Ephraim the Wretched

Saint Ephraim the Wretched, a venerable monk, was from Thessaly and struggled in a cave near Katounakia, opposite the Cell of the Venerable Hypatios (the Vlach Cells). Tradition says that in the Ottoman period the cave was a robbers' den. He made it a divine Bethlehem, sanctifying it with his life. He had a sensitive and humble soul and a manly spirit. The fathers around said that he was like the abbas of Nitria and the Thebaid. He called himself "the wretched".

To hide his fasting, he went down at night and filled his bag with empty tin cans from the pits, then climbed back loaded by day and emptied them at the door of the cave, so that visitors would think he was a glutton. From the harsh asceticism and the damp of the cave he fell ill with tuberculosis and built himself, in the sun, a small stone hut, where he kept the same custom. What the fathers gave him he received with joy, but at night he left the things at the doors of the needy or sick whom he served. Once, snowbound in the cave, an unknown man brought him a bag of food and vanished. He reposed in the Lord in 1962, in humility and obscurity. He is honoured by the faithful, without synodal canonization.