Damianos of Simonopetra

Damianos of Simonopetra was the son of a priest named Christodoulos, from the Serres region. He came to Simonopetra, the monastery neighbouring heaven, in 1871 and was tonsured into the great schema in 1873. He lived a life of wonder, which angels admired and demons shuddered at, as we read in ancient synaxaria. For fifty-⁠six years in the cenobium he did not have his own cell. Having a wooden "shield," he hid in a remote corner of the monastery and, leaning on it, spent whole nights in prayer. He slept little, sitting. All these years the blessed man without possessions passed in the cassock he received at his tonsure. Remarkably, despite so many decades it did not wear out. When he was ill, he never went to a doctor.

Father Chrysanthos of St Anne's (d. 1981) relates: "Because he was a saint, he wanted to teach everyone holiness. And as others teach letters, so this most blessed man, when he found me, would say: 'My dear, my dear, when you finish your obedience, sit before the door of your room, hold your breath and say with your mind: My cell is a tomb, and I must think of death; I am bound to be humble-⁠minded and to make perfect obedience, in order to be saved.' He also taught me the manner of prayer and many other things. He counselled the order of the cenobium: that the young beware of speaking with one another. That we should abstain outside the refectory even from water, which he kept until his death."

He foresaw his end. He chanted "Christ is risen." He went gladly to the eternal Pascha. According to the monastery's register: "11-12.6.1927, about 2 at night, Friday, aged 86, as he said, after four days in bed with a high fever in the monastery infirmary, the blessed one reposed blessedly." He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.