Kosmas of Little St Anne's

Kosmas of Little St Anne's (d. 1923) lived very ascetically with his small company in the smallest hut of the skete of Little Saint Anne's, that of the Dormition of the Theotokos. His elder was the renowned confessor Gregory (d. 1899), whom Patriarch Joachim III called a pillar of virtue and monastic life. Elder Kosmas continued his work. It is said that he was deemed worthy to give communion to the unknown and nameless hermit ascetics of Athos. Once, at a synaxis of the fathers of Saint Anne's Skete, some monks said that today there are no great strugglers and virtuous fathers; Father Kosmas set out his position boldly and with knowledge: very near them, in the wilderness, there are today too men of God, saints, equal to angels. His word was convincing and the monks withdrew to their huts peaceful and reconciled.

Father Kosmas returned to his hermitage. At the end of the week, as usual, the unknown ascetics visited him. After communing with great reverence and compunction, they left. The eldest delayed his departure and told him that they had made an agreement and that he must never mention to anyone their existence and their visits to his little church for Holy Communion. A witness relates that he was also taken into the cell of his most venerable elder, kept with very deep reverence as it was when the great confessor lived, where they sat a long time listening to the most holy life of Father Gregory, to whom even patriarchs confessed, and many unpublished anecdotes, which Father Kosmas and Elder Daniel told with much grace. "Three years ago Father Kosmas reposed in the Lord, the most devout priest and confessor, on the very day of the Holy Unmercenaries Cosmas and Damian." He departed to the Lord on 1 November 1923, according to Elder Joachim Spetsieris (d. 1943), who knew him. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.