Kendeas

Venerable Kendeas the Wonderworker is one of the Holy Alamanni of Cyprus, who came from Palestine. At eighteen he went to Jerusalem, where he became a monk. He then withdrew to the Jordan wilderness, to a small cave in a steep and hard-⁠to-⁠reach place, feeding on tender shoots like Saint John the Forerunner. Through prayer and fasting he began to work miracles. Once Ananias, a renowned ascetic of those parts, came to him and asked him to cast the demons out of the son of a local ruler. Kendeas at first was not persuaded, but in the end he prayed and the young man was freed. After this miracle he was put under great pressure, was ordained priest and entered a monastery, but the busy life of the monastery did not please him and soon he left again for the desert.

He did not stay there long, because enemies of the faith drove out the venerables who lived in that desert. With them Kendeas broke off his ascetic life and, after a stormy voyage, reached the port of Paphos. The ship was wrecked completely, but the venerables came out unharmed and scattered over Cyprus, each to the place he judged most suitable. Kendeas set up his hut on a steep cliff by the shore of Paphos. He was greatly tried by the devil: one evening the devil took the shape of a man, fell at his feet asking a blessing, and the saint, terrified, fell headlong into the ravine, but by God's grace was not hurt; another time he put a beautiful woman before him who tried to scandalize him, but the saint escaped through prayer; another time he handed him to a murderous robber, who beat him, took his cassock and burned his hut.

One day he longed to meet his fellow ascetic Jonah, who lived toward Famagusta, very far away. On the way, in every village people brought him their sick, and he healed them. Troubled by this, he entered a cave and decided never to come out. Then an angel lifted Jonah from his cell and took him in a moment to Kendeas's cave; after they had embraced and spoken, the angel took him back. Kendeas ended his ascetic life in the Famagusta region, near the village of Avgorou, where he fell asleep; a fine fragrance began to come from his relics and miracles to be worked. Much later a church and a monastery were built near his cave. In 1972 there was only the church and five or six cells, mostly in ruins; after that the nuns built new cells, and the monastery again became a place of help for the sick. The holy water there is said to have gushed forth through his prayers. He is said to heal above all neuralgia.

A testimony of the abbess of the convent says that in the Turkish invasion of 1974 Saint Kendeas appeared to her a month earlier and told her not to leave the convent, because the Turks would stop right in front of it. The nuns stayed, despite pressure from the army, and the Turks stopped exactly where the saint had said. These local stories sometimes confuse him with Saint John of Chozeba, commemorated on 3 October. A part of his relics is kept at the Kykkos Monastery. He is commemorated on 6 October, according to the calendar of the Church of Greece (new style); in the village of Avgorou the day is a public holiday.