Kosmas the Liberator

The monk-martyr Kosmas of Aitolia (+1779) may appear at first glance to be an unlikely source of inspiration for Dixie, but a closer look reveals him to be a radiant source of hope.
 
He was born in 1714 in a rustic mountain village named Mega Dendron (Great Tree) to good Christian parents.  When he came of age, he left his home in search of deeper knowledge and wisdom.  We still have his own words about his education:

Later, in his teachings, he refers to the education he acquired: "My Christians, I wore out my life in studies forty to fifty years. I read the works of priests, and of the impious and the atheists and the heretics. The depths of wisdom I researched."


Elsewhere he said: "I learned many languages: Hebrew, Turkish, French, and from all the nations many things did I read."

His desire for God became so great at one point that he left the world and became a monk on the holy mountain of Athos:

Then he went to Philotheou Monastery. There he became a monk and took the name Kosmas and was ordained a priest. As he says himself: "I went, and on the Holy Mountain I wept for my sins for seventeen years."

But love for God overflows and becomes also love of neighbor.  This is what happened with St Kosmas; his heart broke for his fellow Greeks, who struggled under the heavy Turkish yoke.

 
Since the fall of Constantinople/New Rome in 1453, the Greeks had been ruled by the Muslim Turks, who did what they could to suffocate the Christian Faith amongst the Greeks and convert them to Islam.  Southerners should understand this tactic very well and sympathize with the Greeks, for the Yankees have done the same to Dixie:  They conquered our people in 1865 and have slowly tried to kill our love for Christ, to eradicate our Christian culture, and to replace them with the idol of Yankee Americanism (thanks to Fr Peter Heers for mentioning this similarity in a talk he gave recently).

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Father Kosmas saw all that was happening to his fellow Greeks, and the Lord called him to act:

In studying the Gospels he thought by this he could help his brethren in the best manner. He prayed and he consulted with spiritual fathers and elders. He felt that he had to leave his beloved Mount Athos, to help the suffering people. St. Nikodemos continues: "The Nation was in danger of the following: On the one hand the Turks, on the other hand the Enlightenment - the atheistic Enlightenment - of France. The faith was constantly diminishing. Islam was in triumph. The Greek language was disappearing. Whole provinces forgot Romeik [Greek] and some spoke Turkish, others Slavic, others Arvanite and others Vlach.

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There was also foreign propaganda. . . . The Saint understood the risk. The pessimistic messages had arrived at Mount Athos. He received them. He had to interrupt his asceticism in the Monastery. The Nation, the Church of Christ, awaited him. . . .


At Philotheou he felt the call from God to undertake this great work "of enlightening and regenerating his Christian brethren. The Greeks had fallen into ignorance in regards to their religion, and this resulted in much wickedness, with large numbers changing their faith from Orthodoxy to Muhammadanism. Kosmas felt this deepest. Therefore he requested and received the permission of his elders to undertake such a mission. Leaving the Holy Mountain, he went to Constantinople, met with Patriarch Seraphim (1757-1761) and received from him written permission to preach throughout Greece.

The superabundant humility of St Kosmas attracted the Grace of God to him, which endowed his preaching with great power:
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For his over two decades of rich work preaching he passed through Constantinople, Thrace, Macedonia, Thessaly, Central Greece, Peloponnesos, Epirus and the islands of the Aegean and Ionian seas. His fiery sermons were particularly successful in the hungry and tired souls of the enslaved, as his good disciple and biographer Sapfeiros Christodoulides says: "Wherever the thrice-blessed one went, there was a large gathering of Christians and they listened with compunction and reverence to the grace and sweetness of his words, and this was followed by a great correction and benefit to the soul." And St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite writes: "His teaching was, as we his listeners became, most simple, like that of the fishermen; it was serene and gentle, where it appeared to be entirely full of the grace of the cheerful and quiet Holy Spirit." He continues: "And God above cooperated and confirmed his words with the signs and miracles that followed, and through these miracles he confirmed the preaching of his sacred mission." In North Epirus "he cooperated with divine grace, and he produced many and great fruits, so that he tamed the wild, calmed the bandits, soothed the ruthless and unmerciful, showed mercy to the irreverent, made the illiterate to be reverent, taught those who were ignorant divine things, and he caused them to run to the Divine Services. And simply all sinners he brought to great repentance and correction, so that all said that in their time there appeared a new Apostle."


. . . On his journeys he was followed by many priests and many people. Every sermon in each place was a sacred rite. He would tell Christians to prepare, confess and fast. The priests performed the Mystery of the Sacred Unction, and they anointed the Christians. Everywhere a large wooden Cross was set up, they lit candles, and he stood on his stool, distributing blessings, bread, kollyva, and then he taught. The Cross would remain to commemorate his passage and often worked miracles. His disciples took notes, and this is how we have his teachings today, accompanied by the miracles and prophecies. His prophecies mention the liberation of the enslaved Nation, the future of various individuals, cities and mankind, the discoveries of science and other subjects. Many of these things took place with true precision.

Effects on the broader culture of the Greek lands were seen as results of those events:

All his biographers especially emphasize that he suffered to establish schools that Greek children could learn letters for free, "that they may be established in the faith and in reverence, to be led towards a virtuous life and disposition." He also persuaded the rich to buy fonts for the churches that did not have them. In this way 400 fonts were purchased, as well as books for the illiterate and prayer ropes and crosses for all the faithful, around 500,000. He did not hesitate to stigmatize the trade of the Jews which they did on Sunday, and he did not allow Christians to work on the Day of the Lord. This is why the Jews mortally hated him.

The devil and the demons hate to see the liberation of mankind from the bondage of sin and evil, and so unsurprisingly they stirred up persecutors to oppose St Kosmas:

Despite the great love of the people who were beneficiaries of the Saint, and the respect harbored for him even by the Turks, there were also certain people who hated him, such as certain wealthy kodjabashis, because he rebuked their various injustices, but especially the Jews, whom he also rebuked in his sermons. "Of course, the Saint did not suffer from anti-semitism. Rather here he was speaking words of truth. He knew that Jews were behind many of the injustices and persecutions of the Christians." He wrote in a letter to his brother Chrysanthos a few months before his death: "Ten thousand Christians love me and one hates me. A thousand Turks love me and one not so much. A thousand Jews want me dead and one does not."


The Jews slandered him to the Turkish authorities, and managed with a lot of money given to Ahmet Kurt Pasha of Berat to achieve his killing. The Saint foreknew his end and on his last night "he showed no signs of sadness for his withdrawal from this life, but he even appeared graceful in his face, as if he was going to joys and revelry." They hanged him from a tree in the village of Kolikondasi and threw his honorable relic in the Apsos River. Despite the fact that they tied a rock around his neck, his relic washed ashore. It was found by the pious priest Mark and buried in the Monastery of the Theotokos Ardenica. The Saint was martyred on August 24, 1779. In August of 1813 the translation of his honorable relic took place. The following year a church and monastery were built in his honor by command of Ali Pasha of Ioannina, which he had prophesied about.

Thus did a little monk for a backwoods mountain village renew the Christian Faith and traditional Greek culture amongst his fellow Greeks.  In truth it may be said that without his zealous missionary work (four long journeys in all), the Greek War for Independence from the Turks in 1821 would not have happened:
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​Rarely do we think about how much Saint Kosmas the Aitolos contributed to the liberation of the Greek nation. He had no weapons. He led no troops. He was not involved in wars and battles.
 
But he did have the weapons of the spirit: holiness of life and preaching, by which he awakened the consciousness of the enslaved Greeks, who thus learned about their Orthodox faith and the glorious history of their homeland.
 
 . . . One man, who was ardent and without self-interest, achieved the impossible: the salvation of Orthodox Hellenism, but also prepared for the national rebirth.

​For us as Southerners, for whom Greek culture is dear (just look at the older architecture, for starters, and one will see that such is the case), we are able to see how we ought to proceed if we want to escape the Yankee/American prison.  The main emphasis must not be on politics initially but on the souls of our fellow Dixians.  The rebirth of Southern souls in Christian churches must take precedence over any other goals.  Following close behind that will be the teaching of our history and folkways to our families and neighbors.  As all of that progresses, we will need to create networks to encourage and support one another in whatever ways we can, so that Southern renewal can gain strength and not wither away by the divide and conquer tactics of the Regime.  Given enough time and with God’s Grace assisting us, the growth of re-baptized and re-traditioned Dixie would reach critical mass, and independence from Yankeedom would be a fait accompli.

 
But a good leader is invaluable in any situation, especially an undertaking as difficult and perilous as the awakening and liberation of an entire people like the South.  It is imperative, then, that we also beseech the Lord Jesus Christ, Who is ever merciful and loving, to raise up amongst us an exceptional leader like St Kosmas to bring us out of spiritual and physical captivity.
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May we have the help and prayers of St Kosmas himself in our labors, who stands before the Throne of the Holy Trinity in a place of glory and honor.  As proof of his close union with God, and of what a good friend and strong supporter he could be for a Christ-seeking Dixie, we append this account of the attempted desecration of his tomb in Albania by militant atheists in the 20th century:

​"When in 1968 the law of the Albanian state prohibited any religious event, there came an order from Tirana to destroy the churches and for the crosses to disappear from the Christian graves. The Fieri police commander took with him a competent crew and went to the Monastery to destroy it. Knowing the devotion of the Greeks to St. Kosmas, he instructed to begin the work by demolishing first the tomb of the Saint. When workers gave the first blow to the church monument, then a loud roar broke the stillness of the area and a strong fire sprang from the grave of the Saint. Terrified bystanders fled and did not return despite threats coming from Tirana and despite the reassuring statement of the commander that supposedly a forgotten World War 2 bomb exploded. Therefore they did not desecrate the tomb of St. Kosmas and the grace-filled relics remained there as a balm on the wounds of Christians and the hope that the 'the desirable will come'" (Archimandrite Timothy Iliaki, The Supplication Canon to Saint Kosmas the Aetolian, New Philadelphia 1997, p. 61).

May God be glorified in the Southland!