The Ionian Islands are the birthplace of many saints of our Church. One of them was the newcomer Saint Panagis Basia by Lixouri of Kefalonia. He lived in the era when the Ionian Islands were constantly changing conquerors and our Church was groaning under the unbearable pressures of the heretical papists, who for whole centuries collaborated closely with the western conquerors for the Hellenization of the inhabitants and submission to the heretical pope.
He was born in Lixouri ensures 1801. Parents were Michael Typaldos Basias and Regina genus Dellaporta, pious and prosperous. He received a serious grammar education. He also knew Italian, French and Latin.
At first he was appointed scribe and practiced the function of a teacher, but was soon inspired by the radical preaching of Cosmas Flamiatou and Eusebius Pana, great ecclesiastical figures of the time, who defended Greece and Orthodoxy and he joined them. The English (rulers of Iptanissos) supposed protectors, tyrannized the people and manipulated their orthodox opinion. So he left the public school, which propagated English supremacy, and started teaching at home.
At the age of 20, after the death of his father, having an innate inclination for monasticism and influenced by the personality of the Patron Saint, the great Ascetic, Agios Gerasimos and of his neighbor, also a great Ascetic, Agios Anthimos, abandoned everything and went to the island "Dry scope", in Kato Leviatho, in the Vlachernon Monastery, place of exile of Clergy by the English. There he also met the exiled famous Zakynthian Cleric Nikolaos Kantounis and received the lonely shape and lonely name Paisius.
But he did not stay there for long, because he was forced to return to Lixouri to protect his widowed mother and his unprotected sister. Although he lived in the world, his entire life proved to be a continuous ascetic struggle and a consistent living of solitary ideals and principles. Sta 1836 he is ordained deacon and Elder by the Archbishop of Kefallinia Parthenio Makri. Henceforth he lived for the Church, for Christ and for his faithful brothers. He refused to be appointed to a parish and settled in the small Monastery of Agios Spyridonos. For fifty years he officiated daily, preaching with the fire of his soul. He ran to the houses of the residents to help them materially and spiritually. Everyone's problem became their own problem. He sold all his possessions and gave them to the poor. He also turned out to be an excellent confessor. Crowds of tormented people ran to take comfort and lighten their heavy burdens from this virtuous cleric.
With his personal purification and sanctity, he received from God the gift of prophecy and foretold the future happening to persons, families and society in general. He was also claimed to perform miracles in the name of Christ.
At the same time he had developed an admirable national and patriotic action. At 21 May 1864 she tasted her joy Union of Iptanisos with Mother Greece, for which he himself worked in his own resistance way, alongside the radical heroes, preserving and cultivating the Orthodox tradition, in such difficult political and social periods.
The 1867 with its terrible earthquakes PallikiHis house was demolished and since then he has been staying at his cousin's house Ioannou Geroulanou, father of the well-known surgeon and academic Marinos Geroulanos.
He was humble. She didn't want them to talk about him and that's why she decided to exercise her ancient and great virtue through Christ of peace. He pretended to be intellectually disabled, so that others would regard his intellectual gifts and virtues as the products of a man of low intelligence. Despite all this, he was respected by all the inhabitants, except in very few cases. As well as the well-known anti-clerical writer from Lixouri Andreas Laskaratos he liked and appreciated him!
From the hardships, the deprivations and his ascetic struggle, his health was shaken and he was bedridden for five years. The Metropolitan of Kefallinia had visited him at his home German Kalligas, whose election he predicted as Archbishop of Athens! He passed away peacefully, at the age of 88, on 7η June 1888. His funeral became a pandemic. He was greeted by all the people of Kefalonia, led by Archbishop Germanos Kalligas.
His fame never faded from the memories of the pious Kefallenians. Until our mother Church at 1986 she included him in her canon. The collection of his holy relics was a great event, the fragrance of which confirmed his sanctity. His memory is celebrated on 7 June, day of his partial sleep. His graceful remains are enshrined in Holy Church of Agios Spyridon Lixouri.
Among all his virtues, his humility stands out, which elevates man and places him under the throne of God. In contrast to pride, which brings a man down to the deepest pits of hell. Pride is the incurable root of evil in man, which keeps him away from God's sanctifying grace, and that humility is the salutary antidote to the destructive path that selfishness leads man to. It is the worst obstacle to man's salvation. This selfish self-sufficiency, as a very morbid condition, prevents the consciousness of sinfulness and the disposition to repent. Selfishness and repentance are two completely opposite and incompatible concepts. One negates the other. The gates of the egoistic man's soul are hermetically closed to divine grace, and consequently his salvation is impossible, as long as he persists in his selfish preoccupation. Saint Panagis was the embodiment of humility, who taught humility more with his life than with his words.
Such clerics, like the saint Panagi Basia, we need these difficult and revealing days in which we live.
photo https://www.saint.gr/
