By Fr. George Dorbarakis
Venerable Ephraim of Katounakia said: “I came here to Mount Athos on September 14, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Honorable Cross. The day on which I was born again. Every day we should celebrate the exaltation of our cross. When we take up the cross, we die and are born again. The taking up of the cross is death and resurrection” (From the book by Fr. Spyridon Vasilakos, Come, O Light..., Thesvitis Publications, p. 75).
The great Elder, Venerable Ephraim of Katounakia, celebrated the Feast of the Exaltation of the Honorable and Life-Giving Cross in a particular way. Why? Because it was the day on which he entered Mount Athos: “I came to Mount Athos on the Feast of the Cross, September 1933,” he would constantly repeat. Yet he did not celebrate it merely as an event of simple remembrance that changed even the course of his life — from a man living in the world he became a monk — but as an event that left its mark on his inner spiritual life. The holy Elder, with his great, completely luminous eyes that reflected the light of Heaven which he lived in his heart and throughout his entire being, felt, upon entering the Holy Mountain as a young man, the mystical significance of this sanctified place — the grace that permeates it like an inner current of life. It was then, he confessed, that "I was born again.” The person who is baptized in the holy font of the Church is born again spiritually, as is the person who finds the true path of repentance, in which he bathes himself with his tears. God gave the young Evangelos, the man who would later become Ephraim, the grace to understand that being a monk means a person who struggles in repentance. He understood that he had received the power of repentance from the “womb” of the Church, the holy font, and for this reason, many years later, he would seek it out in his village and venerate it with many tears, and that this repentance is the work of every Christian, and all the more so of the “model” of Christians, the Orthodox monk.
And there is more. For the holy Elder, this monastic repentance, through which a person is born again because it is genuine, is identified with the taking up of the cross. Thus, for the Saint, a monk is a crucified person (how beautifully this is revealed in the particular icon of the crucified monk!), according to the words of the Apostle Paul: “I have been crucified with Christ,” which means that the holy Elder experienced the Cross of the Lord as his death, and consequently also as his resurrection. His seemingly simple words contain the revelatory words of Jesus Christ Himself, the Author and Leader of our faith: “Whoever wishes to follow Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me,” as well as the majestic theology of the Apostle Paul concerning Baptism: “As many of us as were baptized, were baptized into the death of Christ, and we confess His Resurrection.” Thus, in two words, Venerable Ephraim allows us to glimpse the intensity of his inner world, the anguish he experienced in the struggle against the passions and the evil devil, but also the spiritual delight that he received abundantly from the resurrectional and joyful gifts of the grace of God.
And his observation is overwhelming and unique: “Every day we should celebrate the exaltation of our cross.” The genuine, true, and unwaveringly purpose-oriented monk: not merely to celebrate the Exaltation of the Cross on the particular day, but every day as a personal event. The path of repentance, therefore, as a path of taking up the cross according to the commandments of Christ, knows no interruptions. Interruption is for beginners and for those who are still spiritually “blind,” for whom it becomes a regression and a downward slide. Following Christ is “cleaving” to Christ, which causes a person to become Christ himself. This is what happened with Venerable Ephraim, and what happened with all the Saints.
We do not know how many of us can endure the fire of the Saint's words. Let us simply pray that the fire of the Spirit that burned in his heart may also burn a little in our own hearts, so that the ground may be cleansed and the space may be illumined.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
