Venerable Eustratius the Wonderworker (IX)

The Venerable Eustratius was born in the city of Tarsus. At twenty the saint secretly left his family, came to the Agauros monastery (on Olympus, in Asia Minor), and settled there. He lived a strict, abstinent life: he fed only on bread and water and spent his nights in prayer. The brothers chose the monk, filled with divine love, as hegumen of the monastery. In the reign of the iconoclast Leo the Armenian (813–820) the Venerable Eustratius escaped persecution and hid in the mountains and deserts. He prayed without ceasing.

Before his death the hegumen instructed the brothers: do not be nailed to earthly well-being, think constantly of eternal life. Then he made the sign of the cross and, with the words “Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit”, reposed in peace at the age of ninety-five.