A Conversation With Saint Paisios on the Existence of the Invisible Naked Ascetics of Mount Athos

 

By Hieromonk Athanasios of Simonopetra,

Hymnographer of the Great Church of Christ

"Elder [Paisios]," I said to him, "I want you to give us a blessing to leave, because it is getting dark and we do not have a flashlight, we will be killed on the road."

"Sit over there, so we can talk. Where will I find company? I've been desperate to see a man!"

Of course, he did not need company, but his purpose was to help us spiritually, and I said to him:

"Okay, we'll sit down. But I want you to tell us something."

"What?"

"I went to Saint Anna the day before yesterday, there in Little Saint Anna, and I heard various stories being said about the naked ascetics."

"Well," he said, "what do you want me to tell you?"

"Elder, do they exist or do they not exist?"

The Experience of the Transfiguration in the Life of the Athonite Monk (1 of 5)

By Archimandrite Aimilianos of Simonopetra

ATHOS AND TABOR

Every year, for centuries, on the eve of the feast of the Transfiguration, monks leave from the Monastery of Great Lavra and climb to the peak of Athos where there is a little chapel dedicated to the Transfiguration of the Savior. There, between heaven and earth, at an elevation of over sixty-five hundred feet, they will celebrate throughout the ensuing night the all-night vigil as their brothers are doing in the other monasteries of the Holy Mountain. As they slowly climb at the mule's pace the slopes of Athos, just as the Apostles ascended once before those of Tabor in the company of the Savior, they sing the hymns of the forefeast:

Come, let us ascend with Jesus

As he climbs the holy Mountain....1

En route, monks from different parts of Athos join together with pilgrims of every nationality to form a procession which recalls the gathering of the Hebrews from all the corners of Palestine to celebrate with the proselytes the feasts of the Lord at the Temple in Jerusalem, on Mount Zion...

To which the tribes go up,

The tribes of the Lord,

As was decreed for Israel,

To give thanks to the name of the Lord (Ps. 123:4).

The Barefoot Cleric With the Lantern

By His Eminence Metropolitan Ambrose of Neapolis and Samareia

When I went to the Holy Land and celebrated Pascha for the first time in 1954, I saw a cleric with a white beard, thin, pale and barefoot who was coming with a lantern in his hand on Great Saturday, followed also by two barefoot nuns. I then heard a deacon named Chrysostomos saying:

"These people make their appearance here once a year. Where or how they live nobody knows."