An Edifying and Moving Story from the Holy Mountain

 

There was once a monk on Mt. Athos who dwelled in Karyes. [1] He drank every day to the point of inebriation and came to be a source of scandal to pilgrims. Eventually he died and some faithful went to Elder Paisios to tell him, with particular joy, that at last this enormous problem was solved.

Father Paisios replied to them that he was aware of the death of the monk, since he had seen an entire host of Angels coming to receive his soul.

The pilgrims were taken aback and protested, as some of them tried to explain to Elder Paisios just who it was about whom they were speaking, thinking that the Elder had not understood. The Elder told them: “The monk in question was born in Asia Minor, shortly before the destruction, [2] when the Turks rounded up all of the males. So that he would not be taken from them, his parents took him with them to the harvest, and so that he would not cry, they put raki [3] in his milk, so that he could sleep. On this account, when he grew up, he became an alcoholic. At one point, after being persuaded by advice from various physicians not to have a family, he went to Mt. Athos and became a monk.

“There he found an Elder, and he told him that he was an alcoholic. The Elder told him to do prostrations and prayers every evening and to ask the Panagia [4] to help him to reduce by one the glasses of liquor that he drank each day.

“After one year, he succeeded, by struggle and repentance, reducing the twenty glasses that he drank to nineteen. His struggle continued with the passing of time, and he reached the point that he drank only two or three glasses of liquor a day, with which, nonetheless, he would become inebriated. The world for years saw an alcoholic monk who scandalized pilgrims; God beheld a combative fighter engaged in a great struggle to subdue his passion...

 

NOTES

1. Administrative center of the monastic republic of Mt. Athos, Greece.

2. The Turkish onslaught against the Greeks in Asia Minor (1916 to 1922), ending in the final expulsion of the Greeks by a population exchange.

3. An anise-flavored liqueur similar to ouzo.

4. The “All-Holy One,” or the Mother of God (Theotokos).

 

Source: Orthodox Tradition, Vol. XXXII (2015), No. 2.