Saint elder Iakovos Tsalikis was among the holiest Elders, who lived in Greece the past decades. His holiness is acknowledged by almost all Greeks and thousands of faithful from the rest world. His entire holy life and the miracles he worked and is still working today, place him among the biggest recent Saints of the Orthodox Christian Religion.
Fr. Iakovos Tsalikis was born in Livisi, Asia Minor on November 5, 1920. He was one of nine children that his mother Theodora gave birth to. His father Stavros was taken captive by the Turks in the catastrophe of Asia Minor, when the Greeks lost the war. The father was later released and joined his family in Greece. Because of the difficult times in which the Elder’s family lived only three of the nine children lived beyond infancy.
Young Iakovos lived through the upheaval of the Orthodox Christian population of Asia Minor in 1922. Initially the family settled in the village of Saint George in Amfissa, where the living conditions were appalling. In fact, the conditions there were close to starvation. In 1925, the family moved to Farakla in Northern Evia, Greece. The Elder Iakovos was educated in the village Church School of Saint Paraskevi. Young Iakovos expressed from a young age an inclination for monastic life. He was known as the monk in the village because of his monastic practices of fasting and prayer. While still a young boy he had a visitation from Saint Paraskevi, who revealed to him in detail the religious life that he would follow in his life.
His fervor for the Church from a young boy was so profound that he learned by heart the whole text of the Divine Liturgy at age seven. He became seriously ill at the age of fifteen but survived. The Second World War broke out five years later. His health was impaired again during the war and he lost his mother in 1942. During the German occupation of Greece, he and many of his fellow villagers were taken prisoners by the Germans. They were taken to the village Strofilia. He and his fellow Greeks suffered terribly during the German occupation of Greece and later with the civil war that broke out with the communists. He was drafted into the Greek army in 1947 and was discharged in 1949. In 1949 his father passed on to eternal life.
The Elder’s sister got married in 1951. The same year elder Iakovos decided to enter the monastic life. He chose to enter the Monastery of Saint David in Evia [Euboea], which at that time had only three monks. The conditions at the Monastery were very difficult at the beginning. The Monastery had been almost abandoned and the monks that lived there did not do anything to improve the facilities. Because of these difficulties that he encountered the Elder returned to Farakla for a while. He returned to the Monastery again and was tonsured a monk on November 31, 1952. The following month, he was ordained a deacon on the 17th of December in Halkida and two days later he was ordained a priest. He was chosen to be the Abbot of the Monastery of Saint David in 1975. But prior to this the Elder had become well known and beloved by the faithful in that part of Evia. The faithful would visit the Monastery for the sacrament of confession and for pastoral counseling. The number of faithful Christians visiting the Monastery increased drastically and the income of the community was increased dramatically to the point where many improvements were made to the Monastery.
The Elder Iakovos Tsalikis is a contemporary of the Elder Porphyrios. Both men were miracle-workers. Elder Tsalikis died November 21, 1991 and the Elder Porphyrios died December 2, 1991. They have had a great spiritual impact upon the contemporary Orthodox Church. This impact has continued even more profoundly after their departure for eternity.
What is unusual in the life of Elder Tsalikis is his visible battles with demons that assailed him and how he was able to subdue them. Following his experience with these spirits of darkness, he then was given the grace to become a very effective exorcist. He was able with the sanctified skull of St. David, the founder of his Monastery, to banish many demons from faithful people of the Church, who were possessed. It was early on in his monastic life that the demons would attack Fr. Iakovos physically to the point of knocking him out cold. On the heels of these merciless attacks by the demons Fr. Iakovos was given the grace to banish demons from people. The demonic method of attacking people is well known from Holy Scripture and in the history of the Church. They are able to inflict such demonic influence on human beings that they become blind followers of Satan. It was especially during the 1980’s that possessed people were brought frequently to the Monastery for the prayers of exorcism. Father Iakovos would read the prayers of exorcism over them and then bless them with the blessed skull of Saint David. The Monastery was established by Saint David in 1550. The relics of Saint David are very fragrant to this very day.
Translated from the Greek by:
+Fr. Constantine (Charles) J. Simones, Waterford, CT, USA, October 21, 2013
Elder Iakovos (Tsalikis) of Evia canonized by Constantinople
Constantinople, November 27, 2017
The meeting was chaired by His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.
St. Porphyrios said of the late Elder Iakovos, “Mark my words. He’s one of the most far-sighted people of our time, but he hides it to avoid being praised.”
He lived for the Divine Liturgy, which he celebrated every day, with fear and trembling, dedicated and, literally, elevated. Young children and those with pure hearts saw him walking above the floor, or being served by holy angels. As he himself told a few people, he served together with Cherubim, Seraphim and the saints. During the Preparation, he saw angels of the Lord taking the portions of those being remembered and placing them before the throne of Christ, as prayers. When, because of health problems he felt weak, he would pray before the start of the Divine Liturgy and say, “Lord, as a man I can’t, but help me to celebrate.” After that, he said, he celebrated “as if he had wings.”
He always had the remembrance of death and of the coming judgement. Indeed, he foresaw his death. He asked an Athonite hierodeacon whom he had confessed on the morning of November 21, the last day of his earthly life, to remain at the monastery until the afternoon, in order to dress him. While he was confessing, he stood up and said, “Get up, son. The Mother of God, St. David, St. John the Russian and St. Iakovos have just come into the cell.” “What are they here for, Elder?” “To take me, son.” At that very moment, his knees gave way and he collapsed. As he’d foretold, he departed “like a little bird.” With a breath like that of a bird, he departed this world on the day of the Entry of the Mother of God. He made his own entry into the kingdom of God. It was 4:17 in the afternoon.
His body remained supple and warm, and the shout which escaped the lips of thousands of people: “Saint! You’re a saint,” bore witness to the feelings of the faithful concerning the late Elder Iakovos. Now, after his blessed demise, he intercedes for everyone at the throne of God, with special and exceptional confidence. Hundreds of the faithful can confirm that he’s been a benefactor to them.
The memory of Elder Iakovos will be celebrated on November 22 according to the New Calendar.
Read a fuller life of Elder Iakovos (Tsalikis) of Evia immediately below.
11/27/2017
The Elder of love, forgiveness and discernment
Orthodox Christianity - Source: Pemptousia
November 21, 2016
Our age and today’s culture has, unfortunately moved away from the vision and pursuit of sanctity. The Orthodox faith is based on the presence of the saints. Without these, our Church is on the path towards secularization. Naturally, as we know from Scripture, God alone is holy, and sanctity derives from our relationship with Him, and therefore sanctity is theocentric rather than anthropocentric. Our sanctity depends on the glory and the grace of God and our union with Him, not on our virtues. Sanctification assumes the free will of the person being sanctified. As Saint Maximos the Confessor says, all that we bring is our intentions. Without those, God doesn’t act. And Saint John the Damascan repeats that we render honour to the saints ‘for having become freely unified with God and having Him dwell in them and by this participation having become by grace what He is by nature’. The saints didn’t seek to be glorified, but to glorify God, because sanctity means participation in and communion with the sanctity of God.
The source of sanctity in the Orthodox Church is the Divine Eucharist. By partaking of the Holy One, Jesus Christ, we become holy. The ‘holy things’, the Body and Blood of Christ, are given as communion ‘to the holy’, the members of the Church. Sanctity follows on from Holy Communion. The ascetic struggles of the saints are not an aim but a means which leads to the aim, which is Eucharistic communion, the most perfect and complete union with the Holy One. In the Lord’s prayer, the ‘Our Father’, we see that sanctification is associated with the Kingdom of God. We ask that His Kingdom come into the world so that everyone can praise Him and can partake of His sanctity and His glory, which is what we call ‘deification’.
The Kingdom of God and deification are an eternal extension of the Divine Liturgy within space and time, as Saint Maximos the Confessor writes. By taking part in the Divine Eucharist, the saints become gods by grace, but they’re aware that ‘they have the treasure in vessels of clay’ and they see ‘through a glass darkly’. They await and expect the time when the gate of heaven will open and they’ll see God ‘as He is’. Their struggle against the passions and the demons is continuous and they believe that everyone else will go to Paradise except them. They know their insignificance and unworthiness, they don’t believe in their moral superiority and worthiness and, with the humility which they feel, they see others as saints, especially when these people render them honours. This is due to love, which is the one thing which will remain in the Kingdom of God.
An example of their love for God is their personal struggle to observe His commandments. Submission to the will of God cleanses people of their passions and prepares the place for grace to take up its dwelling. All the saints are characterized by an attitude of asceticism and self-sacrifice. According to Saint Isaac, the ascetic life is the mother of sanctification ‘from which is born the first taste of the sense of the mysteries of Christ’. Or, as Saint Maximos the Confessor puts it: ‘By their voluntary mortification, denying all evils and passions… they have made themselves pilgrims and strangers to life, fighting boldly against the rebellions of the world and the body… and have preserved the honour of their soul’.
Such a vessel of grace and dwelling-place of the Holy Spirit, was Elder Iakovos Tsalikis, one of the most important and saintly personalities of our day, a great and holy Elder, a true friend of God.
He was a living incarnation of the Gospel, and his aim was sanctification. From early childhood he enjoyed praying and would go to different chapels, light the icon-lamps and pray to the saints. In one chapel in his village, he was repeatedly able to speak to Saint Paraskevi. He submitted to God’s call, which came to him when he was still a small child, denied himself and took up the Cross of Christ until his last breath. In 1951, he went to the Monastery of Saint David the Elder, where he was received in a miraculous manner by the saint himself.
He was tonsured in November 1952. As a monk he submitted without complaint and did nothing without the blessing of the abbot. He would often walk four to five hours to meet his Elder, whose obedience was as parish-priest in the small town of Limni. The violence he did to himself was his main characteristic. He didn’t give in to himself easily. He lived through unbelievable trials and temptations. The great poverty of the monastery, his freezing cell with broken blinds and cold wind and snow coming in through the gaps, the lack of the bare essentials, even of winter clothing and shoes, made his whole body shiver and he was often ill. He bore the brunt of the spiritual, invisible and also perceptible war waged by Satan, who was defeated by Iakovos’ obedience, prayer, meekness and humility. He fought his enemies with the weapons given to us by our Holy Church: fasting, vigils and prayer.
His asceticism was astonishing. He ate like a bird, according to his biographer. He slept on the ground, for two hours in twenty-four. The whole night was devoted to prayer. Regarding his struggle, he used to say: ‘I do nothing. Whatever I do, it’s God doing it. Saint David brings me up to the mark for it’.
His humility, which was legendary and inspiring, was his main characteristic. The demons which were in the possessed people who went to the monastery cursed him and said: ‘We want to destroy you, to neutralize you, to exterminate you, but we can’t because of your humility’. He always highlighted his lack of education, his inadequacies and his humbleness. It was typical of him that, when he spoke, every now and again he’d say: ‘Forgive me’. He was forever asking people’s forgiveness, which was a sign of his humble outlook. Once, when he was invited to visit the Monastery of Saint George Armas, where the abbot was the late Fr. George Kapsanis, he replied: ‘Fathers, I’m a dead dog. What will I do if I come to see you? Pollute the air?’ He always had the sense that he was a mere nothing.
And when he became abbot he always said that he wasn’t responsible for what happened in the monastery: ‘Saint David’s the abbot here’, he maintained. When he served with other priests, he went to the corner of the altar, leaving them to lead the service. When they told him: ‘This isn’t right, you’re the abbot of the monastery’, he’d reply: ‘Son, Saint David’s the abbot here’.
Although he didn’t seek office, he agreed to be ordained to the diaconate by Grigorios, the late Bishop of Halkida, on 18 December 1952. The next day he became a priest. In his address after the ordination, the bishop said: ‘And you, son, will be sanctified. Continue, with God’s power, and the Church will declare you [a saint]’. His words were prophetic. He was made abbot on 27 June, 1975, by Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Halkida, a post he held until his death.
As abbot he behaved towards the fathers and the visitors to the monastery with a surfeit of love and understanding and great discernment. His hospitality was proverbial. Typical of him was the discernment with which he approached people. He saw each person as an image of Christ and always had a good word to say to them. His comforting words, which went straight to the hearts of his listeners, became the starting-point of their repentance and spiritual life in the Church. The Elder had the gift, which he concealed, of insight and far-sight. He recognized the problem or the sin of each person and corrected them with discretion. Illumined by the Holy Spirit he would tell each person, in a few words, exactly what they needed. Saint Porfyrios said of the late Elder Iakovos: ‘Mark my words. He’s one of the most far-sighted people of our time, but he hides it to avoid being praised’.
In a letter to the Holy Monastery of Saint David, the Ecumenical Patriarch, Vartholomaios, wrote: ‘Concerning the late Elder, with his lambent personality, the same is true of him as that which Saint John Chrysostom wrote about Saint Meletios of Antioch: Not only when he taught or shone, but the mere sight of him was enough to bring the whole teaching of virtue into the souls of those looking at him’.
He lived for the Divine Liturgy, which he celebrated every day, with fear and trembling, dedicated and, literally, elevated. Young children and those with pure hearts saw him walking above the floor, or being served by holy angels. As he himself told a few people, he served together with Cherubim, Seraphim and the Saints. During the Preparation, he saw Angels of the Lord taking the portions of those being remembered and placing them before the throne of Christ, as prayers. When, because of health problems he felt weak, he would pray before the start of the Divine Liturgy and say: ‘Lord, as a man I can’t, but help me to celebrate’. After that, he said, he celebrated ‘as if he had wings’.
One of the characteristic aspects of his life was his relationship with the saints. He lived with them, talked to them and saw them. He had an impressive confidence towards them, particularly Saint David and Saint John the Russian, whom he literally considered his friends. ‘I whisper something in the ear of the Saint and he gets me a direct line to the Lord’. When he was about to have an operation at the hospital in Halkida, he prayed with faith: ‘Saint David, won’t you go by Prokopi and fetch Saint John, so you can come here and support me for the operation? I feel the need of your presence and support’. Ten minutes later the Saints appeared and, when he saw them, the Elder raised himself in bed and said to them: ‘Thank you for heeding my request and coming here to find me’.
One of his best known virtues was charity. Time and again he gave to everybody, depending on their needs. He could tell which of the visitors to the monastery were in financial difficulties. He’d ask to speak to them in private, give them money and ask them not to tell anyone. He never wanted his charitable acts to become known.
Another gift he had was that, through the prayers of Saint David, he was able to expel demons. He would read the prayers of the Church, make the sign of the Cross with the precious skull of the saint over the people who were suffering and the latter were often cleansed.
He was a wonderful spiritual guide, and through his counsel thousands of people returned to the path of Christ. He loved his children more than himself. It was during confession that you really appreciated his sanctity. He never offended or saddened anyone. He was justly known as ‘Elder Iakovos the sweet’.
He suffered a number of painful illnesses. One of his sayings was, ‘Lucifer’s been given permission to torment my body’. And ‘God’s given His consent for my flesh, which I’ve worn for seventy-odd years, to be tormented for one reason alone: that I may be humbled’. The last of the trials of his health was a heart condition which was the result of some temptation he’d undergone.
He always had the remembrance of death and of the coming judgement. Indeed, he foresaw his death. He asked an Athonite hierodeacon whom he had confessed on the morning of November 21, the last day of his earthly life, to remain at the monastery until the afternoon, in order to dress him. While he was confessing, he stood up and said: ‘Get up, son. The Mother of God, Saint David, Saint John the Russian and Saint Iakovos have just come into the cell’. ‘What are they here for, Elder?’ ‘To take me, son’. At that very moment, his knees gave way and he collapsed. As he’d foretold, he departed ‘like a little bird’. With a breath like that of a bird, he departed this world on the day of the Entry of the Mother of God. He made his own entry into the kingdom of God. It was 4:17 in the afternoon.
His body remained supple and warm, and the shout which escaped the lips of thousands of people: ‘Saint! You’re a saint’, bore witness to the feelings of the faithful concerning the late Elder Iakovos. Now, after his blessed demise, he intercedes for everyone at the throne of God, with special and exceptional confidence. Hundreds of the faithful can confirm that he’s been a benefactor to them.
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