Archimandrite Vasileios: Selected Writings

We present to the English-speaking audience the Selected Writings of Archimandrite Vasileios, previous abbot of Iveron Monastery on Mount Athos. As a unique 3-volume set with a hardcover box, the Selected Writings combine and contain dozens of texts of an Athonite Elder. Put together in a magnificent three-volume set, they serve a better and more efficient effort to spread the Athonite traditional and genuine wisdom through the voice of Fr. Vasileios. It is a fresh testimony of the Orthodox ethos and spirituality to the public, university campuses, libraries, churches, and bookstores.

The Selected Writings of Elder Vasileios express the author’s desire for all of us who live and struggle in this wounded world to become aware of human beings’ spiritual nobility and dignity. These writings come as a breath of fresh air, refreshing as the dews of Hermon. Fr. Vasileios’ writing style represents an antidote to the anemic piety of our days and bears witness to the transcendent. He, having passed through dark places and having tasted the Passover of the future, exudes the scent of sanctity and teaches the logic of the Age to come. He is a writer who expresses the truth of human life freely and uses quotes from works written by writers from the East and the West as he deems appropriate as if different cultures and traditions did not separate them: Heraclitus, Abba Isaac, Albert Camus, Apostle Paul, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Stefan Zweig, Porphyrios the Kapsokalyvite, etc.

We can already hear the faithful and theologians, inspired by the Selected Writings of Elder Vasileios, speaking in a new language that reflects the immediacy of real-life experience. And we hope that they can provide godly guidance in their communities and that their service will comfort and encourage those on the narrow path that leads to the Door of Life.

At the remote skete of Iveron at the foot of Athos, in the great silence of the Holy Mountain pervaded with the scent of conifers and wild meadow flowers and refreshed by the sea breeze that brings the “ozone” of health, lives and works the Elder Vasileios. Unpretentiously and authentically, he brings back to life what must have once been the most remarkable transformative change in knowledge, brought about by the Scriptures and the Church Fathers. His words put the spark of eternal life within each of us so that we can recognize the elements of peace and certainty in the confusion of modern urban life.

Available as a boxed set of 3 softcover volumes totalling over 750 pages in a special slipcase.

Archimandrite Vasileios Gondikakis (1936–2025) was a prominent Athonite monk, theologian, and spiritual leader who played a pivotal role in the revival of monasticism on Mount Athos. Born on February 8, 1936, in Heraklion, Crete, as the second of eight or nine children in a devout family from Kefalovryso of Viannos, Vasileios grew up rooted in Orthodox faith. His father was a mathematician and school director, and his mother a refugee from Asia Minor; from youth, he dedicated himself to the Church, eventually forsaking academic promise for monastic life in the mid-1960s. Entering Mount Athos amid a period of renewal, he served as abbot of Stavronikita Monastery from 1968 to 1990, revitalizing it as a model cenobium. In 1990, he became abbot of Iviron Monastery—one of Athos’s oldest foundations—for 15 years until 2005, restoring communal life and elevating its spiritual stature. A prolific author and speaker, Vasileios blended Athonite tradition with insights from Church Fathers, philosophers like Heraclitus, and figures like Dostoevsky. His seminal work Hymn of Entry (1974, English 1984) defended hesychasm amid ecumenical tensions, while later texts nurtured Orthodox ethos for modern audiences. Proudly Cretan yet ecumenical in nuance, he inspired generations, including Serbian Orthodox communities in the US and Europe, through lectures, homilies, and friendships with bishops and theologians. Known as a “silent revolutionary,” Vasileios embodied scriptural death-to-life, drawing from Abba Isaac the Syrian. He reposed on September 17, 2025, leaving an enduring legacy in Helleno-Orthodox renewal.