Orthodox Calendar, March 28
Venerable Hilarion
Saint Hilarion the New, Igumen of Pelekete Monastery, from his youth devoted himself to the service of God and spent many years as a hermit. Because of his holy and blameless life he was ordained to the holy priesthood, and later he was made igumen of the Pelekete monastery (near the Dardanelles). Saint Hilarion was granted gifts of clairvoyance and wonderworking by the Lord.
Through prayer he brought down rain during a drought, and like the Prophet Elisha he separated the waters of a river, he drove harmful beasts from the fields, he filled the nets of fishermen when they had no success in fishing, and he did many other miracles. In addition to these things, he was able to heal the sick and cast out demons.
Saint Hilarion suffered on Great and Holy Thursday in the year 754, when the military commander Lakhanodrakon suddenly descended upon the Pelekete monastery in pursuit of icon-venerators, boldly forcing his way into the church, disrupting the service and throwing the Holy Gifts upon the ground. Forty-two monks were arrested, slapped into chains, sent to the Edessa district and murdered. The remaining monks were horribly mutilated: they beat them, they burned their beards with fire, they smeared their faces with tar and cut off the noses of some of the confessors. Saint Hilarion died for the veneration of icons during this persecution.
Saint Hilarion left behind spiritual works containing moral directives for spiritual effort. Saint Joseph of Volokolamsk (September 9 and October 18) was well acquainted with the work of Saint Hilarion, and he also wrote about the significance of monastic struggles in his own theological works.
Troparion — Tone 5
Adorned with gladness of soul / as a pure vessel of the wisdom of Christ, / you were a reflection of the life in God. / Therefore you are resplendent with the light of virtues, / O Father Hilarion, / and you guide us unerringly to the salvation of our souls!
Venerable Stephen
Saint Stephen the Confessor, Igumen of Triglia Monastery, suffered under the iconoclast emperor Leo the Armenian (813-820). From a young age, the holy ascetic dedicated his life to God and received monastic tonsure. He later became head of the Triglia monastery near Constantinople.
When persecution again began against holy icons, the saintly igumen was summoned for questioning, and they tried to force him to sign a document rejecting the veneration of icons. Saint Stephen steadfastly refused to betray Orthodoxy and he boldly denounced the emperor for his impiety. They subjected the saint to cruel torments, after which they sent him to prison in the year 815.
Weakened and sick, the holy Confessor Stephen soon died in prison from his sufferings.
Saint Gavrilia from Leros
Saint Gavrilia was born on October 2, 1897, in Constantinople, the youngest of four children in a well-to-do family.
She was a sociable and cheerful child, loved by her parents and older siblings, and she had a very close relationship with her mother. She received a good education and, at her father’s initiative, learned several foreign languages.
In 1923, during the population exchanges, she arrived with her family from Asia Minor in Thessaloniki. There, she enrolled in philosophy courses at the Aristotle University, becoming the second woman in Greece to study at a university.
She then set out on her own for Athens, where she worked in a psychiatric clinic and as a teacher of English and French. She felt she had to go further, to England.
Thus, with inexhaustible inner strength and a single British pound, she arrived in London, where she first worked as a French teacher.
Later, she cared for an elderly former actress, helping her regain mobility, even though she had not yet obtained a diploma in chiropractic.
She endured the hardships of the Second World War in London, staying close to those who were suffering.
Returning to Greece, she became a teacher and headmistress at a school in Thessaloniki, and later opened a medical practice in Athens, where she quickly became highly sought after. Besides healing people’s feet, she offered advice and listened to their troubles. The money she earned in a day would be gone by evening—she paid the rent for a blind man, bought clothes for the unemployed, and helped orphans.
The death of her mother in 1954 triggered an inner crisis, through which she felt that her bond with this world had been completely severed. Thus began to take shape the idea of going to India.
For a year, she accepted various invitations to give seminars and work in Austria, Israel, Cyprus, Lebanon, and Jordan, eventually reaching India.
During the years she spent there, she met great foreign missionaries, doctors, and writers—some of whom became her friends—and she worked in leper colonies.
She traveled across India using every possible means of transport to reach hospitals, train medical staff, and treat patients. She did all this at nearly 60 years of age, saying: “He who loves never grows tired.”
After four years of intense work, she spent 11 months in the Himalayas, near the sources of the Ganges, in prayer and silence, which prepared her heart for the moment when the Lord called her to monastic life. She spent three years as a novice in a monastery in Bethany, in the Holy Land, after which her mission continued.
She returned for a time to India, then traveled across the globe. She went to Africa, France, the United States of America, Belgium, Denmark, and Switzerland. Although she had no money, she always accepted any invitation she received, and the Lord took care of everything.
In all her travels and missions, she never parted from her prayer rope and the Prayer of the Heart, which she also made known to others. Among other things, she undertook a tour of 12 states in North America to give lectures on this subject.
At one point, she received as a gift a prayer rope that had belonged to Saint Amphilochios of Patmos. Not knowing what to do in a certain situation, she prayed with that prayer rope, and the Lord enlightened her to go to Patmos to meet Father Amphilochios. During this journey, both she and the sister accompanying her were tonsured into monasticism by the saint.
Her travels continued, as she constantly received requests for help. Saint Sophrony of Essex proposed that she remain as abbess at the monastery he had founded in England, but Saint Gavrilia refused. In 1979, she was given an apartment in Athens, which became the “House of the Angels.” All kinds of human suffering passed through this place and found consolation with Saint Gavrilia.
Toward the end of her life, she fell ill with cancer of the lymph nodes and was miraculously healed during the Divine Liturgy. She still had to fulfill her mission of establishing a monastery on the island of Leros, the place where she received the Great Schema and where she passed to the Lord in 1992, at the age of 95.
