Justin of Prodromou

Justin, born in Moldavia in 1770, was a hieroschemamonk and the founder of the Romanian Skete of the Prodromos on Mount Athos. He fell asleep in 1845, aged 75. He is named in the Romanian Paterikon and venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization; the sources available to us give no day of commemoration.

He had taken his vows at Neamț Monastery, where he was tonsured by the great elder Paisius. Around 1800 he was a confessor and guided many souls. Wishing to spend the rest of his life in the Garden of the Mother of God, he left in 1810 for Athos with his disciples Patapius and Gregory. He bought from the Great Lavra the cell called Vigla Ianicopoli, with a small church dedicated to the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, and built beside it fifty cells, a guesthouse, kitchen, refectory, infirmary and abbot's residence. Hearing of this, Romanian monks living in monasteries and caves gathered, some thirty, in his community. After a few years the Great Lavra recognized his right to call it the Romanian Skete of the Prodromos, the first Romanian skete on Athos.

The monks suffered great lack of water for themselves and for the garden and asked the Lavra's permission to bring the water of Isaiah's Spring, but were refused. The Paterikon tells that a cloud of locusts struck the Lavra's crops, and the monks of the Lavra, having prayed in vain, understood it was God's anger at the refusal given to Father Justin, who was also their own confessor. The abbot of the Lavra called Justin to pray and, after he blessed holy water, the locusts fled. From then on they were allowed to bring the water to the skete.

After 1820, seeing his skete well established, Justin left the hieromonk Patapius as abbot and withdrew to a cave. There he struggled more than twenty years, in fasting, vigil and unceasing prayer, and many Greek and Romanian monks honoured him and held him as spiritual father. He fell asleep in peace in 1845, after kissing his disciples.