Maxim of Kafsokalyvia

Maxim of Kafsokalyvia was a Russian schemamonk, for many years cell attendant at the Skete of St Andrew, then a hermit at Kavsokalyvia on Mount Athos. It is not known where he was born or when he reposed. He is venerated by the faithful, without a synodal canonization.

He came to Athos at the end of the 1860s and entered the Skete of St Andrew. For almost twenty years he was cell attendant of Father Theodoritos (Krestovikov), who tonsured him first into the mantle and then into the schema with the name Maxim. He longed for the desert, but Theodoritos would not let him go while he lived. When there was unrest in the skete, he asked a blessing and sought a place of quiet, choosing Kavsokalyvia. He bought a small hut near the cave of St Acacius; the money came from an elder and then from Russia, and later he built the upper floor. He himself testified that in ten years there he had never known real want.

He lived in silence, did not go to the elders' assemblies because he did not know Greek, came to the vigil and sometimes to the Liturgy, and declined invitations to coffee or a meal. He received provisions from the Skete of St Andrew. Father Denasios (Yushkov) wrote that he faithfully kept the rule given by the angel to St Pachomios and had a living faith in God's providence. A serious illness after a Sunday Liturgy took him to the skete hospital, where he recovered. He regarded illness as a visitation from God, so that the soul might examine itself.