An old monk, a true ascetic, comes to our monastery from time....

An old monk, a true ascetic, comes to our monastery from time to time to ask for a little help. With what he receives, he feeds himself and also helps others, older than himself. 

One day he came for his usual visit and said to one of the brothers of the monastery, “I hope I’m not being too much trouble to you, coming in asking for your help. If I am too much of a bother, don’t worry yourself, I need not come again. Don’t worry about it. Monks are like a dog. If you give them a kick, that does them some good, and if you don’t give him a kick, but a piece of bread instead, that does some good as well.”

This old man, although he is more than 75, does not expect anyone to respect him. He thinks of himself as a dog. He bows to everyone and asks for their blessing, not only to the monks but also to the novices and the pilgrims who come to us. But he is full of such inexpressible grace, that a joyful sense of celebration runs through the monastery every time he comes. 

All of us, monks and pilgrims, gather around him to hear the words of grace which come from his lips, to be encouraged by the joy that his face reflects, without his ever suspecting it. It is like the Father of the desert who asked God that he might not receive any glory on this earth, and yet his face was so radiant that no one could look directly at him. 

In humble men like this, who radiate grace, one feels that two great virtues are always at work: the mystery of repentance and the mystery of love. They are not men who have been converted, who have repented. They are men who are being converted, who are repenting. The Lord’s call to repentance does not mean that we are to be converted once only, nor that we should repent from time to time (though one ought to begin with that). It means that our whole life should be a conversion, a constant repentance; that in us there should always be a state of repentance and contrition. We ought not to speak or think or do anything outside that atmosphere, that attitude of penitence and contrition which should fill our whole being.”

—Fr. Vasileios Gondikakis, “Hymn of Entry”