Gerontissa Anastasia

Description

There was a ten year old girl named Anastasia, a chosen vessel of God who was born in 1910, from the same village as the Monastery.
Her parents had fields with olives near the Monastery, and several times Anastasia passed the ruins of the Monastery and would see a figure praying near the belltower, and she wondered who or what this figure was that was praying there.
The answer to her question soon came, we can say, from the Panagia herself.
One day, she heard a voice calling her: “Anastasia, is it not a pity that I am buried in here? I want you to fix my Monastery.”

Anastasia was startled and didn’t say anything to anyone.
After several such divine manifestations, the ten year old Anastasia decided to speak of this incident with her mother, because she was terrified after the last appearance of the Panagia, since she was warned that the village would “fall” to disease.
When Anastasia told her mother everything that was taking place for so long, she confessed that when she was little she had a similar experience.
Anastasia, one could say, could not find peace and her mind was constantly on the Monastery and the divine manifestations she experienced.
Thus, after four years when she was fourteen years old, she told everyone and so they decided to build the Monastery.

As long as the restoration work lasted, Anastasia did not leave the site for even a minute. She took her dwelling in a hollow tree, which today is called “Holy Hollow” (Αγιοκούφαλο). It is called “The Holy Hollow of the Barefoot Ascetic Anastasia Vlachos”.*
In 1933 Anastasia, now a nun from the Monastery of Saint Nicholas in Melikia of Lefkimmi, settled in the Monastery of Our Lady of the Angels and came to complete its restoration. It was completed in 1935.

By 1955 it began to be populated with nuns. This fulfilled the main goal of Eldress Anastasia. In 1965 there were seven nuns, while today there are only two.
The nun Anastasia lived ascetically, far from all worldly things, and she lived according to the will of God and the requirements of the Gospel.
She reposed at the age of 69 on the 22nd of September in 1979.
In 1991 the Monastery was officially recognized by Presidential Decree.
There is a folk tradition that says that if you have deep faith and take three stones from the grave of the ascetic Anastasia and say three prayers, then the stones will return to her grave.

In the Monastery is also kept the Miraculous Icon of Our Lady of the Angels. It celebrates annually on August 15th.
* The ascetic Anastasia Vlachos is called “barefoot” .