Feast Today, April 20. Saint Athanasios, founder of Meteoro Monastery, is celebrating.
He was born in Nea Patra, today’s Ypati of Fthiotidos, to prominent parents, around 1302. He was orphaned early.
His uncle took over his upbringing. His zeal for learning made him sit outside the schools to listen to the lessons, because he did not have the required money for his teachers. His intelligence, however, helped him acquire considerable education.
After the occupation of his city by the Catalans (1319), he fled to Thessaloniki, Athos, Constantinople, Crete and once more to Athos, where he became a monk and was named Athanasios by Andronikos in 1332. He practiced asceticism near the hermitage of Magoulas, at the site of Milea. He submitted to the hesychasts Elders Grigorios and Moises and “always carried out the duties of the service unburdened”.
Frequent raids by pirates forced the blessed convoy to split up. Athanasios, together with his Elder, Grigorios, left Mount Oros and in search of a new peaceful place, through Thessaloniki and Veria, they arrived at Stagoi, in today’s Kalambaka, where there are “tall and large stones from the construction of the world”, the well-known Meteora. The crevices of the rocks were their first abode.
At the top of the largest rock, the saint, together with the saint Joasaf, founded the first Koinovian monastery of the stone forest, according to the standards of the Saints, in honor of the Transfiguration of the Savior and the Virgin. His virtue gathered around him many monks, for whom he drew up the regulation of the community, in the spirit of ascetic tradition. In his last years he retired to a cave in the rock, which is preserved to this day. After he fell asleep, his grave, which he himself had opened, was fragrant. He was richly endowed with the gift of prophecy and foresight.
Saint Athanasios was one of the greatest figures of the Hesychasm of the 14th century; a charismatic, discreet, miracle-working father. He was associated with Saints Gregory the Sinaite, Daniel the Hesychast, Isidore and Callisto, the Ecumenical Patriarchs and others.
His life was written by an anonymous student, a few years following his death
In the monastery of Megalo Meteoros, his graceful miraculous chariot is kept.
Saint Athanasios is a great form of monasticism, with the gift of foretelling the future and working miracles, nurtured with the saintly spirit, destined, as the Theotcini nun writes, in the “Stone Forest of Meteors”, to become the Saint of the Rocks.
For years the saint appeared in a specific person and asked to build a temple for him in the place where he was born, Hypati. A few years ago, the then abbot of the Great Meteoron, Archimandrite Athanasios, who also bears the name of the founder of the monastery, decided to fulfill the saint’s wish himself in the place where Saint Athanasios was born in 1303, and the result is really impressive from every perspective. point of view.
An architecturally elegant temple of the Byzantine style built on a “tooth” of the rock, is projected onto the green of the slope, which is crowned by the important remains of the medieval castle and makes an imposing impression even from afar. It is decorated externally with plaques and two small mosaics by Tsotsonis. Inside, a wonderful iconostasis with images of a new, very remarkable hagiography, of excellent quality and construction, marble pavement and frescoes also by Vlasis Tsotsonis, in some places with representations of Saint Athanasios.
Source: ekklisiaonline.gr
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