By Fr. George Dorbarakis
Venerable Ephraim of Katounakia was born in 1912 in Ampelochori of Thebes. His father was named Ioannis Papanikitas and his mother Victoria. The Elder’s secular name was Evangelos. He completed secondary school, yet the grace of God closed before him every path toward worldly advancement.
In Thebes, where his family later moved, Evangelos met his future elders, Ephraim and Nikephoros. Even before becoming a monk his life was already monastic; while still living in the world he struggled spiritually, practicing the Jesus Prayer, prostrations, fasting, and above all obedience. His deeply devout mother was granted assurance from Saint Ephraim the Syrian that her son’s desire to become a monk was also the will of God and that Evangelos would honor the monastic life.
Indeed, on September 14, 1933, Evangelos left the world and came to the desert of Mount Athos, to Katounakia, at the hesychasterion dedicated to Saint Ephraim the Syrian, placing himself in obedience under the Elders Ephraim and Nikephoros. After his trial period he was tonsured a monk of the Small Schema with the name Longinos. Two years later he received the Great Schema from his Elder Nikephoros and was given the name Ephraim. The following year he was ordained a priest.
Venerable Ephraim was also deemed worthy to meet the great saintly Elder Joseph the Hesychast and became spiritually united with him with the blessing of Elder Nikephoros. From Venerable Joseph he learned the safe path of spiritual life and was initiated into the “mysteries” of noetic prayer. Thus, from early on he understood that no spiritual progress exists without the foundation of all virtues — obedience, genuine obedience motivated by love and zeal for God.
Venerable Joseph the Hesychast gave the young Ephraim a rule of hesychastic life centered on the cultivation of the prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me,” so that he might guard his senses and purify his heart, as far as humanly possible, through the light of God.
In 1973 his Elder, the hieromonk Nikephoros, fell asleep in the Lord. For his sake the true disciple celebrated nineteen cycles of forty consecutive Divine Liturgies.
In obedience to Venerable Joseph, beginning in 1980 he formed his own brotherhood, giving seekers of the hesychastic life the opportunity to find the path of the saints in whom the Spirit of God rests. A central element of this path was the continual celebration of the Divine Liturgy, which for Elder Ephraim constituted a deeply overwhelming and experiential reality.
He once confided to a fellow hieromonk that from the very first Divine Liturgy he celebrated he visibly perceived not only concelebrating holy angels but also the grace of God transforming the bread and wine of the offering into the Body and Blood of Christ. For this reason he was unable to restrain his tears, often soaking the antimension upon the Holy Table. Tears became characteristic of his entire holy life, for he lived profoundly the mourning that expresses true repentance.
The Venerable’s ascetical life — founded upon obedience as the very mind of Christ, of the Most Holy Theotokos, and of all the saints — opened his mind and heart, making him a participant in divine energies such as spiritual discernment and foreknowledge, and even miraculous intervention.
It became widely known that the Lord granted him the grace to “sense” the spiritual condition of those who visited him, even making perceptible to others the spiritual corruption emitted by persons who were heretical or spiritually deluded.
Living in the Spirit of Christ, he deeply desired the unity of all and prayed for it with pain of heart — yet always according to the conditions set by the patristic ecclesiastical tradition: unity and love in truth. He characteristically said words that sound strikingly prophetic today:
“Schism happens easily; unity, however, is difficult.”
He did not see unity only on the level of faith and Churches but also in everyday human life, especially within marriage. He helped many families preserve their marriages and understand that marriage itself is a path to sanctification. Likewise, in a spirit of freedom, he guided many young people away from prodigal living toward blessed family life.
In 1996 the Venerable suffered a stroke and became immobilized. Not only did he not complain, but he regarded this as an opportunity for greater glorification of God. On February 27, 1998, the great Elder of Mount Athos delivered his holy soul into the hands of his Creator, whom he had served from his youth.
On October 20, 2019, while in Karyes of Mount Athos, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew announced the forthcoming official canonization of Elder Ephraim of Katounakia. This became reality on March 9, 2020, when the Holy and Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, echoing the Orthodox consciousness of the faithful who had known him, inscribed him among the Saints of the Orthodox Church.
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From the very beginning of the service composed in honor of Venerable Ephraim, its author — the humble hieromonk Ignatios, a man experienced in the spiritual life — emphasizes what is known to all who even slightly came to know the great Elder Ephraim: that he was a true child of obedience.
“The charismatic disciple” is the description most commonly attributed to him. And this is because already from his life in the world — and even more so after becoming a monk - he had come to understand the height and depth of this charismatic state: that one sets aside one’s own will in order to fulfill the will of one’s spiritually experienced Elder, which ultimately means learning obedience to God Himself.
For obedience, as is well known, constitutes the very mindset of the Author of our faith, Jesus Christ Himself, as the great Apostle Paul bears witness; and for this reason he exhorts every believer who desires to follow His path to acquire this same disposition:
“Let this mind be in you which was also in Jesus Christ; who, though being God, emptied Himself, became man through humility, and became obedient to God the Father unto death, even death on a Cross.”
Therefore obedience — true obedience, not that which is forced or inwardly oppressed, but that which springs from loving zeal for Christ — is regarded as the highest manifestation of humility, which draws down abundantly upon a person the grace of God: “God gives grace to the humble.”
And for this very reason it simultaneously leads to love, for “God is love.” Obedience, humility, and love coexist in the laborer of faith — charismatic states perceived in their fullest measure in the great Venerable Ephraim of Katounakia. Upon these very foundations the Venerable’s humble Hymnographer continually dwells.
“You loved obedience, O blessed one,” he writes already in the first sticheron of Vespers, “and you proclaimed it to be the highest of all virtues,” adding what the Venerable himself likewise taught:
“From this obedience there flows unceasing prayer in an ineffable manner.”
Here, indeed, Venerable Ephraim is revealed to us in all his greatness. He was a child of obedience, so that he might live the presence of God within his very being — both soul and body — and be “lost” in unceasing prayer out of love for Him. This shows that obedience is not an end in itself, but the unique path by which one may already “see” Christ in this present life, partake of Him, and continually taste Him, awaiting the time when He will come again at His Second Coming in order to increase this communion with Him beyond all measure.
“Let us honor with our hymns the glorious Ephraim, the laborer of obedience, the lover of prayer, and the zealous initiate of the greatest ascetic struggle,” exclaims once more the inspired Hymnographer (Vespers sticheron). And precisely because he himself knows well that such spiritual giants stand firmly upon the practice of the virtues and ascend to the heights of theoria — the vision of God — he rightly likens him to a “high-soaring eagle who lived on the Holy Mountain.”
Who does not admire and stand with awe and wonder before the king of birds, the eagle? Truly he is a sovereign creature, whom no one would dare approach casually or carelessly. We recall Saint Porphyrios the Great speaking about the “taming” of such a royal bird: how he approached it with reverence, advancing little by little, step by step, until after a long time he was finally able simply to touch it. Such a ruler, such a spiritual king continually dwelling in the Lord, was Venerable Ephraim as well. “Like a high-flying eagle upon Mount Athos, you ascended to the heights of mystical theoria, O God-bearing Ephraim, often partaking richly of divine grace” (Vespers sticheron).
Ephraim, therefore, signifies a man of prayer — a man in love with Christ — because he understood and experienced that one’s relationship with Him is accomplished through the heart and not through cold or calculating reason. “We love Him because He first loved us,” says Saint John the Theologian; the same truth Venerable Ephraim both taught and lived: you give your heart to Him who has given you everything.
As the humble hieromonk Hymnographer notes in the Kontakion of the Venerable: “The beauty of Christ drew you as a magnet; therefore you followed wholly in His footsteps through prayer, obedience, ascetic struggle, and humility.” For this reason, his spiritual experiences — both from the practice of the single-phrase Jesus Prayer, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me,’ and from the celebration of the very center of ecclesial life, the Divine Liturgy — were unique and overwhelming.
Gathered noetically with reverence at his feet, we hear him say:
“You say the little prayer — slowly, gently, steadily, imploringly, even tearfully: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.’ The prayer gives life, in a certain way, to the soul. Let the soul boil with prayer. Thus it softens, thus it becomes peaceful, thus it finds rest… It softens and is sealed by Grace. Feel the words. Hold fast to every word. The prayer rope is a lifebuoy.”
And elsewhere:
“Through the prayer the soul is clothed and adorned. It is the garment Adam lost, because he did not say to God, ‘Have mercy,’ because he did not say to the Creator, ‘Bless.’ Yet before being clothed, the little soul melts from the warmth of faith and, so to speak, divine love. You feel as though your soul will depart through your tears, my child.”
Likewise, we behold him inwardly officiating almost daily at the Divine Liturgy, seeing and hearing things which it is not permitted for a man to utter. The Hymnographer again guides us:
“Most sacred Father, as you celebrated the holy mysteries daily, amid the multitude of your tears you clearly beheld the grace of the Spirit overshadowing the Holy Gifts and their true change into the Body and Blood of Christ” (Glory of the Lity).
We gain some small understanding also from what he himself recounted:
“Let me tell you what happened to me concerning Elder Nikephoros, who reposed in 1973. I saw after this that he did not, in a manner of speaking, have repose of his soul. ‘Shall I leave my elder like this?’ I said. ‘No, no. I will struggle, I will keep vigil, I will labor, I will pray.’ I pursued God: ‘In Your compassion! In Your mercy! In Your love, my Christ!’ I performed nineteen consecutive forty-day Liturgies. I felt God telling me, ‘Speak, speak.’ Grace encouraged me to continue — as if saying, ‘Tell Me, tell Me.’ But in another case, for another soul, I sensed Him saying: ‘I do not hear you. Stop. Whatever you say or do, I do not hear.’”
What remains for us to do before this giant of the spiritual life — who, as the hymn declares, "astonished all even by his very divine countenance" (Ode 5) — is known from the moving incident of a young man who, upon seeing the Venerable’s icon after his repose, said: “I have never seen such eyes penetrating into my soul,” and thereafter changed his life — is to entreat him to continue interceding for us before the heavenly altar with the great boldness he possesses before the Lord.
In the words of the Hymnographer Ignatios, who prays to the Venerable for himself — and surely for all of us as well:
“Remember also us, O divinely-blessed Ephraim, who celebrate your all-revered memory, as you now stand before the heavenly altar; and from heaven grant fervor of faith to him who has woven with reverence and longing hymns in your honor” (Ode 9).
Bibliography:
Fr. Spyridon Vasilakos, Come, O Light… Encounter with Venerable Ephraim of Katounakia, Thesvitis Publications, Thera, 2021.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
