Father Herodion, the fool for Christ of the Mount Athos desert of Kapsala

For a long time I had heard about Father Herodion. The miracle worker, the saint of the Mount Athos desert of Kapsala.

From scattered sources I collected a few poor details of his life which I offer to pious Christians so that they may know that even in these last times, God did not abandon us, but gave us strong supports on earth and ardent ambassadors in heaven.
He was born in 1904 in Romania in the province of Ordasest. His father was called Petros Manduf, his mother Helen. They were poor but honest people. Petros worked in the fields, grazed his few sheep, that is, he ate his bread in the sweat of his brow. God gave him a son, John. He was an innocent and honorable young man. Tall, burly, with bright blue eyes. He helped his father with the sheep and they cultivated the fields together. John had an intense religious nature. He was a desert-loving character. He liked to hear stories about great hermits who practiced in caves and in small huts they made from tree trunks in the Carpathian Mountains and his heart burned to imitate them. The elders told him that in Greece there is a mountain, like a prefecture in which there are only monasteries, hermitages and poor huts where for about a thousand years only ascetics have lived. The first hermit of the Holy Mountain was called Peter. He was a general and friend of the Byzantine emperor Nikephoros Phocas. The hermit Peter lived as an ascetic in a cave and tortured his body a lot. He was tormented by demons a lot.
The Mother of God appeared to him in a vision full of light and said to him. Be patient in the snares and arrows of the enemy, my chosen one. This mountain is mine. I asked my Son for it, and he gave it to me. Here will come to dwell those who want to dedicate themselves to God. As long as they live, they will have my protection. I will feed them and sustain them. They will lack nothing. And when they leave this world, I will give them the kingdom of God. I will make it known and glorious to the whole world. Kings and princes will come here to worship. No woman will set foot here. I alone will reign, no king or prince will reign here.
John's heart was broken. How will I manage to get to the Holy Mountain? By what means? In what way? Won't my parents look for me? Won't they find me? But John decided to do it. So he leaves his home, comes to the Black Sea, finds a ship, and with God's help, comes to Mount Athos. But he wants to see, to study, to understand life here. So he becomes a worker at the Karakalou Monastery. He works in the vegetable gardens, in the olive groves. In every job. Always willing, always smiling, always happy. This joy is his characteristic and accompanies him throughout his life. Then he decides to join a monastic order. First he practices asceticism in the monastery of Saint Dionysius. What attracted him here? The strict formality, the zealous ascetics and the relics of the Saints. Here, a precious treasure, the right hand of John the Baptist is preserved. The hand with which he baptized our Lord Jesus Christ. But John wants to know and live in other monastic monasteries. So he leaves this holy monastery, and comes to the monastery of Philotheos.

Here he stays for quite some time. He trains himself in spiritual warfare. He accepts the arrows of the enemy and responds like a brave soldier. His heart becomes a shooting range. An unbroken battlefield. On one side, the demons. They fight him with all their might, with all their hatred. And on the other, the heroic fighter. He does not fight the enemy with visible weapons. The war is not visible. It is invisible. He fights him with spiritual weapons. Fasting, patience, silence, humility, vigilance, study of the word of God. But especially he fights him with prayer. For the monk, prayer is his first subject. If he succeeded in prayer, he succeeded in his goals. If by chance in prayer, the enemy has made great breaches in the castle of his soul, and he must rush to gain the lost ground. Here on Mount Athos, the monks pray with a simple prayer, which has become a true science. They pray with the prayer “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us.” Macarius the Egyptian asked the angel. “How should we monks pray?” And the angel answered him: “If the monk is literate, let him read the psalter. If he is illiterate, let him say the simple prayer, Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us.” However, many literate people prefer to pray with this simple prayer, rather than with the psalter.
The monk says this prayer throughout his life. This prayer is like the still, gentle rain. The still rain slowly waters the earth and the earth bears fruit. The torrential rain does not help the earth bear fruit. It washes away the soil, the fertilizer, the seeds.
Another example. When hot water is always circulating in the radiators, the entire room is heated. If the hot water stops circulating in the radiator, the entire room is cooled. When the sweetest name of Jesus Christ always circulates in the heart, the heart is warmed with divine warmth, and through the heart, every cell, every member of the body is warmed, purified from every impure thought, from thoughts of hatred, grudge, revenge, envy, jealousy, pride, arrogance, arrogance, ambition, greed, gluttony, gluttony, sleepiness, sloth, apathy, laziness, curiosity, multitasking, sadness, melancholy, agitation, nervousness, impatience and every passion, small or great. But our ascetic thought that here in the monastery with so much noise, the soul cannot cultivate heartfelt prayer, so he left the monastery and came to the desert of Kapsala, in which many monks and many Romanians lived a hesychast life, with absolute silence, isolation, fasting, and they also had suitable circumstances for mental or heartfelt prayer. With great care he surveyed the huts, the sketes, the small entourages and his soul rested in a very isolated cell, of Agios Dimitrios, forty minutes away from the road. It was completely deserted, uninhabited, half-ruined. The windows were damaged, the doors too, the metal sheets too. When the wind blew, it whistled inside the cell, when it snowed, the cell was always covered in snow. Father Paisios, knowing the condition of his cell, sent three of his subordinates to fix it.

There he lived for forty whole years. Alone. Very lonely. Deserted. An unapproachable hermit. He did not take care of himself at all. He never washed himself, He never took care to find a good dress. He did not take any care for food. Fathers from the neighboring cells, Greeks and Romanians, left him blessings, and with them he was sustained.
Forty years of studying God.
Forty years of heartfelt prayer.
Forty years he fought with the elements of nature and with demons.
From a recluse and a hesychast, he became a fool according to God. Crazy according to God. A mischievous, a God-dishonoring man. He spoke the world's foolishness, nonsense, he made crazy gestures. He was not noble. To the curious, he was very abrupt. When he chased them away and they wouldn't leave, he would curse them.
In the last years of his life, they realized what a treasure he was. What a treasure he hid. What insightful and prophetic gifts he hid and many visited him and he condescended and accepted them.
One says. We bought macaroni, biscuits, pears, peaches, tomatoes and went to see him.
He accepted us. "Oh, thank you, good fathers. Thank you very much." We gave him our gifts. He cuts the biscuits into small pieces and throws them in the air. "For the birds to eat." Then, he breaks the macaroni into pieces and throws them in all directions. Then, he takes the pears, peaches, tomatoes and throws them against the walls of his cell. "We needed them," they said.

 the Holy Elder of Herodion was young when he came to the Holy Mountain.

Inside, his cell was no worse. Spilled coffee and orange juice on the walls. On the floor, thirty centimeters high, discarded cans of all kinds, bottles of orange juice, ointments, and garbage of many kinds.
And his companions living peacefully and moving freely, without fear. Lizards, skunks, cockroaches, flies, mice. Of all kinds and all sizes.
And our good Herodion moving and living with them, the hermit and reconciled.
He had the gift of insight. "You, you are from Corfu," he says to one.
"You should go to Sykia," he says to another. To which fig tree, he wondered. Sykia was the name of his village.
Like Adam, before he sinned, he had power over the elements of nature, he commanded them and they disciplined him. A pious man once visited him and they talked for a long time in his cell. When the conversation was over and they went outside to see him off, he saw him melancholy. The reason was the cloudy sky. Our father noticed this and said to him. “I see you melancholy. Do you want me to disperse the clouds?” He raised his eyes to the heavens and gave the clouds an order: “disperse.” The clouds dispersed and the sun appeared warm. He asked again. “Do you want me to tell the earth to sprout flowers?” “No, no,” he said, terrified.
One afternoon, he had gone out into his rudimentary garden to plant beans. But it was drizzling. He looked up to the sky and said: “Stop.” And the rain stopped. When he had planted the beans, he looked up to the sky and said: “Now it rains.” And it began to rain.
They never saw him receive communion. Is that so?
Either an angel from heaven was giving him Holy Communion, as happened to the hermits who lived in the depths of the Egyptian desert, or he had received divine Grace so intensely that he did not need the Grace that the Mysteries provide.
In physical appearance he was stout, straight, with a little beard, here and there he had grown.
He had soft, natural and sympathetic features. Always smiling. His eyes were blue, large, bright. He was all radiant. Many times his face was illuminated by the divine light, and then you could not see him face to face.
When he grew old, Father Meletios, a Romanian by race, took him in and nursed him. When he fell asleep in the Lord on December 12, 1990, he buried him.
Father Meletios made him look great and gave him the name Herodion.
Saint Herodion was a disciple of Paul. A faithful disciple. He was ordained a presbyter and bishop and was appointed bishop of Neopatras. He was a zealot, for this reason the pagans and the Jews, after scolding him, cut off his head.
The reburial of the relics of Elder Herodion took place seven years later, and his holy casket is kept in the cell of Father Meletios.
Father Meletios is now over eighty-five, an imitator of Elder Herodion. He also imitates his folly. May
God, through the intercessions of our Holy Father Herodion, have mercy on our sinful soul and make us worthy of His heavenly kingdom and His heavenly blessings. AMEN.
A new element from his life.
A pious man visited him and gave him two icons. “Take them for your children.” “But I don’t have two children, I have one,” “Take them, take them.”… A year later, he had a second child.