Leontios of Simonopetra

Leontios of Simonopetra was born in the village of Neochori in Kynouria, in the Peloponnese. He had been a great merchant in America and came to the Holy Mountain with his employee, who became the monk Daniel and served him with devotion. At first he lived in the cell of the Presentation of the skete of Koutloumousiou. He had received the monastic habit in 1897 at the monastery of Saint Gerasimos in Jerusalem. He completed his struggle at Simonopetra, where he came in 1908, and spent his last twenty years blind in the Kathisma of Saint Simon the Myrrh-⁠Gusher. When he became blind he said: "Now I see everything better, I feel everything better. God has given me a stronger light than the one I had when I was healthy." Ascetics who passed in the little boat and saw his cell bowed to it. They called him "Elder Leontios the blind and virtuous." For a time he struggled in the wilderness of Saint Basil and at Katounakia; at Simonopetra he lived with two ascetic fathers, the monks Daniel (d. 1949) and Alypios (d. 1954).

Father Chrysanthos, his fellow monk, writes that, being blind, he made three thousand to three and a half thousand prostrations a day. He never accepted heating in his cell. Those who had cells on the north side did not accept glass in the windows but endured the bitter cold as a freely chosen martyrdom. Being blind, driven by divine longing, he struck his face ceaselessly. To a brother who asked about the high life, he answered with a sigh: "Ah, my child, I have not reached the depth of humility that Adam had before his disobedience. If I had, I could have told you a word. But learn: if you want to reach these heights, they are not far, but bear in your cell hunger, thirst, cold and the distressing things." Another time a young monk saw him with two other fathers, in a violent storm, barefoot, with the oil lamp lit at night, reading Holy Scripture and weeping unceasingly. In his youth he went to consult the hesychast Kallinikos of Katounakia (d. 1930).

He reposed in the Lord in the Kathisma of Saint Simon on 24 February 1949, cared for by his disciple Daniel. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.