All the Venerable Fathers of Mount Athos

All the Venerable Fathers of Mount Athos are commemorated together in the Synaxis of all the Venerable and God-⁠bearing Fathers who shone forth on the Holy Mountain, on the second Sunday after Pentecost (the date of 4 July being only a guide). The Synaxis brings together the ascetics, hierarchs and martyrs whom the Mountain has given to the Church over the centuries.

The garden of the Mother of God

According to tradition, when the apostles cast lots for the countries in which they would preach, Iveria (Georgia) fell to the Mother of God, but an angel told her that it would be enlightened later and that her portion would be another land. St Lazarus of the four days, then bishop in Cyprus, sent a ship for the Mother of God, and a sudden wind drove the ship to Mount Athos. The inhabitants were pagans; the Mother of God enlightened them with the preaching of the Gospel, broke the idols, worked wonders and healings and turned many to the faith. On leaving she said that the mercy of the Lord would not be lacking in that place until the end of the ages and that she herself would be a warm intercessor for those who would live there. After seven centuries the Most Holy Virgin visited Athos again, appearing to the hermit, Venerable Peter (†734), and said that the mountain was her portion, a place chosen for those who wish to escape the cares of the world and serve God without hindrance; she called it her garden and promised that it would be full of monks, that she would lighten their illnesses and hardships and make their names glorious in the whole world.

The promise was fulfilled. Monasticism appeared on Athos in the fifth century, and at the end of the seventh the emperor Constantine Pogonatus gave the peninsula in perpetual possession to the monks who lived there. Despite famine, Arab raids, the claims of iconoclasts, Catholics and other heretics, and four centuries of Turkish rule, Athos has remained an unshaken guardian of Orthodoxy. The Mother of God appeared more than once to the Athonite saints: to St Athanasius the Athonite (†1000), founder of a community monastery and author of the Typikon; to Venerable Agapius and to St Philotheus, whom she freed from chains and prison; to Venerable Niphon of Vatopedi, to whom she gave a year of life; to Venerable John Koukouzelis, whom she healed of a disease of the feet; to Venerable Maximus the Hut-⁠burner, whom she fed with her own hand; to Venerable Symeon the Myrrh-⁠streamer, founder of the Simonopetra monastery; and to others. To St Gabriel the Georgian she commanded that he take the icon that had come over the water, later called the Iveron or Portaitissa.

Founders and teachers

The Church honours the founders and builders of the monasteries: Venerable Paul of Xeropotamou, Venerables Euthymius and Neophytus, disciples of Athanasius and founders of the Docheiariou monastery, Venerable John and his son Euthymius, founders of the Iviron monastery, St Symeon the Myrrh-⁠streamer, the Serbian king who restored Hilandar, Venerable Dionysius, builder of the monastery of St John the Baptist, and Venerable Gregory the Serb, founder of Grigoriou. These monasteries raised many teachers: St Gregory Palamas, archbishop of Thessalonica, a disciple of Vatopedi and great expounder of hesychasm; Venerables Nicephorus and Nicodemus, his teachers; Venerable Gregory of Sinai; Venerable Nicodemus the Hagiorite (†1809), author of Unseen Warfare and of the preface to the Philokalia; St Sava, first archbishop of Serbia, of Panteleimon; and many Serbian hierarchs trained at Hilandar. From Athos also came patriarchs of Constantinople, such as St Athanasius I, Callistus I and Callistus II, and St Philotheus Kokkinos was a monk of Vatopedi and abbot of the Great Lavra.

Ascetics and martyrs

Many monks reached holiness through silence, fasting, the hermit's life, prayer of the mind, humility and patience: Venerable Euthymius the New of Thessalonica, who kept silence in a cave; Venerable Thomas Maleinos; Venerable Niphon with the gift of prophecy; Venerable Damian of Esphigmenou, whose relics gave off a sweet fragrance; Venerable Philotheus of Karyes; Venerable Leontius, who for sixty years did not leave the monastery of St Dionysius; Venerable Gerasimus, healer and exorcist; Venerable Symeon the Barefoot; Venerable Nectarius of Bitola and others.

The monks who received martyrs' crowns are honoured in a special way. At the end of the thirteenth century the emperor Michael Palaiologos sought to unite the Church with Rome, and the Athonite monks refused in writing. For this Latin troops and Turkish mercenaries were sent to Athos. In 1284, at Zographou, twenty-⁠six monks and laymen were burned in the monastery tower, among them the abbot Thomas; at Vatopedi the abbot Euthymius was drowned in the sea and twelve monks hanged; at Iviron many were drowned; at Karyes Venerable Cosmas the protos, who had rebuked the Latin-⁠minded, was hanged after many torments. Later other monks were martyred by the Turks: James, with his disciples James and Dionysius, of Docheiariou (1520), Joasaph (1536), Damian (1568), Macarius (1590), Romanus of Karpenision (1694), the abbot Damascene the New (1771), Cosmas, equal to the apostles (1779), and Onuphrius (1818). Others, who at first denied Christ out of weakness and afterward repented before the Athonite elders, washed away the denial with their blood: Romanus, Nicodemus the Albanian and Pachomius the Russian, disciples of Venerable Acacius the New, and also Elias Ardunis, Nicodemus the Myrrh-⁠streamer, Theodore, John the Bulgarian, Luke, Nicetas, Procopius, Ignatius, Euthymius the New and Acacius.

Ties with the Russian Church

The Russian Church has been bound to Athos for almost a thousand years. The Russian monastery of St Panteleimon is said to have arisen in the time of the great prince Vladimir. Venerable Anthony of the Caves, father of Russian monasticism, was tonsured on Athos and returned home with the blessing of the elders and a monastic rule. St Sergius of Radonezh continued the Athonite traditions; his disciple Sergius of Obnora and Venerables Arsenius of Konevets, Sabbas of Vishera, Sabbas of Krypets, Nilus of Sora and Maximus the Greek had ties with the Mountain. The Russian Church and its tsars gave the Athonite monasteries, for centuries, money, treasures, vessels and books.

The Synaxis is commemorated on the second Sunday after Pentecost, in the new style.