Neophytos of the Great Lavra

Neophytos of the Great Lavra was born in 1908 at Zatouna in Arcadia. He came to the Holy Mountain in 1936 and was tonsured a monk at the Great Lavra in 1938. He lived in the cave of Saint Athanasios the Athonite, at Katounakia, in Saint Anne's Skete and at Kapsala. Always without possessions, temperate in everything and a strict faster, he wore a single garment and went barefoot. For a time he was doorkeeper and caretaker of the Athoniada School. Its head, Chrysostom of the Lavra, says that he rendered the students precious service by his fatherly counsels and above all by his monastic example. He always bore unperturbed various trials and annoyances. His small wage he distributed as alms to the poor on the very day he received it. His hut at Katounakia was half collapsed and inaccessible. He always communed with compunction; before Holy Communion, out of humility, he kissed even the hands of the novices. He knew many ascetics, who avoided many conversations and frequent meetings; they cut off even much spiritual talk. They hated idle talk mortally. Silence, stillness, remembrance of death were their secret loves. He had the good habit of zealously visiting isolated sick elders and helping them with a hand, a little food, a word of comfort; several died in his arms. He was also an attendant of the aged at the Great Lavra.

For three years he was ill with hemiplegia in the Lavra he loved; he tried to be as little burdensome as possible to those who served him. With his gaze turned to the icon of the Mother of God, he prayed with tears. No one heard him groan or complain. On the contrary, he had a continual prayer of compunction, thanksgiving and praise to the Lord and the Lady Theotokos. He had great devotion to the Holy Cross and all his life wished to die on the feast of the Cross. Often at Compline, after the Akathist to the Mother of God, he said the Akathist of the Cross; he had read somewhere that one who reposes on this day of the Holy Cross is loved by Christ and goes unhindered to his throne. With holy zeal he admired the repose of Saint John Chrysostom on this day. After midnight, while the vigil of the Cross was being celebrated in the katholikon of the Lavra, the blessed Neophytos ended his life. According to Bishop Chrysostom of the Lavra, his disciple, the hieromonk Nathanael, "was amazed at the state of beauty to which that weary face had come and at its radiance." He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.