Elder Chrysostom: "Farewelling" for Eternal Life a soldier of justice in the Holy Landtranslated

By Maria Yachnaki

I have met many heroes over the years as a journalist and traveled to most parts of the world to meet them. But perhaps Elder Chrysostomos, the abbot of Saint Gerasimos in the Jericho Desert, was a unique case.

He arrived many years ago at the ruined monastery in the desert when it still had rags instead of doors, when there was no water, when no one wanted to go there, when the soldiers were passing by for the Jordanian war outside his monastery after the fighting raged, when the local soldiers beat him because they thought he was hiding extremists, when he was deafened by the wood when he went out barefoot on the sand dunes and begged tourists to restore the monastery.... when … when ….

And he made the monastery an oasis in the desert, with his love, his perseverance and his self-sacrifice. I admired him, as I have admired some others there in the Holy Land, because he was not afraid to clash, to fight for the rights of pilgrims, for the land of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem. He fed people and cosmaki, lived the orphans of the area because he gave them work, aged all of them...