Elder Adrianos of Sinai

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A letter of Orthodox confession by Elder Adrianos of Sinai: https://nicefor.info/en/a-letter-of-ort ... inai-1994/

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Video footage of Elder Adrianos advising pilgrims while he was still at St. Catherine's monastery:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XwLuoeHu-M

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He was born on the island of Zakynthos, in a small village, Kallipado, in 1926. From this small island where was born Dionysios Solomos, who wrote the National Anthem of Greece, and our holy Father Dionysios the Wonderworker, the Archbishop of Aegina in 1600, who hid the murderer of his brother. From his childhood he had an inclination toward holy things, close to the Church of Christ. His parents, who were farmers, had seven children; of which he was the fifth. Because of the poverty of his parents, none of his brothers studied, but from a young age he read religious books. From a young age his family struggled with the land, God's work, to earn their daily bread and to live.

He went to Mount Athos, to the Holy Monastery of Vatopedi and submitted himself to a venerable Elder, Porphyrios, a Monk from Asia Minor, in 1951. They lived together, him as an obedient disciple and his Elder as Abbot, as God willed; and he was greatly benefited by his spiritual words. He lived with him from 1951 to 1963.

From 1951, when he put on the blessed robe, the fiery arrows of the devil began to make war on him. To throw him sometimes into carnal passions, sometimes into pride, because he had a good voice and sang, sometimes into money.
However, since the first and greatest enemy of man is the flesh, with it he warred against him from his childhood in order to defile him with fornications, adulteries, homosexualities, as the Apostle Paul tells us in the Letter to the Corinthians. In the end, the grace of the Most Holy Spirit prevailed and he was not defiled, by the grace of God.

In 1954 he was ordained a deacon, and in 1956 a priest. In 1963, he buried his elder and left for Jerusalem to venerate the Holy Places. At Easter he witnessed with his own eyes, the Holy Light of the Resurrection coming from the Tomb of the Lord, on Great Saturday. He received a blessing from the Patriarch Benedict of Jerusalem and then left for the God-trodden monastery of Sinai.

There he stayed, in the desert of Petraia Arabia, in the old skete, where many holy ascetics ascetically strove and served God, 250 years before the founding of the Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine of Pansofou, in the 5th century. There he also lived, this ascetic in the same blessed place where the holy couple of Saint Galakteion and Saint Epistemi ascetically strove, with holy struggles and chastity, during the reign of Decius, in 250 AD. There he served the liturgy daily for thirty years uninterrupted.

In 1993, he severed communion with the Archbishop of Sinai Damianos who along with the Patriarch of Constantinople, Archbishop of Athens and Archbishop of Cyprus had conspired to depose Patriarch Diodoros of Jerusalem who was opposed to their heretical and ecumenist tendencies. He left for Australia, Canada and America where he confessed many people and gave them spiritual advice.
After his return to Greece, he went to his native place, the island of Zakynthos. There the Metropolitan of the official Church, Panteleimon (Bezenitis), was well-known for his ecumenist views.The elder was shocked when he stated to him privately that the Latins are not heretics...!
Naturally, he broke off all ecclesiastical communion with him.
On his father's property in the village of Pianos, Zakynthos, there was an old family Chapel, which he renovated in order to Liturgize. The Latin-minded Metropolitan Panteleimon responded with persecution: he ordered the police to seal up the Chapel.
However, the pious laypeople should be informed that Metropolitan Panteleimon was one of the many Orthodox who took part in the Seventh General Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Canberra, Australia (February 1991), where there were prodigies and omens, and sky-high blasphemies against the Holy Spirit were heard.
The Ecumenist Metropolitan Panteleimon was not bothered by the heretics of all kinds who wander around the blessed island of St. Dionysios, nor by the church of the heretical Latins on the island. The only thing that bothered him was Elder Adrianos’ own return to the genuine sources of our Holy Faith and the consistency of Orthodoxy.

He eventually arrived at the monastery of Sts. Cyprian and Justina in Oropos and Fili, where he lived for many years. His confessions on Saturdays, in the small chapel of Saint Kosmas of Aetolia, beneath the old katholikon, will remain unforgettable. Lines of people, who patiently waited for hours, to confess or to receive a blessing.
Sister Helen M. recounted how, when she mentioned to him the problem with her husband, who did not believe in God and cursed all day, sitting in front of a television, he said to her, half-smiling: "Tell him that tomorrow night he will see, in front of the television… the one who makes him blaspheme against God…"
The following day, around 11:00, as the sister recounted, she was in the kitchen when she suddenly heard deafening sounds like those of many animals shaking the entire house. When she went to the living room, she found her husband coldly silent, as if he had lost his voice, groaning and pointing to the television. Terrified, she saw, above the television… the devil in the form of a small doll, making a prostration and saying to him: "Thank you, that again today you listened to me and did what I wanted. And tell that… monk," he said to the woman, "that I will not leave from here, because your husband brought me…"
Fr. Adrianos was poorly educated, yet rich in the wisdom of the Holy Spirit:
"Know that these are times when the chaff is separated from the wheat. The few gather in the small sheepfold and the many are in the large one. Be patient, because these are years of Antichrist. He has fashioned Ecumenism, which is his own religion, and he has in his service Patriarchs, Archbishops, Metropolitans, monks, priests, and a multitude of laypeople... At first, they will tell you that it is not bad for us all to be united together, and then they will tell you that it is not bad to take the mark, because Christ is in our hearts… They will deceive you by distorting the Fathers and will present to you… new ones, who will be entirely their own. They will perform wondrous signs; people will run to them to hear prophetic things so as to be led astray. Do not listen to them. If you remain in the traditions of our Church and in what the God-bearing Fathers taught us, the Holy Spirit will guide you."
To the late old lady, Mrs. Eucharis, a former sister of the Monastery, he confided:
"Your repentance was very great. Remember where you were and where you are now. You have labored greatly, my sister, on the path of virtues. Soon you will receive your reward…"
Mrs. Eucharis fell asleep a few days later, after she had first confided to our father the things that Fr. Adrianos had told her.
Fr. Adrianos prayed unceasingly. He always had an old, thick, woolen prayer rope wrapped around his hand and continuously said the Prayer. To the monks of the Monastery, he had discreetly revealed things that they later saw fulfilled in their lives. To those, who were deemed worthy to live close to him, they will always remember his simple and humble words.
God especially graced him with the talent of calligraphy and painting. Whatever object he took into his hand, he would turn into gold. Dry gourds, pieces of wood, stones — he would paint them in a particularly beautiful, ornamental way, almost always depicting monasteries, cells, and sketes from Mount Athos.
However, since temptations existed and will always exist, some scandals occurred (“Woe to the scandal”), and so he peacefully departed from the Monastery, going to Menidi, where he heard many confessions. [The “scandal” in question reportedly involved a disagreement over some of the Elder’s personal assets] But before he left the Monastery of Saint Cyprian and Justina, he told a good clergyman that after his departure, the hand of God would fall upon the Monastery. A few days later, a great earthquake struck Parnitha and demolished the Monastery from the sanctuary to the interior of the Monastery. A little further down from that Monastery is a small convent, with four nuns—Panagia Kanala—where nothing was damaged. Whereas in Chasia, in Menidi, there was much destruction: a factory collapsed, many people were killed. In the house where Elder Adrianos was staying in Menidi, many cracks appeared, and immediately the family that was hosting him, along with the elder, left the house and went to another part of Parnitha, where they stayed for a few days. The earthquakes did not cease; they said that approximately 300 small and large ones occurred.
After the earthquakes passed, he departed and went to the Holy Mountain, to the Holy Monastery of Esphigmenou, in 1999. He went to his former obedience, the Holy Monastery of Vatopedi, with a brother, in order to request his apolytirion [canonical release letter]. He requested the apolytirion from the abbot of the monastery, Fr. Ephraim, with entreaty, and he asked him to remain there. But how could he stay there, where—along with the other monasteries, 19 in total—they commemorated Patriarch Bartholomew? He asked again for his apolytirion in writing, and again they did not give it to him. In the end, he departed from the Holy Mountain after the feast of the Holy Prophet Elias in 2002, giving place unto wrath.
He was hosted for several weeks by a spiritual child of his in a village near Domokos. During Holy Week they went daily to a church of the Patristic Calendar, the Church of the Life-Giving Spring, where he served as priest, and his spiritual child, as a layman, ministered in the sanctuary with a blessing, also carrying the Cross during the procession of the Epitaphios. On Pascha itself, they went to Lamia for a feast. There, he met the Most Reverend Kallinikos at his monastery of Saint Athanasios of Meteora. Their joy, and that of the fathers of the monastery was so great that they would not let him leave, and thus he remained with the six Fathers of the Monastery, and they became seven (seven being a symbolic number). And thus, he continued his missionary work up until his repose in 2004.