Gerasimos of St Basil's

Gerasimos of St Basil's, with the secular name Nicholas Karavelis, son of Triantaphyllos and Evangelia, was born in 1896 at Verdikousa in Elassona. He was tonsured a monk on 15 November 1920, together with two other brothers, at the Holy Trinity monastery of Sourvia near Volos. In 1926 they moved to the Flamourion monastery, founded by Saint Symeon the Barefoot of Philotheou. He came to the Holy Mountain as a deacon and was a disciple of the hesychast Kallinikos (d. 1930) at Katounakia, from whom he learned the secrets of the prayer of the mind. The Thessalian priest lived in the old kyriakon of Saint Basil's Skete.

He was small, skin and bone, weak, yet with a valiant soul and a heart that loved Christ, virtue and the brothers. He studied the Philokalia daily and warmly supported the venerable Kollyvades. He communed daily and spoke with passion about continual Communion, saying with tears: "What the blessed fathers lose who live far from the holy chalice." He lost himself in reading the services and in ceaseless prayer; whole nights he gave to God, without sparing his weak body. Many evenings he passed on a cup of sage tea. His cell was full of poverty, simplicity, stillness and compunction. He was ordained priest in 1937 and reposed in the Lord on 15 February 1967, in the hut of the Entrance of the Theotokos. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.