Charalambos of Dionysiou

Charalambos of Dionysiou, archimandrite and abbot of Dionysiou Monastery on the Holy Mountain and a disciple of Joseph the Hesychast, reposed on 1 January 2001 and is regarded as one of the great ascetic figures of Athonite monasticism in the twentieth century.

He was born in Russia, but at ten he came to Greece with his parents, Leonidas and Despina, and his four siblings, and they settled in the village of Arkadikos near Drama, where the family grew tobacco. At baptism he received the name Charalambos (the family name Galanopoulos), which he kept in monastic life. His mother, who later became a nun with the name Martha, had raised the children with a strict rule: the daily services were said at home with the prayer rope, and in Great Lent they ate once a day, without oil. The Russian monk Elias taught them the secrets of the struggle, and his uncle, the monk Arsenios, was a fellow ascetic of Father Joseph.

From the age of twenty-⁠one he made a hundred prostrations a day in the world. At thirty he came to Athos with his uncle and submitted to the great hesychast Joseph, who then lived in caves near Saint Anne's. Asked how many prostrations he made, he said three hundred, and the Elder set him three thousand; this was lowered to two thousand and finally to seven hundred a day, which he kept for seven years. Once the Elder sent him to a cave so small it had to be entered on the stomach, telling him he would find paradise there; Charalambos tasted there first the tears of repentance and then an unusual sweetness, and returned glad in the evening.

As the caves were unhealthy, they moved to two small houses of the New Skete. They made wooden crosses and seals for prosphora. When the Elder saw his strength and speed in work, he entrusted to him the outside labours: he carried sacks of cement and flour on his back, sold their handiwork in Karyes and worked as a day labourer at the olive harvest. After the Elder's repose he had a brotherhood of his own, settled in the cell of Saint Nicholas Bourazeris near Karyes, and later the brothers manned Dionysiou Monastery, where he became abbot. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.