Part Two – (What the Old Athonite Monks and all True Orthodox Monastics of Old Knew That We Have Forgotten-) Hidden Holiness: Remembering Mother Agathangeli

There are people whom one never forgets.
Some impress us by their learning. Others by their eloquence. Still others by their accomplishments. But every now and then, God allows us to meet someone whose holiness is so genuine that it cannot be explained by outward appearances.
Mother Agathangeli was one such person.
She was widowed while still young and faithfully raised her children before embracing the monastic life. Later she returned to live near her family. During her years in Jerusalem, using her own means and funds, she restored the neglected shrine of the Prison of the Holy Apostle Peter, making it once again a place of pilgrimage. Countless pilgrims would come to venerate this holy place because of her tireless labour and love.
By every worldly standard, however, she did not fit the image of a saint.
For women of her age in Greece, she was considered educated, having finished the “scholarhio“. (scholarhio was an old Greek school level that served as a transition between primary education and the first year of secondary education. It no longer exists in the modern Greek educational system. It had an excellent output at that time, and anyone who had finished it was well-educated).
However, she could be brutally blunt. Her language was sometimes startlingly direct. She laughed, spoke without pretence, and had absolutely no interest in appearing holy. If someone had judged her only by outward appearances, they wouldn’t think of her as holy.
Yet when she stood before God in prayer, it became immediately clear that she lived in another world. I will always remember the night-time liturgies I served underground in the Prison of St. Peter.
Over the years, whenever we met, Mother Agathangeli would say something that always puzzled me.
“I want you to bury me,” she would say. “I want you to serve my funeral.”
I would smile and answer, “Mother, you live in Jerusalem. How could I possibly bury you? Where would I ever perform your funeral?”
She never explained herself. She would simply repeat the request like it was a sure thing.
At the time, I thought it was merely one of her unusual remarks.
Only much later did I understand.
At one point, news spread throughout Greece that a woman long tormented by a demon had been delivered through Mother Agathangeli’s prayers in Jerusalem. The story quickly became known among Orthodox Christians, and many people wanted to meet the remarkable nun who lived above the Prison of the Apostle Peter.
As I was preparing a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, several pilgrims asked me,
“Will we meet Mother Agathangeli?”
“Yes,” I answered. “God willing, we will. She is a friend of mine.”
I knew very well that those expecting to meet a quiet, soft-spoken nun who looked every bit the image of a saint were in for a surprise.
When we finally arrived at the Prison of the Holy Apostle Peter, Mother Agathangeli welcomed us into the small room where she received visitors.
Before long, the pilgrims began nudging me.
“Ask her about the possessed woman,” they whispered.
So I did.
Her answer was entirely characteristic.
She immediately avoided speaking about herself.
Laughing, she began telling us that a priest had brought the possessed woman to her.
“Imagine that!” she said. “A priest asking a nun to bless someone with the Cross! What kind of a priest does that?”
Then she laughed even harder as she described how, before she had even raised the Cross, the demon began shouting intimate details supposedly from her own married life before she had become a nun—things so vulgar that they cannot even be repeated.
She laughed while telling the story.
The pilgrims looked shocked.
This was certainly not the solemn, mystical conversation they had expected.
Almost as an afterthought, she mentioned that she finally made the sign of the Cross over the woman.
That was all.
She never described the miracle itself.
She never spoke about the dramatic way in which the demon left.
She quietly skipped over everything that might have brought attention to herself.
As I looked around the room, I could almost hear the thoughts of my pilgrims.
“This cannot be a holy woman.”
They had completely misunderstood her.
What they failed to see was that this refusal to speak about herself was itself part of her holiness.
She had no desire whatsoever to appear extraordinary. It takes a holy person to understand a holy person. Recognizing a holy person requires at least a person with spiritual experience.
By the end of the visit, many of the pilgrims were ready to leave. They had no desire to ask for her blessing or remain longer in her company.
They thought they had not met a saint.
In reality, they had just failed to recognize one.
Just before we departed, Mother Agathangeli quietly called me into the kitchen with a gesture that might have been made by a trucker.
It was already late in the autumn.
“After the feast of the Nativity of Christ,” she said, “I will come to Greece.”
Then she asked me,
“When I come, will you take me to Gatzanas?”
Gatzanas was the local name used by the people of her village for a particular area of the Mountain of Parnitha, near the Convent of Saint Paraskevi where I was then for years the priest who served the elderly nuns there.
Having recently bought my first car in Greece, I answered immediately,
“Of course, Mother. I can take you anywhere you want.”
She looked at me impatiently.
“I have children and grandchildren. They can take me anywhere. I am asking whether you will take me to Gatzanas.”
Again I replied,
“I can take you anywhere you wish.”
For a third time she repeated the question.
“When I come to Greece, will you take me to Gatzanas?”
Finally she looked directly at me and said,
“Are you stupid? I want you to tell me that you will take me to Gatzanas!”
At last I understood what she wanted to hear.
So I answered with a bit of impatience,
“Mother Agathangeli, when you come to Greece, I will take you to Gatzanas.”
She smiled, completely satisfied.
We spoke a little longer about her children, especially her son, and then I returned to my waiting pilgrims.
That was the last time I ever saw her in the Holy Land.
Some time later, although she was already in her nineties—something I had never guessed from her strength and determination—she travelled by ship to Cyprus and then continued on to Greece.
Her granddaughter picked her up from the port and brought her home.
Almost immediately, Mother Agathangeli sat down and began sewing little phylakta—small devotional cloth pouches containing blessed items from the Holy Land, which she lovingly prepared and gave away to pilgrims.
As she sat sewing, her granddaughter walked past and saw her with the needle in one hand and the little pouch in the other.
Her eyes were closed.
Her mouth was slightly open.
Thinking her grandmother was joking, she laughed and walked on.
When she returned a few moments later, Mother Agathangeli was still sitting the same way.
They rushed her to the hospital.
She peacefully surrendered her soul into the hands of God.
Not long afterwards her son telephoned me.
“Father,” he asked, “where should we bury my mother?”
The question caught me completely by surprise.
“I’ll think about it,” I answered. “Let me call you back.”
As soon as I put down the telephone, the conversation in that little kitchen in Jerusalem came flooding back into my mind.
Immediately I telephoned the family.
“I know where your mother wanted to be buried,” I said.
Only then did I finally understand!!
She had never been asking me for a ride.
She had been asking me to fulfil her final wish.
She had asked me, again and again, to promise that when she came to Greece, I would take her to Gatzanas—to the Convent of Saint Paraskevi.
That was where she wished to make her final journey.
And so it happened.
I celebrated her funeral there.
I buried her exactly where she had quietly foretold that she would be laid to rest.
Only afterwards did I understand that God had granted her the gift of foreknowledge. She knew she would never return to Jerusalem. She knew that her earthly pilgrimage was drawing to its close.
Yet she never announced it.
She never spoke dramatically.
She never sought admiration because of spiritual gifts.
She simply made sure that one promise had been given.
When I think of Mother Agathangeli today, I do not remember first the deliverance of the possessed woman or even the remarkable foreknowledge that God granted her.
I remember her humility.
She spent her life hiding what others would have proudly displayed.
She never tried to convince anyone that she was holy.
She simply lived before God.
Certainly that is why so many people failed to recognize the sanctity that stood quietly before them.
The older monks and nuns whom I was privileged to know were like that. They were not interested in looking holy.
They wanted only to become holy.
Mother Agathangeli remains one of the clearest examples of that truth that God allowed me to meet.