Dionysios of Dionysiou

Dionysios of Dionysiou moved to the Lord at the dawn of 1 January 2018: a hidden but great luminary of Dionysiou Monastery and of the whole Holy Mountain. A hidden pearl and a rare secret struggler, adorned with many fruits of the hard struggles he performed throughout the long road of his monastic life, from 1961 to his holy repose in 2018. He came from a small but not insignificant village in Karditsa called Kanalia, of pious and virtuous parents, John and Charikleia. Two of his brothers, Triantaphyllos and Hippocrates, had so great a weakness for their brother that every year they had to visit him and stay several days at the monastery. From the moment of renouncing the world he resolved fully not to leave the Mountain except in grave and absolutely necessary need, and he kept the resolve to the end. Only once, of necessity, he went out as far as Ouranoupolis, and a few years earlier, from excessive fasting, he grew so weak that he fainted during the service. The abbot judged that he must go urgently to Thessaloniki for medical care. Although he did not wish to, out of obedience to the elder he consented. In Thessaloniki, as long as he stayed, he knew only two places: the hospital and the monastery's dependency.

His parents sent him to the gymnasium, but although a top pupil, war intervened and he studied only three years, then worked for his family. It seems family reasons forced him to remain in the world until he was 35. But even in the world he lived as a monk. I did not learn details of his life in the world; but I know that after he settled at Dionysiou Monastery, the then abbot Gabriel, his compatriot, tonsured him into the great schema the next year and then prepared him for the altar. As for the latter, he fell at the abbot's feet and begged to be spared the burden of the priesthood, having full awareness of his unworthiness. This deserves the attention of many of us who struggle to be ordained priests.

In the monastery he lived the first ten years, giving himself with perfect obedience wherever they sent him. Later he served at the guesthouse with all willingness and gave rest to crowds of people who visited the monastery. The fame of Abbot Gabriel and of the learned monk Theokletos drew crowds of people whom he received at the guesthouse. In Dionysios's pure soul divine longing for stillness and dedication to sobriety and unceasing prayer was soon kindled. But to achieve this great aim he had to receive the blessing of his spiritual father, that is the abbot. Because his longing was genuine and according to God, although the monastery then suffered a lack of monks, the abbot consented that he go to the wilderness of Kapsala, near the monastery's confessor, Father Charalambos, who then lived with his community in the large Hilandar cell of Saint Nicholas Bourazeri. Pantokratoros Monastery immediately gave him a small abandoned cell of Saint Sergios, where Saint Nikodemos the Hagiorite had once lived briefly. Then he visited our Elder Charalambos at Bourazeri. The elder tried to turn him back because of the shortage of monks at Dionysiou, but seeing that he had left with his own elder's blessing, he agreed to take over his spiritual guidance on condition of obedience. He reposed at dawn on 1 January 2018. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.