Holy Elder Eumenios Saridakis the holy friend of lepers, has been canonized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate Today, on April 14th, 2022.

 

Holy Elder Eumenios Saridakis the holy friend of lepers, has been canonized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, during the session of the Holy Synod Today, on April 14th, 2022. Saint Eumenios had already been accepted as a Saint from the faithful and it was a matter of time for his canonization.

 

 

 

Saint Eumenios Saridakis: the holy friend of lepers

Reposed in the Lord on May 23, 1999, The seventh Sunday after the Feast of Holy Pascha, Sunday of the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council

 

St. Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia used to say about Elder Evmenios: “ You should go and receive the blessing of Elder Evmenios, for he is the hidden Saint of our time. A saint like Elder Evmenios comes along only once every two hundred years ”.

 

‘Only saints can talk about the saints as they share common spiritual experiences and understand each other’

 

Saint Eumenios Saridakis said: “If your heart becomes one with Christ’s heart, you feel what He feels”.

 

Saint Eumenios was born January 1, 1931 in Ethia of Monophatsion in the province of Heraklion of Crete, the eighth child of a poor family of faithful Christians. A wondrous event had a decisive influence on the future elder’s choice of path in life. It happened in 1944. During a festive dinner an extraordinary, blinding radiance appeared, which, as Fr. Eumenios later related, penetrated deep into his soul. Amazed and shaken by the divine light, the youth cried out, “I will become a monk!” Constantine’s path in life was foreordained. As the elder himself said, “If a person has a calling from God for something good, then God works and helps him.” He became a monk at the age of 17; he struggled to cultivate his soul with love and prayer and was tested very harshly by leprosy; but later also, while a priest, by a demonic influence which tormented him in body and soul, but was freed of it after many prayers, vigils and exorcisms in monasteries of Crete, such as the monasteries of Koudoumás and Panagía Kalyvianí.

Leprosy brought him to the Hospital for Infectious Diseases in the St.Barbara suburb of Athens. He was healed there, but, having seen human suffering, he decided to remain at the Hospital as a priest, in order to help comfort his fellow-men as much as he could! That was where “he was to begin his pastoral work, in the presence of which, those with theological degrees and ecclesiastic offices ought to kneel”.

 

His love and his ascetic labours brought God’s grace upon him; this humble priest (who officiated in the chapel of the Holy Unmercenaries and Physicians, Saints Cosmas and Damianos, situated inside the Hospital for Infectious Diseases) reached a high degree of sanctity – which he kept secret as much as he could – and became endowed with the gift of foresight, lofty spiritual experiences and visions and helped countless people of every social class and level of education – not only with his advice and his prayers, but also with his sanctified presence.

The Elder loved everyone, every individual personally, and he was particularly a laughing saint – his booming laugh was one of his distinctive features – likewise, he would often exit the Inner Sanctum during the course of a Liturgy, with his beard soaked by his tears, since he used to pray for all of our suffering and unfortunate fellow-men, obviously because he also had the gift of tears.

 

At the Hospital for Infectious Diseases, he was blessed to meet the leprosied holy monk Nicephorus who, even though blinded by the illness, had nevertheless become a great spiritual father of many Christians and a teacher to Elder Evmenios.

He spent the last two years of his life at the “Annunciation” Hospital and on May 23, 1999 he gave up his spirit in the Lord and was buried at his birth place (in Ethia), in accordance with his wishes. Generously endowed with grace-filled gifts of the Holy Spirit, the elder “hid himself” successfully behind the walls of the hospital. St. Porphyrios of Kapsokalyvia, who sometimes went to Fr. Eumenios for confession, called him a “hidden saint of our days”. In our days, at the prayers and intercession of the blessed elder Eumenios, the Lord works a multitude of miracles of healings and spiritual consolation for the sick and suffering.(cf. Monk Simon, Fr. Evmenios – The hidden saint of our time, Athens 2010, ed. 2, pp. 137-146).

 

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On a book about elder Eymenios he mentions an incident.

-Once Elder Eymenios said that a 3rd world war would happen in the lands of Germany,Russia in Ukraine.

 

 “We were all on the front”. “What do you mean by all?” “All,there was father Porphyrios,father Iakovos,father Paisios, all the monks we went to the front”. The writer then mentions that Elder Eymenios meant a spiritual front. And then Elder Eymenios says “And I was crying, crying. Father Porphyrios saw me and said Don’t cry father Eymenios like that,nothing will happen, Panagia will make mercy”. This is the testimony from Metropolitan Neophytos of Morphu. In the end the Metropolitan mentions that they – the Elders – knew each other, they were a company.