Saint Hilarion settled in Dionysiata, where 14 monks lived under the leadership of Abbot Eulogius (the rest of the brethren labored on the islands of Poros, Zakynthos and Skopelos and returned to the monastery on June 6, 1830). But since there, as in other Athonite monasteries, there was a Turkish garrison (in Dionysiata - more than 50 people), Hilarion soon moved to a cave near the monastery, where he labored for 2.5 years. Then Hilarion spent another 3.5 years in the Katunaki caves in silence, eating only herbs, roots and chestnuts. His spiritual father at that time was the Athonite elder Neophytos (Karamanlis).
Once a certain monk was collecting snails near the cave of Hilarion the Gruzin. Having discovered an old man in it, exhausted from illness and hunger, the monk gave him the snails and told him about the ascetic in the nearest hermitages; the monks began to bring him food and seek spiritual advice. Constrained by a significant number of visitors, Hilarion, having asked for a blessing from Paul, the rector of the New Skete in honor of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, went into seclusion, taking refuge in the tower of the New Skete, where he spent about 3 years. The resident of the monastery, monk Gerasim, brought him crackers and water every 15 days.
Monk Gerasim repeatedly witnessed how demons appeared to St. Hilarion. One day he found the elder half-dead, beaten by “countless regiments of demons marching to his pier (tower) from the very sands of St. Paul, over a distance of half an hour’s journey.” The elder was taken out of the tower and called priest. Venedikt (Kiotishvili), and he convinced the hermit to leave the seclusion. The elder was transferred to the cell of St. Charalampia, “where Fr. took care of him. Benedict", then into the Dionysian kathisma of St. James, brother of the Lord. But since disputes soon arose among the brethren in Dionysiata about how often Communion should be taken, and each side tried to enlist Hilarion’s support, the elder, after 2 months, moved to the Iveron Monastery, where he lived for 6 months (1836). Here he began dismantling the cargo. books and compiled the 1st cargo catalogue. libraries. Jerome.
Anthony Svyatogorets also points out that Hilarion the Gruzin made extracts from books and manuscripts (mainly the lives of saints), amounting to 12 volumes, which were published in the Georgian language in Russia by Abbot Zograf under the title “Flower Garden” and without indicating the author.
Having recovered from his illness, Hilarion moved to the Iveron cell of St. John the Theologian, where Georgian monks labored and where he “found true silence.” Two brothers - calligrapher Macarius and Savva (the later famous Athonite ascetic Elder Savva the New (1821-1908)) - begged him to take them under his command. Hilarion was glad to have Greek students: Savva helped him improve in the Greek language. At the request of the Russian monks, Hilarion accepted confession at the Russian Great Martyr Panteleimon Monastery (Rusik). In order to avoid idle talk, he went for 5-10 days to Elder Benedict (Kiotishvili) in the Iveron cell of the prophet. Elijah. However, even there the sufferers found him, and the elder soon moved to the cell of St. that was built for him. Arkhangelov, and in 1843 he moved to the Dionysian cell of St. James, brother of the Lord. Refusing the title of confessor, Hilarion was still forced to accept those who came for spiritual advice. Soon they began to call him “the confessor of the confessors of Athos.” Needing solitude, he periodically went for several days to the Dionysian kathisma of St. Onufria.
In Aug. 1849 I. G. was visited by the church historian and writer A. N. Muravyov, who had heard about the ascetic from P. Ioseliani, who studied Georgian manuscripts on Mount Athos. Muravyov called the elder “an invaluable treasure - a hermit, of which there are few on Athos” and mentioned that the elder “for the sake of extreme humility refused to serve in the priesthood” (Muravyov. 1851. Vol. 1. pp. 290-292). In 1851, Hilarion the Gruzin’s disciple Macarius met a blessed death, and Savva was ordained a deacon, then a priest.
A letter from Hieromonk Savva to the monk Denasius, who labored in Rusika, has been preserved, where he describes with what deep anxiety the Monk Hilarion reacted to the news of the beginning of the Crimean War of 1853-1856. Having learned that the Patriarch of Constantinople Anthimus VI (Ioannidis) issued a decree on reading a prayer in all Athonite monasteries for the granting of victory to the Turks, the elder “was horrified and said: “He is not a Christian!”” (Antony Svyatogorets. 1985. P. 70). According to the prediction of I.G., the monks of the monastery of Grigoriat (see St. Gregory the Monk Monastery on Athos) who were reading a prayer incurred the wrath of God: a stream of water demolished the mill, and a murmur arose in the monastery. The abbot and the brethren begged Elder Hilarion to show them how to ask for God's forgiveness, and followed all his instructions. According to archim. Cherubim (Karambelas), in 1854, the officers of a Russian sailing ship that dropped anchor at Dionysiatus, by order of the Russian emperor. Nicholas I turned to Saint Hilarion to find out the outcome of the war.
The elder, who did not want to be revered as a prophet, refused, but on the 3rd day, yielding to persuasion, he said: “Russia will endure difficulties, it will not win, but it will not lose territories either” (Cherub (Karambelas). 2000. P. 326).
In 1857, a conflict arose in Dionysiata due to the fact that a prosphora man who kept cats lived in a prosphora. St. Hilarion accused the abbot of the monastery of Eulogius of neglecting the saint and advised him to build a more spacious room for prosphora - “at least half” of the abbot’s new cell. The angry abbot forced the elder to leave the monastery, and Saint Hilarion moved to the group of Kalivas of the Lesser St. Anna, located near the cave where he had previously labored. A certain merchant purchased for him the kathisma of St. who belonged to the monastery. Onuphriya, where the elder lived for 5 years. The altar of the cell needed significant repairs, but the monastery did not have the funds for this. The money appeared miraculously: one monk from the Great Lavra, busy collecting funds for his monastery, met a certain woman in Wallachia who handed him 20 ducats and asked him to give it to Hilarion the Gruzin. As it turned out later, the elder did not know who she was, and, deciding that the money was not for him, he ordered it to be distributed to the poor.
However, the council of the Lavra decided to use these funds to rebuild the church in the elder’s cell: at the request of Hilarion, the new church was consecrated in honor of the Resurrection of Christ.
In 1859, the elder was visited by the manager of the office of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, P. I. Salomon, and the official of special assignments, K. K. Zederholm (later hieromonk of the Optina Hermitage Clement), who arrived to resolve spiritual and church issues: Salomon’s letter to the elder dated 1862 and the answer of St. Hilarion, dated February 4, 1863, were preserved. In 1859, an event that became famous outside of Athos took place. Jerome. Gregory from the monastery is right. Anna (Big St. Anne) and the abbot of the Kutlumush monastery “accepted English citizenship and passport.” Hilarion Gruzin imposed penance on Hieromonk Gregory - he excommunicated him from liturgical services for 40 days. However, Abbot Kutlumush, declaring that Hieromonk Gregory “listens to a man who understands nothing further than his wild desert,” ordered the service and commemoration of the name of the English Protestant envoy at the proskomedia.
The confessor of Hieromonk Gregory and Elder Hilarion tightened the penance, but the abbot, having learned about this, reviled both elders and forced the hieromonk to reject them. After the liturgy, Hierom. Gregory started bleeding from his nose, which could not be stopped, and he died.
In 1862, Hilarion Gruzin and Hieromonk Savva moved to Rusik and settled in the cell of the Pechersk monks, and a year later - in the cell of the great martyr, built especially for the elder by his Russian admirer from Ostrogozhsk E. G. Khabarov. George, the church in which was consecrated in October of that year. At the same time, the elder was visited by the chief prosecutor of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, gr. A. P. Tolstoy (1856-1862). However, a conversation with the elder, about whom the count had heard a lot from his wife, the Georgian princess A. G. Gruzinskaya, created a favorable impression of Athos.