St Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain

Born on the island of Naxos and educated in Smyrna, Nikodemos came to Mount Athos in 1775 and gave his extraordinary learning and memory wholly to the Church. With St Macarius of Corinth he compiled and published the Philokalia, the great anthology of texts on prayer of the heart from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries, a book whose influence on modern Orthodox spirituality is beyond measure. He edited the Pedalion or 'Rudder,' the standard Greek collection of the sacred canons with his commentaries, adapted 'Unseen Warfare' for Orthodox readers, wrote lives of the saints and manuals on confession, and with the Kollyvades fathers defended frequent Holy Communion when the practice had grown rare. He labored as a simple monk without ordination to the priesthood, in poverty and constant writing, until his repose in 1809. He was canonized in 1955, and his books remain daily companions of Orthodox Christians.