The Monk Gerasimos
Commemorated on March 4
The Monk Gerasimos
was a native of Lycia (Asia Minor). From his early years he was distinguished
for his piety. Having then accepted monasticism, the monk withdrew into the
depths of the Thebaid wilderness (in Egypt). Thereafter, in about the year 450,
the monk arrived in Palestine and settled at the Jordan, where he founded a
monastery.
For a certain while
Saint Gerasimos was tempted by the heresy of Eutykhios and Dioskoros, which
acknowledged in Jesus Christ only the Divine nature, but not His human nature
(i.e. the Monophysite heresy). The Monk Euthymios the Great (Comm. 20 January)
helped him to return to the true faith.
At the monastery the
Monk Gerasimos established a strict monastic rule. He spent five days of the
week in solitude, occupying himself with handicrafts and prayer. On these days
the wilderness dwellers did not eat cooked food, nor even kindle a fire, but
rather ate only dry bread, roots and water. On Saturday and Sunday all gathered
at the monastery for Divine Liturgy and to commune the Holy Mysteries of
Christ. In the afternoon, taking with them a supply of bread, tubers, water and
an armload of date-palm branches for weaving into baskets, the wilderness
dwellers returned to their own cells. Each had only old clothes and a mat, upon
which he slept. In exiting their cells, the door was never secured, so that
anyone coming by could enter, and rest, or take along necessities.
The Monk Gerasimos
himself attained an high level of asceticism. During Great Lent he ate nothing
until the very day of the All-Radiant Resurrection of Christ, when he communed
the Holy Mysteries. Going out into the wilderness for the whole of Great Lent,
the Monk Gerasimos took along with him his beloved disciple Blessed Kyriakos
(Comm. 29 September), whom the Monk Euthymios had sent off to him.
At the time of the
death of Saint Euthymios the Great, the Monk Gerasimos saw how Angels carried
up the soul of the departed off to Heaven. Taking Kyriakos with him, the monk
immediately set off to the monastery of Saint Euthymios and consigned his body to
earth.
The Monk Gerasimos
himself died peacefully, wept over by brethren and disciples. Before his death,
a lion had aided the Monk Gerasimos in his tasks, and upon the death of the
elder it too died at his grave and was buried nearby. And therefore the lion is
depicted on icons of the saint, at his feet.
© 1996-2001 by translator Fr. S. Janos.
