Symeon of Xenophontos

Symeon of Xenophontos, with the secular name Spyridon Pylarinos, son of Gerasimos, was born in the village of Hilarion on Kefalonia. He finished the gymnasium in Thessaloniki. He worked as a ship's captain, a train engine driver, knew English and by his labour acquired a great fortune. He also married. From his marriage he had a son, who became an officer and was killed in the retreat from the Albanian front. After his wife's death he distributed his property in Thessaloniki to relatives and left for the Garden of the Mother of God in 1958.

Coming to the Holy Mountain he first worked as a paid gardener at Saint Paul's Monastery and then at Xenophontos Monastery. When he decided to become a monk, he handed to Abbot Eudokimos a sum of gold pounds he had brought from the world. He was tonsured into the great schema in 1958 and received the name Symeon, in honour of Saint Symeon the Stylite. He was a struggling and zealous monk. Once he went fourteen years without passing out of the monastery gate. He served as guestmaster, cook and kollyva maker.

For a time a hernia appeared that tormented him, and from great pain he was bent double. He was in the fishermen's house, a building at the entrance to the monastery, and begged the Mother of God to help him. The Mother of God appeared to him descending in a cloud. "As she is," he said, "in an icon at Vatopedi." She blessed him and healed him. In his simplicity and joy he cried: "Do not go, do not go, my Panagia." The whole place was filled with fragrance. The Mother of God rose again and vanished in a powerful and different light. After she left, that fine fragrance remained. Another time he saw the Mother of God coming by caique to the shore, attended by Saint George the Trophy-⁠Bearer, protector of the monastery, and Demetrius the Myrrh-⁠Gusher, and escorted by a multitude of angels.

Unable to do full prostrations, he did as many as he could. He made a prostration also to those who helped him; to his attendant, Father Prodromos, who cared for him as well as he could. He thanked them all with great joy of soul. He had an innocent gaze like a small child. His face shone with joy when he communed in the holy mysteries. Once he was seen in the lite of the katholikon raising his hands high. When they said to him: "What are you doing there, Old Symeon?" he answered: "Sometimes I forget and pray." He reposed in the Lord on 12 November 1983. At the exhumation his bones were amber-⁠yellow. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.