James (Iakovos) of St Anne's Skete

James (Iakovos) of St Anne's Skete, whom all the fathers of the skete called lovingly "little James" because he was short and thin, was a fool for Christ. You met him on the paths poorly dressed and bareheaded, sweeping the courtyards of the huts or carrying wood, taking a little food in a tin can. Around the kyriakon of Saint Anne he often served the Dikaios in whatever he could. He had no comb, socks, cap, belt or bag; he was utterly without possessions. When they paid him no attention, he was not upset; when he was rejected, he showed no protest and even smiled without guile.

Some thought him rather feeble-⁠minded, even demonized; others held him a fool for Christ. Our elder Aimilianos of Simonopetra said that fools for Christ also have a dose of madness. Despite his old age, his unwashed state, his trials and persecutions, he had on his face a cheerful radiance, a childlike innocence, a touching sweetness that made you pause and not judge hastily. Sometimes his listeners marvelled, because from his disconnected words you heard wise and revealing ones. At a hut where they gave him lentils in his tin, he went away muttering that fish was not for him; indeed at the hut they were to dine on fish.

A few days before he fell asleep the sleep of the righteous, Elder Paul (d. 1987) of the hut of the Holy Hieromartyr Seraphim tonsured him into the great schema. Returning from the change of the Dikaios, on 8 May 1982, they found him dead at the place where he had lived most recently, with his arms crossed. He had been a novice at the hut of the Archangels, at the Resurrection of the Lord in Little Saint Anne's, and had been tonsured a monk at the hut of the Nativity of Christ of Elder Joseph of Lesbos (d. 1957), a great chanter. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.