Meeting a Saint – Father Emilianos Simonopetrit

The day of May 9, 2019, with the dawn, would bring with it lightning-fast news for the entire Holy Mount Athos, Hellas, and the whole world – Elder Emilianos Simonopetritul passed to the Lord. This news also reached the ears of the group of priests who had left the Iași and Neamț areas, who were waiting to board the ship that would take them from the Daphne port of Holy Mount Athos to the port of the city of Uranopolis. Among these priests guided by Father Petru Sidoreac was I. After making the sign of the holy cross and saying a short prayer each for the eternal memory of Father Emilianos, we plan and establish a return route to the country that will also include the Ormylia Monastery, where the old abbot lived for almost 20 years, rector of the monastery, the last years being years of serious illness that kept him bedridden and unable to speak to people, but with the possibility of speaking secretly with the Bridegroom Christ.

Setting out on our journey, we all want to receive a blessing from this great elder, even if none of us knew him personally, the encounter with him taking place for each of us only through the reading of the numerous homilies delivered by the father that were translated from Greek into Romanian.

God ordained that we arrive at the Ormylia Monastery around 4:00 PM and find it with its gates open, with particularly welcoming nuns, even though their spiritual father had departed for heavenly abodes.

Father Petru guided us to the large church, as one who knew the monastery well, where he had stayed with hierarchs and priests over time.

Once in the church, emotion overwhelms us all, at a pew on the left side a nun was reading the Psalter according to the order, at the head of Father Emilianos the current abbot of the Simonopetra Lavra, Archimandrite Elisei, was watching, and the church was almost cramped due to the nuns, priests and believers who came to say goodbye and receive the blessing of the saint.

Arriving in front of the priest, the first impression was that I had arrived in front of a saint: a calm face that inspired peace, a color like that of a beautiful wax candle ready to take light on the night of Resurrection. I bowed with prostration, kissed the Holy Gospel that was on the saint's chest, then kissed the hand that, to my surprise, did not have the usual coldness of a lifeless body, but was warm. I retreated to one side, guided by a nun, and looked at the parents with whom I was traveling as they worshiped with reverence and emotion to the one who spread so much peace around him.

The emotion was doubled, after the moment of worship, by the boldness springing from love of Father Petru Sidoreac, who asks for a blessing to perform a Trisagion for the pious Emilianos. After he says the blessing formula in Greek, we, the group of nine priests and a few believers from Podu-Iloaiei, give the responses and sing the prescribed hymns in our beautiful Romanian language, to the amazement of those present, who nevertheless felt the moment, because we saw tears in the eyes of some nuns and believers. In those moments, the thoughts that came to my mind were that we were singing at the head of a holy man and that, perhaps, never in this holy monastery has a song in the language of Dosoftei resounded.

The service ended with the intonation of the Paschal hymn Christ is Risen! We all kiss the priest's warm hand again and leave the church with the feeling that we were present at the repose of a saint.

Several nuns surrounded us with joy and, although we were in a hurry to get to worship at the tomb of the Venerable Saint Paisios the Athonite of Suroti, they stopped us to linger for a few moments and served us the usual treat. From the nun who served us, we learn that several nuns and believers felt the priest's hand warm to the touch, just as I did, and that the priest's body, despite so many hours having passed, does not know the postmortem rigidity, as happened with the bodies of many saints with a holy life.

We leave the monastery, priests and believers, with the regret that we cannot stay for the funeral and with the thought that we have seen, worshiped, and kissed the hand of a saint whom we, the remaining ones, have acquired as a supplicant before God.

May we have his blessing!

Father Petru-Ionuț Irimia