Gabriel of Karoulia

Saint Gabriel of Karoulia, a venerable monk, was a strict ascetic at Karoulia, a man of deep repentance, self-⁠compulsion and struggle. He was a fervent lover of the reading of the ascetic fathers, an enemy of sloth, a lover of silence, and landless. He was strict with himself, a faster, and avoided people like a sparrow. On rugged paths he walked as if flying, lean from hunger and prayer, always bent towards himself, without curiosity, careful of his inner calm and purity in the silence of the wilderness. He called himself a hermit of the rocks, between heaven and earth. Instead of speaking to visitors, he read them something from the Philokalia. He waited for death with joy. After partaking of communion he fell asleep in peace, in 1968. He is honoured by the faithful, without synodal canonization.