St. “Papa” Tychon (Tikhon) of Mt. Athos

Описание: St. “Papa” Tychon (Tikhon) of Mt. Athos

(Commemorated September 10 o.c. / 23 n.c.)

St. “Papa”-Tychon (Tikhon) was the spiritual father of St. Paisios of Mt. Athos. He was born Timothy Golegof in Novaya Mikhalovka, Russia, in 1884, from pious parents, Pavel and Elena.

When he was 17, they gave him their blessing to go on a pilgrimage to the monasteries of Russia for 3 years. Completing that, he moved on to the God-trodden Mountain, Mount Sinai, for two months, and settled in the Holy Land, beyond the Jordan, to live as an ascetic for a while. Unfortunately, the Elder couldn’t find his peace there because of the many pilgrims and was forced to leave. He had visited over 200 monasteries in search of deeper spiritual formation before eventually settling on Mount Athos.
 
On the Holy Mountain (Mt. Athos), Papa Tychon lived for 5 years at the cell of Bourazeri (a dependency of Hilandar), and then got a blessing to move to a cave in Karoulia, where he lived as an ascetic for 15 years. All these years that he stayed at Karoulia, he spent his time in fierce struggles. His ‘handiwork’ was to make great and small prostrations, as well as to say the Jesus Prayer and to study. He struggled with “Philotimo” - a term St. Paisios often used to mean “the love shown by humble people” - to become an angel internally, too, not merely externally by wearing the angelic habit (being a monk).
 
Eventually, Papa-Tychon left Karoulia as well and moved to Kapsala, at the southernmost tip of Athos (above Kaliagra) to a cell belonging to the Monastery of Stavroniketa. There, he looked after an infirm, an elderly monk for a time. After the elder died, he received his blessing to stay there. In St. Paisios’s words, “Divine grace revealed him to people and many, who were suffering, ran to him to consult him and be comforted through his great love.” It seemed that although he was Russian, Papa Tychon became a spiritual father to Orthodox Christians of all ethnicities, his great disciple, St. Paisios, for instance, being Greek.
 
Seeing the great need of these people, Papa Tychon yielded to their entreaties that he be ordained, so that he could hear formal confessions. He providentially received a donation from America through the head of Prophet Elias Skete, and hired some monks to build a chapel at the cell dedicated to the Precious Cross. There, according to St. Paisios, he celebrated spiritually every day with his prayer rule, which combined the mourning of the Cross and the brightness of the Resurrection, with his great ascesis and almost no human consolation in the hollow of Kaliagra, where he gazed at heaven and lived the joys of Paradise with the Angels and Saints. When anyone asked him, “Do you live all alone in the desert?” the Elder would reply: “No, I live with the Angels and Archangels, with all the Saints, with the Mother of God and with Christ.”
 
Once, a man attempted to rob him, even going so far as to tie a rope around his neck in order to force him to give up his money, of which of course he had none. When the police finally caught the thief, they tried to get Papa Tychon to testify against him, but he replied, “But, my child, I forgave the thief with all my heart.”

Whenever he would have a visitor, after praying with them in the chapel and visiting for a while, Papa Tychon would get up with great joy and say: “Now, I have a treat for you.”

According to St. Paisios, who lived with Papa Tychon at that time, (in 1968) the latter “had a presentiment (premonition) of his death, because he continually referred to death.” After the feast of the Dormition, he became bedridden and did not want anyone with him for some time so that his prayer would not be interrupted. Then, in the last ten days of his life, he asked St. Paisios to stay with him. Because he could no longer go to the Chapel of the Precious Cross, where he had celebrated the liturgy for so many years, he asked St. Paisios to bring him the Cross from the Altar “as a consolation.”
 
Witnesses recounted extraordinary spiritual experiences surrounding him, including accounts of his appearing illuminated during prayer. According to tradition, he foresaw his own death after a vision of the Virgin Mary and passed away peacefully two days after the feast of the Nativity of the Mother of God on September 10, 1968.

St. Paisios said of Papa Tychon that, Papa Tychon would be taken up in spiritual contemplation for twenty to thirty minutes and the chanter was obliged to repeat the Hymn many times, until he heard the footsteps of the Elder at the Great Entrance. When the service was over and he asked the Elder what he saw, he replied: “The Cherubim and the Seraphim glorifying God!” And he went on to say: “After half an hour, my guardian angel brings me back down and then I continue with the Divine Liturgy.”