Gerontissa Makaria. Photo: Nun Christina Oceanitissa
The wondrous adornment of Mt. Amomon, the Great Martyr Ephraim the Wonderworker, by the grace of God and the unceasing labors of the blessed Abbess Makaria, has become known in almost every corner of the earth, and now, like a new Pool of Siloam, grants healing to the many who ask.
In 1950, the blessed Gerontissa Makaria, surrounded by the first nuns who came, began to revive the old monastery and, through many years of effort, struggle, hardships, labors, and exploits, turned this modest monastery into a great Orthodox pilgrimage center, through the Divine grace that our Lord and the Theotokos bestowed upon her and the miraculous power of St. Ephraim.
People who knew Mother Makaria said she was a woman of few words, with an expression of “bright sadness” diffused in her sweet and gentle gaze, full of love and humility. All the various different spiritual gifts that the Lord bestowed upon her, she always carefully hid with great humility behind the work of venerating St. Ephraim. The faithful felt Mother Makaria to be and referred to her as an angel of love and the mother of all who suffer.
Today, we find many fond memories of her. One such memory reads:
There were many orphans around you. You stroked their hair and smiled at them, because you’re their “mama,” the one who raised them. You taught them to love Christ, the Theotokos, and St. Ephraim, and to help the less fortunate. Mother, I lived with you, and I learned and felt what true selflessness, sacrifice, and love for others mean. How many embraces and how much love people have received from you!
You always held a small box with a relic—a fragment of the relics of our saint. You blessed many people from many countries with his relics. The whole suffering world joyfully awaited the chance to kiss your blessed hand. You always found a comforting word for everyone. You spent hours blessing people with the holy relics, because there was always a huge line waiting at the door until late into the night, and sometimes all night. People need your prayer and blessing.
After meeting and talking with you, everyone left with joy and faith, which you gave them, beloved Mother Makaria. That’s why our St. Ephraim chose you to be with him, for you were an angel on earth. Only you, with your sincere love and great faith in Christ, could be the angel that St. Ephraim desires to have by his side. You have worked so many miracles of healing, both open and hidden—too many to count.
Some of these miracles were included in the Greek book, Life and Reminiscences of Mother Makaria, published by her monastery in 2022.
Relics of St. Ephraim. Photo: Basilica News Agency
Throughout her life, Mother Makaria gladly served every believer who came entreating her holy prayer, despite her own numerous ailments: heart attacks, the diabetes that tormented her, and a shell fragment in her abdominal cavity from the time of the occupation. Every day, Gerontissa Makaria answered many phone calls and letters from the faithful from many countries. She spent her days and nights praying and instructing spiritual orphans, widows, the divorced, the young and the sick, academics and workers, monks and nuns. Her profound faith, nobility, and meekness, prudence, amiability, forgiveness, boundless love for mankind, and immeasurable love for every person shaped her decisively as a holy figure.
Having no money, she maintained an orphanage for seventy school-age girls until 1980, providing them with shelter, food, clothing, and primary education. Those among them who excelled in their studies, she saw through to higher education, and today they say that “she fed them out of nothing.” To cover their needs, she would set out her handiwork for sale in the square in front of the Zappeion in Athens, traveling considerable distances and sparing neither her strength, her labor, nor her time.
While having no university education, Mother Makaria published Patristic texts, such as The Ascetic Homilies of St. Basil the Great, and composed the paraklesis and akathist to St. Ephraim. She recorded his miracles and published them gradually in ten volumes to support and strengthen the faithful. She was also an iconographer. Based on Mother Makaria’s personal account, the first icon of St. Ephraim of Nea Makri the Wonderworker was created following an appearance in which St. Ephraim described in detail exactly how his image should be painted. That icon was painted in 1964 by the great iconographer and writer Photios Kontoglou. Notably, Photios Kontoglou himself, who died on July 13, 1965, wished before his death that his bones be transferred to the Nea Makri monastery, where he always felt a true spiritual boon.
Gerontissa Makaria instructing Photios Kontoglou how to paint the first icon of St. Ephraim. Photo: Instagram Another reminiscence of her reads:
In the depths of the half-dark church, the reverent figure of the abbess, our Mother Makaria, is barely discernible, sitting in her stasidion, bowed, silent, immersed in her thoughts and prayers. Her modest face shines through her black riassa. A true and worthy bride of Christ, she shines with the joy that Christ gives those who love Him more than their parents and brothers, who endure incredible sorrows for Him, every deprivation, every suffering, every struggle that can make even the most resilient person tremble.
My Mother Makaria! No matter how many times I told her about my problem, she made it her own, and when she prayed, many tears flowed from her holy eyes. I’ll never forget how she communicated in prayer with St. Ephraim. She had great boldness for all people, for whom she entreated the help of St. Ephraim. Thanks to her holy prayer, people were spiritually and physically healed.
Mother Makaria’s speech was Divinely inspired and humble, filled with profound spiritual power. She told people that healing of soul and body come from frequent Confession and Communion of the Holy Mysteries of Christ. Her words were always a balm for sick and tortured hearts. Every day, often through the night, even in her advanced age, she received all pilgrims with great love and patience, comforting and consoling these despairing souls.
May her pure soul rest in peace, and may she pray in Heaven for the whole world and for those who remember her and seek her help and protection. Her lips, sweet as honey, ceaselessly praised the Lord, the Most Holy Theotokos, and her St. Ephraim until her very last breath.
Gerontissa Makaria’s repose was entirely peaceful and befitting a saint; indeed, she had foretold it more than a decade in advance. Her holy soul, undoubtedly guided by her holy Great Martyr Ephraim the Wonderworker, having communed of the Most Pure Mysteries, flew to its Heavenly homeland, on Friday, April 23, 1999, around 2:20 in the afternoon, on the feast of the Great Martyr George the Victory-Bearer. An ineffable fragrance immediately enveloped her holy body in the hospital room where they had been treating her, and the doctors and nurses and those visiting her were tearfully amazed at what happened.
The repose of Blessed Mother Makaria, abbess of the Monastery of the Annunciation and St. Ephraim on Mt. Amomon in Attica was announced on TV and in the press. Her holy remains were placed in the monastery’s main church for three days for the people to come and venerate her. About 5,000 faithful came in those days to pray, to thank her, to bid her farewell, and to attend her burial. Bishops, monastics, and priests from various dioceses, as well as local authorities attended her funeral.
The grave of Mother Makaria Everyone knew that she embodied the great image of “modern women’s monasticism, as the humble and virtue-loving abbess” of St. Ephraim. Her long-suffering, venerable body was reverently laid to rest in a secluded grave, which she herself had prepared several years earlier in the inner sisters’ courtyard of her holy monastery, “so that she might listen to the psalmody and see the glorious and wondrous deeds that St. Ephraim performs for those who come to his monastery in faith.”
It was a great loss for those who knew her. It’s simply impossible to forget Mother Makaria. May her holy prayers and Heavenly blessing be with us all. We pray and ask that she intercede together with St. Ephraim for every human soul who has recourse to her.
Gerontissa Makaria was proposed for canonization by the Church of Greece in 2024.
