Dionysios of Stavrovouni

Dionysios of Stavrovouni, a hierodeacon, was from Nicosia. He went to Constantinople, where he was a deacon of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and of the Metropolis of Kition. Thirsting for the stillness that every God-⁠loving soul loves, he came to the hesychast, ascetic and desert skete of Kavsokalyvia, to the cell of Saint Haralambos the Hieromartyr, where he was tonsured into the great schema and learned the art of icon painting, in which he excelled, as in Byzantine music.

About 1875 he returned to his homeland, to the deserted monastery of Stavrovouni, where he became spiritual father of venerable monks. Great want forced him to return to Athos with his company of four pious brothers, where he stayed four years and more. In 1882 he was found in a hesychast cell near the monastery of Troodhitissa. After the great fire of 1888 at Stavrovouni Monastery he was invited and became abbot in 1889. He began collections for its rebuilding. Soon virtuous Cypriot fathers, former Athonites, came under his obedience: Barnabas and the brothers Gregory and Kallinikos. As abbot he strengthened the cenobitic system, keeping the ancient monastic rules unshaken. The longing for stillness burned in him ceaselessly: all week he stayed in a poor hut outside the monastery, struggling, praying and painting icons, and only on weekends went up to the monastery to celebrate and to guide his ten monks.

A saying of his, kept by a disciple, runs: "I want to speak and cannot find a suitable man, and my end draws near, and there will be no one to whom I can tell this spiritual work in which I laboured so much." His end was holy: while a disciple read the Akathist to the Holy Cross, the old man saw the Cross of the Lord shining and heard wonderful angelic singing. He said three times "Virgin Theotokos" and the Doxology, and gave up his spirit at the "Amen," on 24 February 1902. His possessions were a few books and icons. At the exhumation three years later his bones "gave off a fine fragrance." He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.