Elder Paisius the Athonite on Faith

"I remember an elderly monk at Esphigmenou Monastery on Mount Athos who was so simple that he thought "Ascension" was the name of a woman saint. He prayed to her on his prayer rope, "Saint of God, intercede for us!" Once, he had to feed a sick brother in the infirmary and had nothing to offer him. He immediately went down the stairs, opened a window overlooking the sea, stretched his arms out and said, "Ascension, my Saint, give me a little fish for the brother!" And right away, as if by miracle, a big fish jumped out of the sea and into his hands. The others who saw him were astonished, but he simply looked at them smiling, as if he were saying, 'What's so strange about what you've just seen?' And then look at us. We may know everything about the life and martyrdom of the Saints, or about when and how the Ascension took place, and yet we cannot even catch a tiny little fish! These are the strange and paradoxical things of the spiritual life, which the reasoning of those intellectuals that are centered on themselves and not on God cannot explain..."

I'm indebted to another's blog for this excerpt from Elder Paisius' Spiritual Counsels.

Greek Court Rules Against Esphigmenou

A Greek court of appeals in Thessalonica has confirmed a ruling ordering the eviction of the monks of Mount Athos' Esphigmenou Monastery because of their refusal to commemorate Patriarch Bartholomew (Arhondonis) of Constantinople. More here.

Although a number of Mount Athos' smaller communities do not commemorate Patriarch Bartholomew, Esphigmenou has so far proved to be the only of the 20 'ruling' monasteries to steadfastly refuse to commemorate him (in the 1920s all the monasteries with the exception of Vatopaidi stopped commemorating the ecumenical patriarch and several refused to do so until after the 1960s).

Mount Athos Questions Esphigmenou Visits

The Holy Community of Mount Athos has written the Ecumenical Patriarchate with concerns over recent visits of Constantinopolitan Orthodox metropolitans to the Esphigmenou Monastery, which ceased commemorating the ecumenical patriarch 38 years ago for his modernism and ecumenism and submitted to the jurisdiction of the Old Calendrist Genuine Orthodox Church of Greece (under Archbishop Kallinikos (Sarantopoulos)). The Ecumenical Patriarchate has affirmed its support for the Esphigmenou brotherhood it set up after the original brotherhood's break with Constantinople and claims it is simply exploring ways in which the schism could be healed. More on this here. More on the Esphigmenou Monastery's situation can be found here.