Concerning the unknown venerable hermits who every Great Saturday would come to receive the Holy Light

When I went to the Holy Places and celebrated Pascha for the first time in 1954, I saw a clergyman with white beard, thin, pale, and barefoot, who was coming with a small lantern in his hand on Great Saturday, followed also by two barefoot nuns.

A deacon then by the name of Chrysostomos, I heard him say:

—These people appear here once a year. Where and how they live, no one knows.

They continued to come for another 4–5 years, that is, until 1959, and since then they disappeared. In various discussions that some had at the time, they said that this hermit was a certain metropolitan of a province in the Peloponnese, and after he resigned from his rank and position, he came to live in asceticism by the River Jordan, near the hermitage of Saint Mary of Egypt, together with the two nuns.

The following year, 1955, I remember, the aforementioned deacon Chrysostomos said to His Eminence Benedict that he wanted to follow those three hermits, to see where they go when they receive the Holy Light. Indeed, he received the blessing of His Eminence, who had not yet become patriarch at that time, and he waited in the tower to see the clergyman with his lantern lit, as he used to do.

Indeed, that hermit arrived with the two nuns in the middle of the courtyard, and the deacon Chrysostomos ran to catch up with them. They, for brevity, passed through the small gate of Saint Mary of Egypt. When the deacon arrived there, he saw them neither to the right, nor to the left, nor ahead, as to where they had gone. No one knows where they went and where exactly they were living in asceticism. After 1959, they ceased to come. It seems that they fell asleep in the Lord.

Excerpts from the sermon of His Eminence Archbishop Ambrosios of Neapolis and Samaria, which was delivered at the Synodikon of the Holy Monastery of Saint Gregory, Mount Athos, on the 24th of October, 1986.

Greek source: https://simeiakairwn.wordpress.com/2025/04/19/%CF%80%CE%B5%CF%81%CE%AF-%CF%84%CF%89%CE%BD-%CE%B1%CE%B3%CE%BD%CF%8E%CF%83%CF%84%CF%89%CE%BD-%CE%BF%CF%83%CE%AF%CF%89%CE%BD-%CE%B5%CF%81%CE%B7%CE%BC%CE%B9%CF%84%CF%8E%CE%BD-%CF%80%CE%BF%CF%85-%CE%BA-2/