When Father Gerasimos celebrated the forty-day Divine Liturgies, he personally commemorated thousands of departed souls at the Holy Proskomide. The holy elder would sometimes receive unexpected visits in the Holy Spirit from the souls of the departed, when their spiritual condition changed—when they passed from the tormented Hades into the holy Paradise. The passage of souls from the darkness of the fallen angels into the heavenly Light of Christ the Life-Giver was his greatest joy, his inner peace, and his unspeakable exultation.
To give an example of this indescribable joy and heavenly gift bestowed upon Father Gerasimos, I will recount the following. He himself once told me that during the first 17 years of his priesthood, among the thousands of names he commemorated was that of his uncle, his mother’s brother, whom he had never met.
One morning, during the Divine Liturgy, he suddenly saw a man patiently standing with his hands in prayer, waiting until the elder would finish the Holy Proskomide. Looking more carefully, he noticed a supernatural brightness in the visitor’s eyes and face. Soon after, he heard the inner voice telling him: “This, Father, is your uncle, your mother’s brother. He has come to thank you for the many years of unceasing commemoration you offered him through the grace of the Savior Christ!”
The elder motioned him to approach. The soul of the uncle made three prostrations, received the blessing of the elder, thanked him, reverently stepped back, and then disappeared into the light.
Coincidentally, Father Gerasimos and the narrator shared a mutual friend, Athanasios, a very devout Christian who underwent a uniquely great trial with his 13-year-old firstborn son.
The child of Athanasios was wasting away from aggressive cancer in a large hospital in Athens. The whole family of the young boy was in a spiritual and earthly state of alarm. The pain was unspeakable. The whole household stood on edge.
The father was constantly at his son’s bedside, weeping, lamenting, and grieving over the final hours of his child’s earthly life. A father severely tested, an unceasing “guardian.” At one point, the little boy’s eyes fixed on the empty space of the hospital room, and the 13-year-old began speaking with a visitor invisible to his father.
“Yes, my Angel, I also want to follow you,” the boy repeated two or three times.
Then the child turned to his father with a pleading look, and with a childlike sadness begged him to stop his bitter crying. As the 13-year-old explained, the reason for this plea was that his father’s heart-wrenching lament had stopped, three times already, the departure of his soul to the Lord!
The very sick child then said with his pure childlike heart to his mourning and tearful father:
“Daddy, outside nature is so beautiful, and for many months now I have not been able to enjoy it, lying in hospital beds and in unbearable pain. Daddy, I have not seen my friends and schoolmates for many months to play with them, to rejoice and laugh together. Daddy… please, my sweet and beloved daddy, I want to tell you that the Angel who came a while ago was visiting me for the third time, and he said to me: ‘I came to take you to Paradise three times now, but each time your father stops me with his bitter sobs and heartbreaking cries. Tell your father to hold your hand, not to cry, and when I see this sign of his inner consent, then I will immediately come to take you with me.’
Tell your father also to pray within himself to the Savior of the world, and to know with absolute certainty that I will take you straight to the Lord Jesus Christ!”
This is what the boy said, and this is what the father, Athanasios, then did. Within five minutes, the father felt his child’s little hand squeezing his gently, and immediately afterward, his 13-year-old son departed this fleeting life. The boy was now journeying to the other and eternal life, to the Lord and to His heavenly dwellings.
At that dreadful moment of temporary separation from his father, the little son closed his eyes and had a smile of joy upon his lips, appearing completely at peace, passing redeemed and blessed into the ages of ages.
The faithful father then embraced his little son with heartbreaking pain, yet also with heavenly joy and exultation, knowing that his angelic child was now beside the Lord, exactly as the Holy Angel had announced to him through his son.
Source: “Ascetics in the Basements of Athens” by Elias D. Kallioras, Agathos Logos Publications, Athens 2025, pp. 23–27
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