Chrysogonos of Koutloumousiou

Chrysogonos of Koutloumousiou, with the secular name Christodoulos Kostakis, son of Nicholas, was born in 1900 at Sochos near Thessaloniki. He came to the Holy Mountain in 1930 and lived very poorly in the workers' house of the Koutloumousiou cell of the Holy Apostles (Alypios). He was tonsured a monk in 1932. His handiwork was dyeing clothes, with dyes he made himself from tree roots. His poverty was remarkable. His usual food was rusk and water; if he went to a neighbouring feast he ate something cooked. His clothes were very poor and his bedding old sacks: he made a hole in the sacks and wore four or five of them, and so passed the winters. He was quiet and good, as Elder Joachim (d. 1988) relates.

The hieromonk Anastasios of Koutloumousiou writes: "All his years he served the sick and the old. He lived unknown and shut in his cell at least twenty years. He never complained. He thanked God and begged to be saved for free, for what could he do that would match God's gift? He had a good death; he confessed to Elder Christodoulos, communed and left full of days for heaven, on the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross. When they lowered him into the grave, it was like seeing a small child in his cradle. Truly." It was 14 March 1984. Because of his blessed simplicity, some naivety of his is excused, which perhaps troubled some brothers. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.