St. Paisios

St. Paisios of Mount Athos was born Arsenios Eznepidis on 25 July 1924 at Farasa in Cappadocia, from which his family, like many Greeks, was uprooted to Greece in the population exchange of his infancy. After serving as a soldier, he became a monk and spent most of his life on the Holy Mountain of Athos, living in great simplicity and austerity in various hermitages and cells, given wholly to prayer, manual work, and penance.

Though he sought hiddenness, his reputation for holiness, discernment, and the gift of reading hearts drew a stream of pilgrims, and he became one of the most beloved spiritual elders of twentieth-century Orthodoxy, offering counsel, comfort, and words of homely wisdom to all who came. His recorded sayings and teachings have been widely published and cherished. Worn by illness, he died on 12 July 1994. The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople formally numbered him among the saints in 2015, and his memory is kept on that day.