Chrysostomos of the Great Lavra (d. 1908)

Chrysostomos of the Great Lavra (d. 1908), an abbot, was born in 1856 at Madytos in Eastern Thrace, to very poor but very pious parents. As a child he followed his father to Jerusalem, where he worked as a carpenter; there he learned his first letters and loved monasticism. In 1870 he came to the Holy Mountain and stayed two years in the Dionysiou cell of the Annunciation at Karyes, where his brother in the flesh, the hieromonk Eugenios, struggled. Eugenios handed him over to Kosmas of the Lavra (d. 1903), then head of the Athoniada School. After two years of trial Kosmas tonsured him a monk and in 1877 sent him to the Theological School of Halki, from which he graduated with distinction. Although high offices were offered him, he returned to his beloved Lavra, "not exchanging, in the tradition of the Lavriotes, the monk's cap for the bishop's mitre."

He was professor and head of the Athoniada School, chief secretary of the Holy Community of the Holy Mountain, chief secretary, superior and steward of his monastery, representative in the Holy Community, librarian, compiler of the catalogue of manuscripts and a tried writer. He was distinguished by rare intelligence, full education, musical knowledge and beauty of voice. He was ordained priest by his close friend Patriarch Joachim III, from the time when he was Metropolitan of Thessaloniki. Bidding him farewell for his return to the Ecumenical Throne, he said to him in the church of the Protaton: "You go up to a new Jerusalem of the Church and the Nation, to suffer for them. Do not forget, Most Holy Master, the Holy Mountain either, which you chose as dwelling, which you loved sincerely and love, and whose truly royal and ecclesiastical rights, if anyone ever honoured and strengthened them, You know how to do it."

Unfortunately his work was cut short by unclean unknown hands. Riding an animal from Karyes to the Great Lavra for the Christmas feasts, he was killed, shot, on the paved path near Iviron Monastery. It was 23 December 1908. His sudden and so horrifying death grieved all. His disciple, the monk Kosmas of the Lavra, wrote to the community of the Ioasaphaioi at Kavsokalyvia: "Like thunder seemed to me the ugly news of the murder of my venerable elder, for it seems to me incomprehensible that such a virtuous man, useful to the monastery, the Holy Mountain, the nation and the Church, should fall victim to the hands of evildoers. Pity for the Lavra, pity for the Holy Mountain..." In an obituary in the newspaper Ecclesiastical Truth, Abbot Chrysostomos of the Lavra is called modest, plain, natural, learned, of sound judgment, understanding, intelligent, meek, temperate, unperturbed, slow to anger, just and kind: "He was truly the ornament of the Holy Mountain... he had won the love and esteem of all the monks..." He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.