Saint Paisios of Mount Athos
Monk of Mount Athos, elder and comforter
- Feast day
- July 12
- Lived
- 1924–1994
- Patronage
- Families in trouble, soldiers, those seeking counsel
Saint Paisios was a carpenter and radio operator before becoming the most sought-after elder on Mount Athos, receiving hundreds of visitors a day at his hut with humour, bluntness, and evident love.
Life
Born Arsenios Eznepidis in Cappadocia and baptised by Saint Arsenios of Cappadocia days before his family fled to Greece in the population exchange, he worked as a carpenter and served as a radio operator in the Greek civil war, repeatedly volunteering for the most dangerous positions to spare married men.
He became a monk on Athos in 1950, spent years at Stomio in Konitsa and on Sinai, and settled finally at the hut of Panagouda near Koutloumousiou, where the queues of visitors sometimes stretched for hours. He gave away everything he received, ate almost nothing, and slept a few hours a night.
Teaching and glorification
His counsels, collected in the six volumes of Spiritual Counsels, are direct, funny and utterly practical, dealing with anxiety, family conflict, prayer and the passions. He died of cancer in 1994 at the convent of Saint John the Theologian in Souroti, near Thessaloniki, where his grave is a place of continual pilgrimage. He was glorified in 2015.