Akakios of Philotheou

Akakios of Philotheou, with the secular name Aristeidis Tsakas, was born in Megalopolis in Arcadia to distinguished parents. In 1907 he came to the slopes of Athos, like a deer to the springs of water, and became a disciple of a virtuous elder and a friend of virtuous ascetics in the cell of Saint Nicholas of Philotheou. His elder was the pious hieromonk Dorotheos. He was tonsured a monk in 1909.

A learned monk of Philotheou wrote in his obituary that he was regarded as the embodiment of ascetic gentleness and goodness, the ideal and symbol of monastic perfection, with a frail, dried body. He possessed the spirit of utter estrangement from the world, together with spiritual mourning from which flowed ceaseless tears, and a fiery longing for unbroken dialogue with God. Pure from youth, kind to all, blameless, a rewarder of virtue and relentless foe of evil. As the years passed, his longing for God grew. In old age, although he could have lived more comfortably, he chose a half-⁠roofed shelter and feared neither the freezing December nor the scorching August. He liked to repeat from the heart: "For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the one to come."

He reposed on 30 January 1964, the feast of the Three Hierarchs. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.