Father Charalambos, the komboskoinas—the monk who made prayer ropes—used to tell us that he had been blessed to behold many things: the Panagia (the Most Holy Theotokos), holy angels, and that many miracles had happened to him.
One day, we were going down to Stavronikita Monastery with other students, and we saw him lying in a ditch where the water ran alongside the road.
Vehicles were constantly passing by and raising clouds of dust, while he was sitting there making a prayer rope. His clothes—old and worn-out as they were—looked as though they were shining, as if they were made of silk; not a speck of dust seemed to touch him.
He had a field where he grew broad beans. I remember one day when we went there, he had climbed into a hole in the field, put some grass inside it, and, because the poor man’s legs hurt, he had raised them slightly. He was constantly making prayer ropes and continually saying the Jesus Prayer. This really struck us. He kept saying the prayer without stopping at all.
We called out to him:
“Elder Charalambos, where are you?”
“Here I am! I’m here!”
We searched and searched among the broad beans and eventually found him lying in a ditch.
For a period of time, he lived in a cell here in Karyes, dedicated to Saint Charalambos, behind the Church of the Protaton.
One day he was sitting on the veranda of his cell, making a prayer rope. As he leaned against the railing—which was already rather unstable—the railing gave way under his weight, since he was a very large man, and he fell down. He cried out:
“My Panagia, am I going to leave this life by this kind of death?”
Below him there were nothing but rocks; he would certainly have been killed. At that very moment, an invisible force came and placed him back on the balcony, and he found himself sitting there once again.
I met Elder Charalambos, the “Komboskoinas,” as everyone on the Holy Mountain called him, in the 1990s. He was a tall, slightly stooped old man—a truly holy elder!—and always smiling.
Whenever you saw him, he was making a prayer rope! Day or night! He had become so practiced that he did not need to look in order to pull the cords correctly while weaving the prayer rope. Those who know how to make them understand how difficult that is.
He spoke very little and was usually silent. Measured and careful, I do not think he ever scolded or offended anyone. What characterized him, however, was his extraordinary simplicity! He was so simple that you sometimes wondered whether he was… making fun of you!
One day we went to his cell to visit him with another brother. We went down a winding little path and suddenly heard his characteristic voice:
“Careful, or you’ll ruin my garden!”
I looked to the right and left… Where was the garden? And then I understood! Along the path, the blessed elder had thrown some broad beans, which—rather amazingly—had sprouted and produced a few… stray little beans that you could hardly even see.
That was his… garden! And he always ate them raw.
When we reached his cell, we looked around for him. Where on earth had that voice come from? Eventually, we discovered him inside a hole in the ground that he had dug for himself. He was lying there with his legs slightly raised because he suffered from phlebitis, naturally making a prayer rope as always.
“What are you doing in here, Elder?”
“Well, I’m sitting here where it’s cool… Welcome! Let me offer you something…”
He got up with difficulty and went into his little hut. A short while later, he returned carrying a miserable plastic bowl containing some loukoumia (turkish delights). From the way I discovered a little later, when I tried to bite into one, that they must have been several… decades old, I suppose they had been sitting there for quite some time.
“Wonderful! Now some water…”
He went inside again and returned carrying some old tins of squid. In the old days, these were given to us as “transits” (duty-free goods), and we called them “Portoles” because the brand was called Portola.
Beside his hut there was a hose. He unscrewed it from the fitting and water began to flow. He rinsed out the little tins and put fresh water into them so that he could offer us a drink.
“Here you are!"
I looked at the little tin and then at the brother who had come with me. Inside the tin was a layer of some indeterminate-colored substance covering the bottom and reaching several inches up the sides.
He smiled and drank it, saying:
“The refreshment of the desert, blessed one!”
I could not do it, I admit! I discreetly poured mine out beside me.
How did this blessed old man live there? Inside his little hut there was no roof except over one side; the other side was completely exposed to the rain.
“But Elder, what do you do when it rains?”
“Blessed one, I have my bed on the other side. Can’t you see?”
His so-called “bed” was a wooden construction almost attached to the ceiling, so that it would catch the heat, as the good-natured elder explained.
As for the heat… he had a small stove that was filled from the top. In order to fit large pieces of wood inside, he covered the opening with a… gasoline can so as to enlarge the stove’s opening!
You actually thought it was a good thing that the hut had no roof, because surely Elder Charalambos would have suffocated from all the smoke!
The amusing thing was that he was also… inventive and innovative! He was the first person on the Holy Mountain to buy a chainsaw. And when people told him to be careful in case the chain came loose and flew off and cut him, what did he devise?
He took pieces of stove pipe and put them over his arms and legs, and two sheets of metal over his chest and back.
He looked like… RoboCop!
Once, a pilgrim gave him a pressure cooker. So the blessed elder took it to cook with, but he placed it directly on the fire with the wood. As a result, the rubber seal around the lid immediately burned away, and the pressure cooker ended up functioning like… an ordinary cooking pot.
When he was staying at the Koutloumousiou Skete, he would go to the Kyriakon for the Sunday Divine Liturgy. In those days, they did not light stoves inside the churches on Mount Athos. The poor man would get cold, and because he could not endure the many hours, he would wrap a blanket around himself over his cassock, without caring that the other monks and pilgrims were watching him.
As a result, they gave him the nickname “Abbas Sindonios” (“Father Blanket”).
The most memorable story about him, however, happened when a monk asked him for the cell he owned and lived in beside the Protaton in Karyes.
He immediately agreed to give it to him, even though he was already an old man, approaching eighty. He handed the cell over and went to live in a remote Stavronikita cell in the wilderness of Kapsala.
One morning, a prolonged noise was heard in the square of Karyes, sounding as though cooking pots were rolling down the road…
Fathers, shopkeepers, and pilgrims came out of the shops, and what did they see?
Elder Charalambos, completely unperturbed, making a prayer rope, with a rope tied around his waist and pulling all his belongings behind him!
A cooking pot, then a little further back a small coffee pot, then the box containing the beads for making prayer ropes, a small gardening tool, and so on he went…
Whatever money he earned from the prayer ropes, he would usually give away, either to monks who were struggling or to the students of the Athoniada Ecclesiastical Academy.
Toward the end of his life, he was cared for by the good fathers of Stavronikita Monastery, from where he departed for heaven in 1998.
We lost an old Athonite monk, a genuine expression of the Holy Fathers’ tradition of “living in obscurity”—of living quietly and without seeking recognition.
Unknown among all, he lived with joy and a smile in the simplicity of the life to come.
May we have his blessing and prayers.
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