Source: Ukrainian Orthodox Heritage on Mt. Athos
January 13, 2017
The Greek site Romfea has published material in honor of the Athonite elder Gregory, who died on December 31, 2016.
Hiermonk Paul Mikrayananitu speaks about Elder Gregory, a member of the Danilov Brotherhood:
"I met him forty-eight years ago, when I went to the Holy Mountain to the Skete of St. Anne; when, as a beginner monk, I went to the cell of the apostle Thomas and was in obedience to the late elder Thomas.
Fr. Gregory was the confessor of the blessed Danilov Brotherhood, zealots of the Patristic Tradition, a confessor of the Orthodox faith demanding of all, a great spiritual father and instructor of thousands of souls, who entrusted to him their salvation. His whole life, from an early age, he spent on Athos in the Katounakia desert, being in obedience for many years to the late Fr. Stephen, and finished his life as a well-known elder-confessor for Athonite fathers.
He was a great student of the art of Byzantine chant, in its perfect performance, as is done on the Holy Mountain. He was the first chanter at basically all the great monastery feasts, with others fathers and brothers of the brotherhood, for more than half a century adorning the holy and great Divine services with his psalmody. He was also a great hagiographer of the brothers of the brotherhood, ascetics laboring in this holy place, and men of pious prayer.
I am happy that I had the special grace, having received a blessing, to have such a spiritual father as the departed Fr. Gregory and to stand under his holy epitrachelion, always feeling his love and fatherly care.
He left behind him a legacy of a brotherhood of pious fathers, having fervently fought for their spiritual perfection and the observance of the monastic tradition. Tested by the Lord God and sicknesses of the mortal flesh, and having suffered, he glorified God, awaiting from him justice and a crown, and rest from the cares and worries of the ascetic life, as he had promised when he was tonsured as a monk before the holy icon of Christ the Savior.
The Athonite desert will never become poor in monks of such spiritual heights. Memory eternal!”
