Our Holy Father Paul of Xeropotamou.

Commemorated July 28 in the Orthodox Christian Menaion

From the Prologue

The son of the Emperor Michael Cyropalates, he was endowed with profound learning and a rare wisdom, conjoined with meekness. Procopius, as he was called at first, was, in his early years, a marvel to the whole of Constantinople. The Emperor Romanus the Elder called him 'the greatest of the philosophers'. But, fearful lest his soul be made proud and fall through the praise of men, this glorious youth clad himself in the garb of a poor man and went off to the Holy Mountain, where he received the monastic habit from the famous hierarch Cosmas. After a long period of solitary asceticism, he re-founded the monastery of Xeropotamou and, shortly after that, built the new monastery of St Paul, where he died in old age. When this monastery was consecrated, Emperor Romanus sent as a gift a large piece of the Precious Cross, which is kept there to this day. It is said of this saint that he preached the Gospel in Macedonia and Serbia. He endured much torment from the wicked Emperor Leo the Armenian, the iconoclast, and entered into rest in 820. At the time of his death, St Paul said to the brethren: 'Lo, the hour has come that my soul has always desired, and which my body has always dreaded.'

From The Prologue From Ochrid by Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich
©1985 Lazarica Press, Birmingham UK




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