Elder Iakovos
Elder Iakovos was a man full of love, very philanthropic—in the fullest sense of the word. Another man’s problem was his problem too. When someone told him about his problem, the Elder didn’t forget it, but took an interest in it and watched to see if the problem was resolved. He was a truly spiritual man. And who is a spiritual man? He who has the Holy Spirit in his heart—in this sense, Fr. Iakovos was a spiritual man. The Holy Spirit dwelt in his heart and guided his life path.
He was a liturgical man. Doctors would tell him:
“Geronda, you have to rest!”
But Elder Iakovos would get up at night and be the first to church, even when he was sick. He truly was a humble man.
I’ve already told you that he often said, “Brother, forgive me, please!” The current Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew visited Elder Iakovos twice, saw and listened to him, and at some point, told me:
“Just as we say ‘St. Nicholas the Penitent’ today, so in the future we’ll be saying, ‘St. Iakovos the Forgiving.’”
The Elder was surprised and said of himself:
“I’m just a normal person, created from the dust of the earth! Why do metropolitans and professors come to confess to me?”
When Elder Iakovos heard confessions, he knelt down, and that’s how he listened to the one confessing. Of course, people deeply experienced the consolation that Fr. Iakovos gave them, and long remembered it.
He was a man of prayer. His entire life was a constant prayer. Even when he was speaking, his heart was praying and he felt the presence of God, in Whom he placed his hope. Elder Iakovos was subjected to temptations and diabolical trials, but he hoped in Christ and feared nothing.
Every night, Elder Iakovos would leave the monastery and go to the cave of St. David, and there he prayed all night. When he went there the first time and was praying intently, at some point he realized there were hornets flying all around in the cave.
“I was startled, my child. But then I quickly remembered that the devil sometimes tries to terrify the saints in this way. I looked at the hornets and told them: ‘I’m here and I’m not going anywhere; eat me!’ And the hornets disappeared.”
That’s why I say, Fr. Iakovos was a man who prayed constantly.
Fr. Iakovos praying on his knees during the Liturgy. Photo: kresthram.cerkov.ru
He had amazing discernment and could see things that we sometimes overlook. I’ll tell you two stories.
One day, a possessed girl was brought to the monastery to have exorcism prayers read over her. One of the monks read them, but Elder Iakovos turned to me and said:
“Father, she needs a doctor, not an exorcism.”
But then he asked the girl, whom he knew nothing about:
“What’s your name?”
And she said:
“Legion.”
No one knew before this that the girl was demon-possessed.
Not everyone is possessed by demons, but we decide we have to read exorcism prayers over them. We need great attention and discernment. We need prudence. When we can’t have such attention and discernment, we shouldn’t think about what we all know. And I say this first to us clergymen, and then to you laymen, who often run around like crazy, not knowing what they’re doing, saying:
“Read the exorcism prayers, because he’s possessed!”
If you take the wrong medicine, you can die. If you take the wrong pills while being healthy, you’ll get sick. Therefore, we have to be discerning and extremely careful.
Elder Iakovos was a man of God, literally a man who belonged to God, and also a man who had God. Who is a Christian? He who has the life of Christ in his mortal flesh, as the Gospel says. Fr. Iakovos manifested the life of Christ in his mortal flesh both here on earth and now in the Kingdom of God.
Fr. Iakovos didn’t go to college. He finished elementary school, but how amazingly he read Church texts, as though he had a higher education. I remember how one time the Archbishop Crete, of blessed memory, heard him reading. He turned to me and asked:
“How much schooling does he have?”
I said, “He only finished elementary school.”
“He reads beautifully!” the Archbishop said.
How does this happen? It’s as it says in the Akathist to the Evangelist St. John: “Being filled with love, thou wast also filled with theology.”
One theology professor told me:
“I asked Fr. Iakovos a few dogmatic questions, and he answered very accurately—not from any writings he’d read, but by the grace of the Holy Spirit.”
Our consolation is in God’s saints such as Elder Iakovos
In the end, the question remains: Why are we talking about all this today? What does Fr. Iakovos have to do with us?
First, he was a man like the rest of us. Second, he lived in our time.
Elder Iakovos (in the center with the staff and pectoral cross) with the brethren of the Monastery of St. David of Evia
He was exiled from Asia Minor, from his village, together with his scattered family, but with faith—which Elder Iakovos received at home in his childhood from his mother and father. And years later, they met again. People say he was still a schoolboy when they would ask him to pray for pregnant women who would then give birth without any problems—this is what happens when a man allows God to abide in him. This is simplicity, which is ultimately the truth—the Lord our God lives. This is what his whole life proclaims. He lived by it. And because he believed in God, Fr. Iakovos wasn’t afraid of anything, but fought to have the Lord present in his life.
Why do we suffer in life? Because we live on a different level, and our salvation is to move to his level. You’ll say, “But he was a monk.” I’m not talking about this level, but about his level of trust in God and his complete dedication to Him. This is where our problem lies. You remember the story with the sick child in the Gospel, when the father came to Christ and told Him:
“Lord, my child has been suffering from an early age. If You can, heal him!”
And how did Christ answer him? He told the father:
“Your doubt is to blame.”
This means that our unbelief is the root cause of all the problems in our heart, our home—everywhere.
So I ask you, is there anything better than entrusting all our problems to God? What will you do? When we get confused, when we don’t know what we want… Today our children are getting married, and before they even enter into marriage, they’re already getting divorced. Why? Because we didn’t trust God, and we didn’t make God’s will the criterion of our life. Therefore, we ruin everything, even when we have a good background. We see people who are simple and humble, but we create trouble for ourselves.
Forgive me, but I’m going to share my recent experience. I was invited to participate in the feast of St. Petka [Paraskeva] in Iași, Romania.
Can I tell you how many pilgrims were there? 40,000! Obviously, they couldn’t all fit into one church, so the service was celebrated under the open sky, on the central boulevard. The clergy served on a special podium, and wherever you looked you could see a sea of human heads. That’s the first thing. Second, the service started at 8:00 AM and didn’t end until 1:00 PM. No one moved, no one left, no one was annoyed by the service taking so long. In the evening, I wanted to see the line of pilgrims who had been coming for four days to venerate the relics of St. Paraskeva. The line of people was 2.5 miles long for the whole four days! The line was that long. Even the sidewalk of the square was full of people. When we got to the end of the line, the church closed its doors, but the people remained in the line. When else could they come to venerate the relics of St. Petka? The next morning, standing in line, they didn’t have any idle conversations, but only prayed. Then I understood why all these people stood in line for such a long time, while we “drown” in the hustle and bustle—because the center of our “I” is our will. But the Lord left us examples.
When I saw the pilgrims coming to the Church of St. John the Russian in Nea Prokopi, I often told them:
“Someday you’re going to curse the day you came here.”
People looked at me askance, saying to themselves:
“What is this priest talking about? We came for a blessing!”
Yes, this blessing will condemn us. Because tomorrow, when we say to God:
“God, but we didn’t know, we didn’t see You.”
He’ll object:
“Are you serious? You didn’t see Me? Haven’t you asked yourself what these holy relics might mean for you? Haven’t you understood anything in life?”
The repose of Elder Iakovos
Today we’re talking about Fr. Iakovos, who for us is a saint, and about other saints whom we knew. And perhaps the Lord has revealed them to us in our time, firstly, so those of us who are sincere can rely on them, given that they’ve lived through the difficulties we’re experiencing today. Secondly, so that we might understand that we’re going through hard times because we neglected them, and remembered and honored them only with our words. And thirdly, because if I ask all of you here:
“Do you believe in God?”
I’m sure you’ll say:
“Yes!”
But if I ask you:
“Do you love Christ?”
I don’t know what you’ll say. Not by words, but by the way you live. I don’t mean just you, but me too.
Elder Iakovos was one of those who loved God and therefore became a man of God for each and every one of us. He became Fr. Iakovos the Forgiving. Do you know what was the biggest problem he faced, like all of us spiritual confessors? One day Fr. Iakovos told me about this problem.
“My child, the biggest problem I’ve faced is that people don’t want to forgive others.”
This condemns us. What do we say in the Lord’s Prayer? “And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” When we don’t forgive, we tell Christ:
“Lord, don’t forgive me!”
That’s the reality. Why? Because we think we know what we need more than God, so we’re always ruining everything. Our Greek nation once relied on faith, but today we ridicule it, reject it, and discard it. I was really impressed by the people I saw in Romania, which confirmed one thing for me: The seventy-year regime that persecuted Christians didn’t damage their souls. All these years, their souls were strengthened in the Living God, and we, who rely on our own minds, money, homes, and cars, are now close to disappearing. The crisis isn’t that we’ve lost all of this, but that we’ve lost the Living God in our lives.
How do we raise our children?
It’s said of Christ that He increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man (Lk. 2:52). I ask you who are here, if your church had Sunday School on Saturdays, but your children had English lessons, or soccer or other sports practices at the same time—tell me, where would you send them? The majority of us would send them to all these activities, but not to Sunday School. What are we depriving them of by doing this? A spiritual vaccine. And therefore, as soon as they grow up, they get spiritually sick. And then you come to me and start asking:
“Oh, Your Grace, my child is this, my child is that! What should I do?”
I’ll say:
“There’s nothing to be done now.”
Fr. Iakovos in his cell with the children of his relatives and spiritual children
This is the only truth. And I’ll finish my reply:
“Back then, when you should have done something, you thought you knew better.”
One father asked me:
“Should I wake my child up in the morning to go to church?”
However, he doesn’t object to the fact that his child comes home at 3:00 or 6:00 in the morning. Who is this person? A father [πατέρας]? Remove the prefix, and you’ll see what remains—a beast [τέρας]. This is our reality today. Because we’ve disdained those virtues by which Fr. Iakovos became a saint, or we try to acquire some of them, but our heart belongs not to God, but to egotism and self-praise.
If we don’t change our level, we won’t see the light of day. There are many dangers around us. Our politicians have again proven that they’re unworthy of the country and the history of its power, because they’ll devour each other, even if the country dies.
So where is our consolation? Only in these people—the saints of God. They are our consolation. That’s why you see thousands of people visiting them; people who come to the annual commemoration of Elder Iakovos. There’s just as many of them as come to the holy monastery for the feast of St. David. Because people see the truth there; they see real life, and that’s the only real consolation.
Let us ask the blessed saint, Fr. Iakovos, to pray for all of us, and above all, that we might be enlightened and see the truth. We and our politicians must be enlightened and grasp the simple truth that the word of God tells us: Except the Lord build the house, in vain do they labour that build it. Except the Lord guard the city, in vain doth he watch that guardeth her (Ps. 126:1–2). The sooner we understand this, the better for all of us!
