Repose (1991)

St. Iakovos Tsalikis reposed at his Monastery of Venerable David the Elder on 21 November 1991, at the age of seventy-one, after a final illness. His death fell on one of the great feasts of the Church — the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple — a coincidence his tradition reads as fitting for a saint whose whole life was the Divine Liturgy.

Tradition: Greek Orthodox (20th-c. elder; glorified 2017)

The Last Years and Final Illness

The last years of Iakovos’s life were marked by the physical cost of his eldership and by illness. The crushing labor of receiving thousands of pilgrims, hearing confessions for long hours, and governing the monastery, borne by a man already austere with himself, told on his health (monastery biography, in The Garden of the Holy Spirit; the toll of the pilgrimage is standard in the accounts; see Spiritual Fatherhood). The accounts report that in his final period he suffered from ill health, and that his death followed an illness — a pneumonia — that overtook him at the monastery (Bousias, “Elder Iakovos Tsalikes,” trans. Sanidopoulos, 2014, that he died “at the monastery after pneumonia”). He had continued, as far as his strength allowed, to celebrate the Liturgy and to receive those who came to him, faithful to the priesthood and the fatherhood that were his life to the end.

The Day of His Death

Iakovos reposed on 21 November 1991, at the age of seventy-one, at his Monastery of Venerable David the Elder near Rovies in Evia (Wikipedia summary of the monastery biography, followed to The Garden of the Holy Spirit; Bousias, trans. Sanidopoulos, 2014; the date 21 November 1991 and the age of 71 are given consistently across the accounts). He died where he had lived for nearly forty years, within the walls of the monastery he had entered as a ruin and left restored, in the company of the community he had gathered and near the relics of the saint he had served.

The Feast of the Entrance of the Theotokos

The day of his death carries, for his tradition, a particular significance. 21 November is the feast of the Entrance (Presentation) of the Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple — one of the twelve Great Feasts of the Orthodox Church year, commemorating the tradition that the child Mary was brought by her parents to the Temple in Jerusalem and entered even into the Holy of Holies, dedicated to God (on the Great Feasts, see Orthodoxy: The Great Feasts; on the Mother of God, St. the Theotokos). That Iakovos should die on this feast is read by his tradition as deeply fitting: a saint whose entire life was oriented to the Temple and the altar — who had learned the Liturgy before he could read and celebrated it daily, tearfully, to the end — passed from this life on the feast that celebrates the entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple of God. The saint of the Liturgy died on a feast of the Temple.

The coincidence also fixes the two dates by which the Church now remembers him: he reposed on 21 November, the feast of the Entrance; and his feast as a saint is kept on 22 November, the day after — the leave-taking of his death-day, so that his commemoration follows immediately upon the great Marian feast on which he died (see Glorification (2017)). By the older (Julian) calendar reckoning his commemoration corresponds to 5 December; the Church of Greece and the monastery keep the feast on 22 November.

The Death of a Local Saint

Iakovos’s death in 1991 was, in the immediate perception of those around him, the death of a saint. He had been regarded as holy in his lifetime — the mother’s deathbed prophecy, the ordaining bishop’s “you will become a saint,” the soldiers’ half-mocking “Father Iakovos” had all, in their way, anticipated it (see Piety, Poverty, and the Army; Arrival at the Ruined Monastery (1951–52)) — and his repose was received not as an ending but as the beginning of his heavenly intercession. The veneration that had gathered around him in life did not disperse at his death but intensified at his tomb, and the reported miracles began at once (see The Relics and Reported Miracles). Within twenty-six years, that immediate and growing cult would carry him to formal glorification by the Ecumenical Patriarchate (see Glorification (2017)).

It is worth noting the poignant near-simultaneity of the elders’ deaths: St. Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia had died on 2 December 1991, only days after Iakovos, so that two of the “three great elders” of contemporary Greece reposed within a fortnight of one another in that late autumn (on the grouping, see Friendship with Paisios and Porphyrios; St. Porphyrios). The generation of the great modern Greek elders was passing; Paisios would follow in 1994.

See Also

• The Relics and Reported Miracles — the cult and the posthumous miracles that began at his repose
• Glorification (2017) — the feast of 22 November and the formal recognition
• The Divine Liturgy of Elder Iakovos — the liturgical life that makes the feast of his death fitting
• Orthodoxy: The Great Feasts — the Entrance of the Theotokos, the feast of his repose
• St. Porphyrios — the fellow elder who died days later in the same season

References

• Bousias, Haralambos M. “Elder Iakovos Tsalikes, the Long-Range Star of Evia.” Trans. John Sanidopoulos. johnsanidopoulos.com, 20 November 2014. (Death on 21 November 1991 at the monastery, after pneumonia.)
• The Garden of the Holy Spirit: Saint Iakovos of Evia. Monastery of Venerable David the Elder, Rovies, Evia. (The last illness; the circumstances of his repose.)
• “Iakovos of Evia.” Reference summary used to locate the death date (21 November 1991) and age (71); followed to the monastery biography. (Also: feast 22 November; the correspondence to 5 December on the older calendar.)
• On the feast of the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple (21 November): the Orthodox liturgical calendar and the Great Feasts.