Chariton the Spiritual Father

Saint Chariton the Spiritual Father of Kavsokalyvia, a venerable monk, was born in 1836 in the village of Megalo Mertsio, near Trikala in Thessaly, into a priest's family, from whom he received the love of divine services. As a child he entered the monasteries of Meteora and joyfully put on the novice's cassock. For twelve years he stayed on Mount Sinai, then in 1870 came to the wilderness of the Garden of the Mother of God. The caves of the venerable Neilos the Myrrh-⁠gusher, Peter the Athonite and Athanasios the Athonite, the wilderness of Saint Basil, Kerasia, Karmelion and the Konstamonitou Monastery gave him shelter, and around him a synodia of three disciples gathered.

He wrote, copied and composed hymns: "Love vigil, fasting, tears, prayers and psalmody, the study of the Scriptures; be humble and tranquil." His epitrachelion often worked miracles. He led a famous robber to complete repentance and made him a monk with the name Nikitas, who had a holy end. Life in the caves was fasting, vigil and unceasing prayer; he bore illness, temptation and demonic attacks without complaint, and said that illnesses cleanse the passions of the soul. He received visitors with kindness. He was a scholar and an imitator of the saints, a hymnographer and a writer of the lives of saints. In his last years he rarely left his cell, kept continual memory of death, and departed to the heavens, as he wrote, while praying. He fell asleep in peace, in the arms of his disciple Athanasios, on 14 August 1906, in the cave of Saint Athanasios the Athonite, on the Vigla, where he was buried. He was about seventy. He is honoured by the faithful, without synodal canonization.