Akylina of Drama

Mother Akylina of Drama (in the world Erasmia Parmaxidou) was a Greek Orthodox nun from Asia Minor, abbess of the Monastery of the Ascension of the Saviour in Drama, known also for her part in the National Resistance. She was born on 23 April 1921 at Theira, near Smyrna, and fell asleep on 16 November 2006. Our sources show no canonization and give no feast day: she is honoured as a holy elder by those who knew her.

The refugee

Erasmia was the daughter of Georgios and Eftychia Parmaxidou. During the Asia Minor Catastrophe seven of her relatives were martyred on the gallows, and she and her family escaped and came as refugees to Piraeus on 14 September 1922. A little later they settled in the city of Drama.

Because of the harsh Bulgarian occupation, the young Erasmia moved with her family to Thessaloniki. She helped many people by arranging meals for the hungry in the Lagadas area, and took part in the National Resistance, risking her life to feed the imprisoned Greek resistance fighters in the Pavlos Melas camp in Thessaloniki, turned by the Germans into a place of detention and torture. In the 1950s she organised common meals in Drama, to meet the hardships left by the Bulgarian occupation, and set up the camps of the Metropolis of Drama at Granitis.

The monastery

She gathered women into a sisterhood, with the aim of dedicating them to monastic life. In April 1970, with the support of Metropolitan Dionysios of Drama, the sisterhood, led by Akylina, settled in the then abandoned place of the Taxiarches of Drama (Sipsa), where there was a small church of the Ascension of the Saviour. On 17 July 1970, at the age of fifty, she received the great and angelic schema and was named the nun Akylina. The Asia Minor elder Anna Makkavaiou joined the sisterhood, and thought highly of the abbess.

Besides her spiritual duties, Mother Akylina worked for the building of the monastery. The whole edifice is the fruit of her labour, together with the first sisterhood and the younger nuns. On 25 April 1971 the monastery was inaugurated. Abbess Akylina fell asleep in the Lord on 16 November 2006. Saint Paisios the Athonite called her "Elder of Elders", and Saint Porphyrios the Kavsokalyvite called her "Cherub with golden wings".