end of the world to be attributed to the elder after his repose, although not all are found in trustworthy sources. Saint Paisios was not a predictor of curiosities. Even when he spoke about the dangers of the times, he called people to repentance, watchfulness, and trust in God’s providence, not to fear. Words attributed to him must be examined in his writings, in the volumes compiled by the sisterhood at Souroti, and in the testimonies of his close disciples. His genuine word does not leave the soul in panic but leads it to Christ.
Anyone who looks at the feasts of these two summer days can see a circle closing: on July 11, the martyr of Chalcedon who held the definition of the right faith in her hand; on July 12, the monk of Kapsala whom she visited and who carried his love for her until death. The saints know one another and call to one another. What remains for us is to honor them and imitate their faith. Holy Venerable Father Paisios, pray to God for us!
Source: Hieromonk Isaac, “The Life of Venerable Paisios the Athonite,” translated into Romanian by Hieroschemamonk Stefan Nutescu, Evanghelismos Publishing House, Bucharest, 2005 (page references are given in the text).