Mount Athos - The indescribable fragrance of the holy relic of Saint Andrew!

Mount Athos - The indescribable fragrance of the holy relic of Saint Andrew!

  At the end of the 19th century, the Russians founded the Holy Skete of Saint Andrew, the First-Called, in Karyes on Mount Athos! The Ecumenical Patriarchate gave the newly founded Skete the holy forehead of Saint Andrew, a precious treasure of Orthodoxy, as a gift! The skin of the Saint is on the holy relic as if it were the forehead of a living person! I have been honored to venerate it dozens of times and its fragrance was indescribable! In earlier years, the blessed Father Andrew, a former industrialist, lived in the Skete, who, although he was a monk of only five years, had great grace!  In fact, he once asked me if I was an educator and when I asked him how he knew, he said: 

"Be careful, my child, because if you lose one of the hundred sheep, you will give a great apology to God"!

  Fr. Andreas had gone to the Skete as a layman to see his two children who were monks there. Moved by the fragrance of the holy relic, he abandoned worldly things and became a monk of the Skete! In a conversation we had about the grace of the holy relic, he told us that perhaps Christ had touched the holy Apostle with his palm, at some point in his illness, and this double grace remained on the holy relic on his forehead!

  When pilgrims went to the Skete, he would first lead them to worship the holy relic! At least ten times I saw the following miracle.  Some of the pilgrims could not perceive its ineffable fragrance, unlike most who perceived it! Then the blessed Fr. Andreas called them to prostrate themselves again, saying three times the prayer of Jesus Christ: 

"Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me"! After that, they also perceived the fragrance of the Saint and moving moments followed! In fact, once when we were with my son, there were two young men who lied to Grandpa that they supposedly felt the fragrance, but Fr. Andreas understood them with the grace of God and said to them: "Come here, please, and prostrate yourselves with your lips to the holy relic", while saying the prayer! The moments that followed were shocking! The two young men, having tasted the divine grace as well, knelt down and cried!  And Pappoulis said to them: "What do you have to say now?" He had also told us that the Russian monks had left in 1917, to help the Tsar and fight against the Bolsheviks! After many years, in 1975, they came from Russia and took all the gold and precious objects that were in the Skete! The Virgin Mary, as he told us, seeing their thirst for gold, "blinded" them and they did not take the real "gold", which was the holy relic of Saint Andrew

Miltiadis Tsesmetzis - Educator