George of St Paul's

George of St Paul's, with the secular name Gerasimos Moschonas, son of Panagis, was born in 1910 in the village of Chavdata on Kefalonia. In 1926 he came to Saint Paul's, where there were several of his compatriots, to meet an uncle who had become a monk there and had been his benefactor when he was orphaned with his five siblings: the virtuous monk Constantios (d. 1973). The order of the monastery and the virtue of the fathers made him stay, and he enrolled as a novice in 1936. He was tonsured a monk in 1937. He became spiritually bound to Abbot Athanasios of Gregoriou (d. 1953) and kept all his life his counsels on estrangement, non-⁠possession and temperance. He had no correspondence and not the slightest property. He was a servant everywhere, industrious and honourable.

During the German occupation he hid and saved several persecuted people. For this he had his abbot's blessing, but he was arrested by the German authorities and taken for trial to the military court of Thessaloniki. Asked, he answered that what he had done he had done according to the Gospel word on defending the wronged and not the wrongdoers. He was condemned to death. In prison, awaiting execution, the protectors of the monastery, Saint George and Saint Paul, appeared to him and he spoke with them; his cellmates heard the conversation too but took it for the delirium of his fever. The saints calmed him, comforted him and told him he would be freed. Indeed, three days later, at noon, he jumped from the third floor of the building where he was guarded and reached Athos on foot with the help of the saints. Being sought, he had to hide. For almost two years he stayed hidden in an unknown cave near the monastery, fed with the holy mysteries and material food in secret only by the abbot. He later said that, despite fear and toil, he passed all that time in great joy of soul, evidently with the support of Saints George and Paul of Xeropotamou.

Those who had received kindness from him wanted to reward him with rich gifts for their salvation, but he would never take any, saying that he had only done his duty and what his conscience told him. He was an honest man. Modest, quiet, fond of services, of few words, serious. I remember his wonderful simplicity, sincerity and monastic bearing. He did not say much, but the few words were enough. He spent his life in the obscurity of the blessed cenobium. He worked the divine virtues secretly and daily did violence to himself in everything. Metropolitan Nicholas of Mesogaia writes: "The asceticism of his last years was his uncompromising struggle for unceasing prayer, his persistence in standing at the very long services despite the weight of age and unbearable pains in the back, and complete lack of washing and endurance of dirt and neglect." When a monk visited him with a sweet, he did not accept it. After Compline he did not drink even water. The monk Nikodemos of St Paul's writes of him: "After a short while, sitting in the seat where he prayed endless hours, he gave his blessed soul into the hands of Christ the Saviour, the Giver of life." He reposed on 23 July 1998. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.