Learning of his death, the fathers, priests and monks came to bury the sacred remains of the monk. And God, Who glorifies those who glorify Him, glorified this saint after death in the following way. When the brethren sang the Funeral Service, all the animals of the wilderness gathered and stood quietly until he was buried, after which each one shouted loudly in his own way, and all fled again. After forty days the brethren came to the cell of the monk and served the All-Night Vigil, after which they opened the tomb in order to take his honorable relics to the monastery, but (O Thy ineffable miracles, O Christ the King!) they did not find his body there, and to this day no one knows where it is, only God, to Whom belongs glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

The Life and Deeds of Our Venerable and God-bearing Father Gregory the Sinaite, Who Asceticized in the Fourteenth Century

 This divine Gregory was a native of the Asia Minor village of Koukoulos, near Klazomenou, and was descended from parents who were rich and noble, and at the same time God-fearing and virtuous. Diligently educated by them, he was given over to teachers, from whom he learned the divine and sacred sciences. At that time (then reigned the great Andronicus Palaiologos) the Hagarian family attacked Asia, plundered it and enslaved almost all the Christians there. Together with them, the divine Gregory was enslaved with his parents and brothers. They were brought to Laodicea, and by God's Providence the barbarians allowed them to go to church. During the usual psalmody and doxology, the local Christians, seeing that they stood with great reverence, sang beautifully and were taught music, were amazed at their piety and singing; immediately after their dismissal they came to the Hagarites and, having given them much money, ransomed Gregory and his family from slavery. After this, the divine Gregory went to Cyprus. He lived there for a short time, but everyone loved his virtue and natural gifts. His pleasant face indicated the inner state of his divine soul, and his modesty, piety and reverence for God amazed everyone, and the people greatly revered Gregory.

 At the time when the venerable Gregory was living on the island, God, Who knew of his strong love for virtue living in his heart, pointed out to him a certain virtuous monk who asceticized in silence. Gregory immediately came to the monk with joy, was clothed by him in monastic garb and became a novice. Having spent some time with the elder, he repeatedly talked with him on spiritual topics, and then went to Mount Sinai, where he was tonsured a monk. Together with the cutting of his hair, Gregory cut off all desires and movements of the flesh and with great spiritual courage continued his ascetic labors. A little time passed, and the fathers there were amazed at his almost immaterial bodiless life in fasting, vigil, all-night vigil, incessant psalmody and prayer, and a little more, and they would have begun to think that he was indeed bodiless.

 In obedience, the root and mother of virtues, and in uplifting humility, he was so skilful that it is difficult to describe them separately, otherwise it may seem to the lazy that I am speaking of the incredible for the sake of exaggeration. At the same time, it is precisely because of the sloths that I am not going to hush up the truth and will write about what I heard from his closest disciple, St. Gerasimus. This blessed one told me that the divine Gregory fulfilled with diligence and all zeal the obedience assigned to him by the superior, as if the Most High God had seen him, and never omitted even the usual fraternal rule. In the evening, having bowed down to the abbot according to custom and having received a blessing from him, the monk entered his cell. Having closed the door, he raised his hands and mind to God, and, completely withdrawing from this material world and trying to draw closer to God, with extraordinary zeal he began the rule. All night long he sang psalms to God and prayed with strong heartfelt desire and genuflections, until he had finished all the psalms of David, the singing of which gave him joy. Then in the morning, when they knocked on the beat, the monk, according to custom, was the first to find himself at the door of the church. He was always so strict with himself that he never left the church until the end of the service. Thus, Gregory entered the temple first, and left last. His food was only bread and water, and even then in such quantities as only to maintain life in the body. Gregory had been fulfilling the obedience of a cook and baker for more than three years, and had never even thought of serving people; on the contrary, he was sure that he was serving the ranks of angels, and he considered the place of his obedience to be the true altar of God and altar. In addition, almost every day he ascended to the top of Mount Sinai to worship the place where the famous great miracles were performed. The monk was very skilled in calligraphy, and he devoted himself to reading so much that day and night he diligently selected sayings from the Old and New Testaments, and tried to fill them in. I do not know if there was a father who studied the Holy Scriptures as well as he did, and who surpassed all the fathers there in knowledge. However, the evil devil could not calmly observe the feats of the monk. He secretly led the monks into a passion of envy and, being a sower of tares, sowed great confusion and agitation in them. Gregory, a disciple of the meek and peace-loving Jesus, realizing that the monks envied him, secretly left the monastery, taking with him Gerasimus, who was a native of the island of Euripus and was a relative of the ruler of the island - Riga. Despising wealth, glory and noble birth, renouncing the world and what is in the world, Gerasim came to Mount Sinai, where he met the divine Gregory. Struck by his extreme virtue, Gerasimus became one of his disciples and, with the help of God, attained a high level of activity and contemplation, becoming after the great Gregory an example for others.

 Leaving Sinai, they came to Jerusalem to venerate the Life-Giving Sepulchre. Having visited the holy places, the ascetic boarded a ship and sailed to Crete to a place called Good Havens, where the monk with great zeal began to seek a calm and quiet place to live. After a long search, they finally found quiet caves and happily settled there. Immediately that good worker began to apply labor to labor, podvig to podvig, in a certain way struggling with himself with even greater courage. His food was bread and water once a day, but there was nothing else, although there was a danger of dying of thirst. The face of the monk acquired a yellow hue from dry eating, the limbs of the body dried up and were exhausted by many labors, weakened from physical exertion and incapable of any other action. In addition, the blessed one tried to find a spiritual man who could instruct him in what he himself could not understand in the Holy Scriptures and what he had not been taught by the spirit-bearing divine fathers.

 God, in response to his pleas, sent him such a husband. In a divine revelation He showed the divine Gregory and revealed his desire to a certain hermit named Arsenius, who was silent in those parts and was adorned with pious deeds and Divine contemplation. Moved by the Spirit of God, Arsenius came to the cell of the monk, knocked at the door and was received by him with great joy. After the usual prayer and greeting, Arsenius began the conversation as if from some divine book, speaking about the guarding of the mind, about sobriety, about prayer, about mental prayer and how the mind is purified through the fulfillment of the commandments and becomes like light. Having spoken about this and many other things, the elder, turning to the monk, asked: "And you, child, what work do you do?" Then the divine Gregory from the very beginning told him everything about himself: about his departure from the world, about his love for wilderness, and about all his actions. The Divine Arsenius, knowing perfectly well the path that elevates a person to the height of virtue, remarked with a smile: "Child, all that you have told me about, the God-bearing fathers call deeds, but not visions." Hearing these words, Blessed Gregory immediately fell down at his feet and began to fervently beseech, adjuring by God, to teach what there is mental prayer, silence and guarding of the mind. That Divine father, accepting the request of the monk as a kind of find, did not hesitate to teach him everything, omitting nothing of what he himself had generously received with the help of Divine grace. In addition, the elder revealed to him what happens to those who strive in the feat of virtue, for they are attacked right and left by the haters of good, demons, and envious people, whom the evil one uses as an instrument of his malice. Arseny told Grigory about all this in detail.

 After this conversation, Gregory immediately decided to sail to the Holy Mountain. Having visited all the monasteries, cells, sketes, and even the hard-to-reach cells of the hermits, he considered it fair to meet with all the fathers and give them due veneration for the sake of prayer and blessing. And, as he himself said, on Athos Gregory met a multitude of ascetics, adorned with prudence, modesty and many other virtues. All of them applied all their zeal to the work of virtue. When he asked whether they were engaged in mental prayer, whether they gave themselves over to sobriety and the guarding of the mind, they replied that they did not even know what mental prayer, the guarding of the mind, and sobriety were.

 Having walked around the entire Holy Mountain, the monk finally came to the skete of Magula, opposite the venerable monastery of Philotheus. There he met three monks: Isaiah, Cornelius and Macarius, who were engaged not only in active virtues, but also in a little contemplative ones. Having labored much together with his disciples, he built cells there. At a short distance from them, he built for himself a hesychastiry, in order to converse alone with the One God by means of mental prayer and propitiate Him with active virtues. It was then that the monk remembered the instruction of the honorable Arsenius, and what he had told him about the guarding of the mind, sobriety and mental prayer. Having subdued all the senses in himself, uniting his mind with the spirit and nailing himself to the Cross of Christ, he often repeated: "Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." Praying thus with tenderness and contrition of heart, with sighing from the depths of his soul, he constantly wept and tears flowed from his eyes like a river. For these tears, the Lord did not despise his prayers: "Thou shalt not despise a contrite and humble heart, O God" (Psalm 50:19), for: "the righteous cry out, and the Lord hears" (Psalm 33:18). Under the influence of the Holy Spirit, his soul and heart were inflamed, and having been changed by a good and wondrous change, enlightened by Divine grace, the monk saw that his cell was filled with light. Filled with joy and inexpressible gladness, shedding again streams of tears, he was wounded by Divine love, for truly the words of Him who said were fulfilled in him: "Action is the way to contemplation." For the monk left the flesh and this world, and was filled with Divine love. From that time on, the light unceasingly shone on the righteous, according to what is said: "The light of the righteous is always" (Proverbs 13:9). When I (Blessed Kallistos) and other disciples asked the ever-memorable one about the meaning of these words, he answered: "He who, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, is exalted in God, beholds as in a mirror all creation in the world, "whether in the body I do not know, whether outside the body I do not know," as the Apostle Paul says (2 Cor. 12:2), until someone prevents it, forcing him to come to his senses."

 Simply and completely without any curiosity, I asked him various questions when Gregory came out of the cell with a cheerful face and meekly looked at me. You, spiritual fathers, know how much more you love your last spiritual children in comparison with the first. In the same way, my blessed spiritual father showed more love for me as for his last spiritual child, and I whispered to him as a loving father. And he answered me thus:

 - The soul that clings to God and is wounded by His love will rise above every creature, will live above the entire visible world and will unite with the desire of God. She will not be able to hide herself, as the Lord Himself promised her, saying: "Your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you openly" (Matt. 6:4). And again: "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven" (Matt. 5:16). For the heart trembles and rejoices, the mind is poured out, the face becomes cheerful and joyful, as the wise man said: "A cheerful heart makes the face cheerful" (Proverbs 15:13).

 I asked him again:

 "Divine Father, teach me, for the love of truth, what the soul is, and what the saints say about it.

 With his characteristic meekness, he answered: