“This old Elder, good willed and everything else, and indeed a struggler in his monastic duties remained with this delusion until he was very old… Nevertheless I was informed with great joy… That a little before the elders death he retracted all that he believed and said, foreseeing his sin, “Forget everything I told you. I am shortly leaving for the other life.” After his holy repose and the end of my anxiety a contemporary co-struggler of his solved my question saying: ‘This Elder passed the first stage of his life in obedience. Since he pleased his Elder he desired greater physical struggles. He went to the desert and performed his monastic duties with precision and frequently took communion. Well he was protected because he had sound foundations and the evil one did not have the power to finish him off despite deluding and deriding him his whole life.”
Abbot Haralambos
~Abbot Haralambos Dionysiatis