On Expatriation and Voluntary Exile. 2

The holy Damianos was indeed worthy of admiration. A friend of St. Kosmas the Zographitan, he led a pure life, labouring in the holy monastery of Esphigmenou. He was under the rule never to stay overnight anywhere else but in his own hut. Once, he found himself at night near Chilandari, in rain and fog, and not knowing where he was because of the dark and the heavy rain, he cried out to the Lord. "Lord Jesus Christ, save me, for I am perishing." Then an angel of God appeared and snatched him up, and suddenly he found himself safely in front of his own hut. After he reposed in the Lord, the fathers of the monastery smelled a fragrance coming from his tomb for forty days; this fragrance reached the holy monastery even though it was a mile away from the tomb.

* * *

"Where do you come from, Elder?" They would ask spiritual father Benjamin from the monastery of

Koutloumousiou, who lived to be ninety-five and departed to the Lord in 1941.

"I am a refugee," he would reply, meaning that all human beings are exiles, and this life is passing and temporary.

* * *

About the year 1835, approximately five years after the Turkish occupation had ended, a group of serdarides^[1] went to a heavily wooded area near Great Lavra to hunt for wild goats. Suddenly one morning they saw a venerable elder outside a cave standing there naked, and they said to him: "Elder, bless!"

"The Lord," he replied, and started asking them ques­tions about the Holy Mountain: "How is it? How do the monks spend their time?" And so forth. They informed him that it was peaceful everywhere, now that the Turkish occu­pation had ended.

"Who are these Turks? And what is the Greek Revolu­tion?" the elderly hermit asked.

"Don't you know, Elder, that we the Orthodox shed our blood to be free from the Turks?"

"No, my children, I do not know anything. Here we are seven altogether, but we do not go anywhere. We do not get any news," replied this earthly angel and heavenly man.

After these hunters had been blessed by him, they hur­ried in amazement to tell the fathers of St. Anne's Skete all about their encounter. The fathers of the skete showed great interest in what the hunters told them. Accompanied by these civil guards, some of the fathers went throughout all Mount Athos searching for the cave and the extraordinary elder, neither of which they found.

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[1] The civil guards of Mount Athos. Trans.

ΑΝ ATHONITE GERONTIKON PUBLICATIONS OF THE HOLY MONASTERY OF ST. GREGORY PALAMAS KOUPHALIA- THESSALONIKI- GREECE