Gerasimos of Dionysiou

Gerasimos of Dionysiou, with the secular name George Bakaloudis, son of Emmanuel, was born in 1875 at Vavdos in Chalkidiki. As a young man he went to the Holy Mountain as a labourer and became a monk at the strict monastery of Dionysiou in 1902. For many years in his monastery, as a serving monk, deacon and priest, he was dear to all for kindness, courtesy and virtue. He used to leave each day a little bread for his guardian angel and increase it daily, until he ate none at all. Abbot Eulogios brought him back to the middle way. In 1929 he left the monastery.

Whatever church and monastery he passed through, in all Greece, he was esteemed and loved. He knew how to sacrifice himself. As a confessor, when he was forced to withhold Holy Communion from someone, he was sad all that day and said: "I feel such grief, my children, as if I myself were deprived of Holy Communion." Guilelessness, patience and dispassion adorned him. He went out of the Holy Mountain with old, heavy shoes with nails in the soles. When new ones were offered him, he said: "These are worn by doctors. Should I wear such things?" That was the answer of the graceful, possessionless monk of Dionysiou. He gave away everything, what he had and had not, and what was given him. Being poor himself, he gave to the poor, so that he did not even have the price of a tram ticket.

What he never forgot was prayer. For hours he was lost or immersed in the love of the holy prayer rope. If sometimes, old, he rested a little at noon, he rose to read the service, thinking another day had come. He kept vigil regularly. To the many well-⁠known curious "whys" of the world he answered: "The Kingdom of heaven is taken by force, and the violent seize it." He passed many forty-⁠day fasts on a little bread and water, praying for the spiritual and bodily health of many sick people, whom he healed. They say he also had the gift of foresight. He had come to be served by saints. He gave up his spirit sitting, with his beloved prayer rope in his hand, on 5 August 1955. The earth of Attica received him on the day of the Holy Mountain's great feast, the Transfiguration of the Saviour, when the church on the summit of Athos, the monasteries of Koutloumousiou and Pantokratoros and many cells keep an all-⁠night vigil. He used not to spit on the ground and said: "The earth must be respected; from it we were formed and to it we shall return." He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.