THE FEAST OF SAINT GERASIMOS MIKRAYIANNANITIS THE HYMNOGRAPHER AT THE PATRIARCHATE

On Thursday, November 24th / December 7th, 2023, the Patriarchate celebrated the commemoration of our Holy Father Gerasimos of Mount Athos, the Mikrayiannanitis and hymnographer of the Church.

On this day, the whole Church, especially Mount Athos, and even the Church of Jerusalem remembers that Saint Gerasimos was born in 1903 in Northern Epirus, came to the Holy Land in 1922 at the Holy Monastery of Little Saint Anne and became a monk in 1924. As a self-taught, well-taught hymn writer, you wrote many hymns, praising the Holy Trinity, Jesus Christ, the Mother of God and the Saints, speaking in the gift of the great hymn writers of the Church. He was recognized as a hymnographer of the Great Church of Christ in 1959, living in the extreme of virtue and holiness and as St. Paisios said: “incarnating the whole of Mount Athos in himself”. He was a pilgrim of the Holy Land and counted among the liturgical deltas of the Church through a Synodical Decision of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the year 2023, to be celebrated on November 24th / December 7th of each year. A lot of information about his life and his work can be found in the works of the Metropolitan Panteleimon of Veroia, Naousa and Campania, “Taught by God – The Canonization of Saint Gerasimos the Hymnographer the Mikrayannanitis” and “Saint Gerasimos the Hymnographer”.

In the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, his commemoration was celebrated in the Holy Monastery of the Archangels with Vespers on Wednesday afternoon and the Divine Liturgy on Thursday morning and by veneration of a part of his holy relics. The service was officiated by the renovator and Hegoumen of the Holy Monastery Holy Monastery, His Eminence Archbishop Dimitrios of Lydda, who started his monastic life in Mount Athos and joined the Holy Sepulchre Brotherhood in 1987.

From Secretariat–General