Our Father, Elder Yacoub, Head of the Monastery of David the Righteous - Spiritual Fathers and Mothers

1- The Sheikh’s lineage and childhood years

Asia Minor, which has produced many saints in our Church, is the homeland of Father Jacob. He was born in the village of Livisi in Makri (Λιβίσι Μάκρης). His family was well-off, among the richest in the village. Their greatest wealth was Christian piety and charity. In its long history, it has produced monks, seminarians and a saint.

The Sheikh was born on November 5, 1920. Due to the events of those terrible days and the displacement of Christians, he moved to the village of Saint George in Amfissa (Αμφισσας) in central Greece, and two years later to the village of Frakla (Φαράκλα) on the island of Avia, near the Monastery of the Righteous David, where he lived until he was thirty years old.

His mother Theodora played the greatest role in his life. She was adorned with virtues, piety, and a monastic spirit that she passed on to her beloved son Jacob. Sheikh Jacob narrated, on the tongue of his mother, that he was weak in his childhood, which is why she called him “the autumn sparrow.”

During the deportation, during the exodus from Asia Minor, the father, Stavros Tsaliki, remained a prisoner of the Turks, and his mother, grandmother, aunts and uncles left by ship to Pieria, when Jacob was two years old. Then the father followed them to the village of Farakla. But the mother always remained the main educator of Jacob. About his childhood, the elder said: “I rarely left the house, except to school. After the children were born, my parents lived as abstemious, modest, blessed, fraternal spiritual lives. My mother taught me to pray and prostrate, and I helped her with the women’s housework. Thus I learned sewing and other skills. This served me well in my monastic life. Every fifteen or twenty days a priest would come to the village to celebrate the Divine Liturgy. I would go to church in the evening to help the priest and stay there praying until the people came in the morning. We did not know confession. We only fasted strictly. Before communion, we would kiss the hands of our parents and elders.”

Elsewhere, the Sheikh says: “My mother’s hands were open to those in need. My father was a builder and was able to provide us with a good standard of living. My mother used to generously help the poor with food and clothes, to the point that many times, my father and I, would return from work in construction and find no change of clothes to change into! But our family life was peaceful and quiet.”

The Sheikh continues talking about his childhood, saying: “I used to go to the small churches in the wilderness, especially to the village cemetery, without this meaning that I had a psychological problem that troubled me. On the contrary, I used to contemplate there the vanity of this fleeting life, and thus the remembrance of death was effectively born in my soul.”

The Holy Spirit enlightened the young Jacob, finding in him a pure and clean soul. He began to think of dedicating himself to God and becoming a hermit when he grew up. He would go out of the village to the surrounding hills and stay in some rocky hollows which he covered with tree branches, praying and considering himself a hermit. He would also visit some of the churches scattered in the countryside, such as the Church of Saint Paraskevi. He would clean them, light their lamps and pray there until nightfall in communion with God and His saints, who had often appeared to him and conversed with him.

After completing elementary school with distinction, the village teacher insisted on sending him to Chalcis to continue his studies. However, his family feared that he would be taken away from them, and preferred that he remain in the village. Thus, he was satisfied with this amount of worldly knowledge to be filled with the “wisdom from above” that revealed the fishermen to be very wise.

The elder’s humility, faith and his mother’s prayers brought him into close contact with the Mother of God and all the saints. The elder recounts that in his childhood he fell seriously ill, suffering from a cold, shortness of breath and severe chest pains. “At that time, there was no doctor in the village except God and His saints. My mother prayed a lot in front of a miraculous icon of Saint Charalambos, which we had at home. In the evening, I saw the hand of a priest drawing a cross on my face, touching the place of pain and caressing me. From that moment, I felt better and was healed. The one who healed me was Saint Charalambos, as my mother told me.”

When the villagers saw the holy life of little Jacob, they began to respect him greatly and considered him a dutiful son of the church and a young man of God. Since the village had no priest, they would often urge him to read a prayer for the needy or the sick, believing that his prayers would help them. The sheikh told many stories in this regard.

The Sheikh often spoke about the practice of fasting in his blessed family. His mother once said to him, during the Holy Forty Days of Lent: “My son Jacob, see how weak you are. Eat even a small egg to gain a little strength.” He replied: “If I eat now, I will not feel the resurrection. I want to eat a Passover egg to understand the meaning of Passover.”

When he helped his father in the construction work, whether in the village or in the neighboring villages, he would avoid eating, on fasting days, what the owners of the houses they were building provided for them, because he was often snoring. The young Jacob preferred to return home to eat fasting food, rather than eat cheese and other things provided, but if he found some olives and bread, he would be satisfied with that.

When he was twenty-five years old, his mother came one day and told him that she had seen her guardian angel who told her that she would depart this life in three days and advised her to prepare. This had a great impact on Jacob, not only because of the natural relationship between them as mother and son, but also because of the spiritual relationship. So, Theodora fell ill and lay down in bed in peace, blessing her beloved son and asking him to become a priest after he took care of his younger sister’s future. Then she breathed a sigh of relief and gave up her spirit.

2- Jacob's military life

The period of the elder’s military service was during the most difficult and harsh period in Greece, the period of the civil war. Jacob served in the city of Volos. He said: “I always had the icon of Saint Charalambos with me. I repeatedly begged him not to let the officer in charge choose me to be part of the patrol, because I was not a man of killing and blood. And indeed, that did not happen. Once I was assigned to guard a certain sector on duty. I sat behind the machine gun, took out the small icon of Saint Charalambos, placed it on him, and said to him: ‘My beloved saint, you are now guarding the target. Guard this sector from here to there.’ After that, I immersed myself in prayer without worry, and I escaped many dangers.”

Then Jacob moved to Athens. There God enlightened the heart of the officer in charge of him, so he gave him written permission every day to visit the churches of Athens and Berea. The friendship between the two continued until he became the elder in the Monastery of the Righteous David, where the officer visited him many times. Despite his gentleness and innocence, and despite his attempts to live with Christ in secret, he was of course not safe from the mockery and annoyance of some of the soldiers, as they could not understand his strange behavior with their human minds. However, others respected him, and later visited him in his monastery.

Thus, his three years of military service passed peacefully and he returned to his village at the age of thirty. After securing his sister, as his mother had instructed him, he became free to achieve what he had dreamed of since childhood.

3- The monastic life of Sheikh Yaqoub

In his monastic life, the Sheikh wished to follow a quiet life in some caves, as in holy places, contenting himself with some water and available wild herbs. But before proceeding to fulfill his wish, he saw the need to receive a blessing from the Monastery of the Righteous David. When he arrived at the monastery, as he himself narrates, he found it different from what it was before, more beautiful, grand and splendid. “There I met a venerable old man with a white beard. This was the Righteous David. I asked him in astonishment if it was possible to give me a room in the monastery. He answered me: ‘You have come to prostrate as a visitor. If you will stay, we can give you a room.’ I immediately answered: ‘I will stay, old man.’ He took me into the monastery after I had made this promise, and then the venerable old man disappeared from my sight as if a wall had opened and he had passed through it. Moments later, I realized the reality of the situation. The monastery was simple, with ruins here and there, and a small church. “I came as an ordinary visitor, but through what happened I found myself giving a promise with all my heart to serve the Monastery of St. David.” At that time, there were three elderly monks in the monastery who lived in isolation. Archimandrite Nicodemus was the abbot and he visited from time to time. He had many virtues, but he suffered from many illnesses and there were some brothers from within the church who persecuted him. This merciful abbot passed away shortly after. “I asked for his blessing in everything,” the elder said. “This was not easy. I would spend four to five hours to get to the village where Abbot Nicodemus served, to get his blessing for matters concerning the monastery.”

The monastery had been neglected for years, so Sheikh Yaqoub worked there all day long, praying constantly. In order for the monastery to be able to support itself, and even give charity to the poor, he did all sorts of work: repairs, construction, agriculture, and more.

At the beginning of the Sheikh’s common monastic life, he suffered many difficulties and trials. This is not strange, for it is the law of Christian life, and God applied it to our Sheikh Yaqub, so his life was a voluntary martyrdom at times and forced at other times. Satan incited the former monks in the monastery against him, so that they would stand in the way of his enthusiasm and make him despair and leave the monastery. “His appearance was heavy upon them.” However, his virtues and God-given simplicity overcame their evils. His cell was almost in ruins: there was no glass on the windows, in addition to the cracks in the door in summer and winter. Sheikh Yaqub consoled himself by comparing it to the vertical hermits, who had no roof to protect them, and to the hermits who lived in the deserts and had no shelter. Thus, he saw himself in a better state than them and thanked God. The Sheikh benefited and was more experienced in various trials and sufferings. But Satan also increased his temptations, similar to his temptations of the God-bearing desert fathers. The Sheikh narrated an incident about the demons attacking him one day, while he was lying down a little before noon to rest from work. They beat him severely all over his body and cursed and blasphemed him, preventing him even from making the sign of the cross. However, he was finally able to make the sign of the cross and drive them out in the name of Jesus.

One day, the abbot came to him and said: “Father Jacob, wash, take a bath and comb your hair. Because we will go down together to Chalcis.” Elder Jacob obeyed without knowing what the matter was. “Indeed, we went down to the Archdiocese of Chalcis, and Bishop Gregory was there, a holy, humble and merciful man… He received us and welcomed us, and then told me that they had decided to grant me the rank of priesthood. This had not occurred to me. However, I could not argue out of respect for the abbot and the holy bishop. So on December 18, 1952, they ordained me a deacon, and the next day a priest. They gave me a wallet containing an icon of the Virgin Mary, under which was written: ‘Father Jacob, may this icon of the Virgin protect you in the deserted place where you reside…’ Then, a few days later, I received written permission to practice spiritual fatherhood and the sacrament of confession.”

4- Sheikh Yaqoub's priestly life

Since the beginning of his priestly life, Sheikh Yacoub began to hold daily prayers and the Divine Liturgy and to receive the Holy Communion frequently, which gave him great spiritual strength and activity throughout the day. Due to the region’s need for priests, he began to serve the villages surrounding the monastery. His zeal for the speaking (believers) and non-speaking houses of God was very great. He worked actively and enthusiastically in serving souls, churches and endowments.

The elder was jealous of the virtues of the saints he read about, and tried to apply some of them himself. So when he read about Saint Daniel the Stylite’s abstention from even the necessities of his daily life out of love for the many visitors he had, Elder Jacob began to abstain from his natural needs from the time he left the monastery in the morning, to serve in the various surrounding villages, until he returned to it.

According to the custom of that time, Father Jacob used to go around with the remains of the righteous David in the neighboring villages so that the believers could receive their blessings. This was very tiring for him despite his ascetic nature. He recounts a consolation that happened to him one time when he was returning from one of his tours in the surrounding parishes. When he approached the monastery, he saw a bright light outside the monastery illuminating the narrow road leading to it. Then, “When I arrived at the monastery, I entered the church. I found an elder standing on the right waiting for me. After I placed the remains and bowed before the icons, I looked for that person to greet him, thinking that he was one of the fathers of the monastery, but I did not find him. He had disappeared. The righteous David was alive, awaiting my safe return.”

Many other miracles happened to the righteous man by the grace of God, we cannot mention them all. We mention that Sheikh Yaqoub was always trying to provide oil for all the churches surrounding the monastery. In addition to the other favors he provided to the believers. One day, he was praying to the Virgin, the righteous David, and the Prophet Elijah in particular, to help him provide oil for the entire area. After a while of praying, he went down to the storeroom where the large oil container was, and he found the lid moving and the oil spilling from the container. At first, he thought that a mouse was in the container trying to get out after spilling all this oil on the ground. However, when he approached and lifted the lid, he did not find a mouse or anything like that, but he was sure that the oil was miraculously overflowing! So he glorified God for His mercies and thanked His saints.

Unlimited kindness and giving were deeply rooted traits of the righteous old man, Jacob. He inherited this from his mother. He would always empty his hands of what he owned, only for God to fill them with more and more. The old man was amazed at these great mercies of God.

The sheikh’s health was iron-clad until he reached the age of fifty-five. However, after this age, God allowed the sheikh to suffer from many serious illnesses. The sheikh said about this: “The devil took permission to test my body,” as happened with the righteous Job in the Old Testament. “I did not want to go to the doctors at first, because I considered it shameful for them to see my body naked, the body of a priest.” However, he was forced to visit doctors repeatedly afterward, especially when he was suffering from severe pain. He underwent surgery. The righteous Saint David and Saint John the Russian often visited him, and he would see them standing by his side, even in the operating room, interceding for his recovery.

In those days, despite the doctors’ recommendations to avoid standing, he did not hesitate to perform the honorable church services and complete the Divine Liturgy, despite the subsequent pains he suffered in the evening and throughout the night. He would suffer from bouts of pain in his neck, head, and other parts of his body, especially after spending long hours receiving the confessions of his spiritual sons. He considered all this a kind of asceticism, which he endured with patience and gratitude.

5- The death of Sheikh Yaqoub

His last experience was heart disease that led him to the afterlife. He underwent two heart surgeries, the second without anesthesia, after the first operation failed. Despite his recurring pain, Father Yacoub maintained his smile and his service to others with love, in their souls and bodies. His conversations in his last years dealt with his intimate relationship with the righteous David, his childhood and various spiritual stories, his advice and miraculous visions. He always spoke with childlike innocence that overflowed with grace and simplicity, comforting everyone around him and advising and strengthening them, despite the pain and weaknesses he was hiding in his body.

His repose in the wilderness was also a wonder. He knew beforehand the day he would die. On that day he was very happy. On the morning of November 21, 1991, the feast of the Entry of the Virgin, he was singing in the monastery church. And in the afternoon, around four o'clock, when he was receiving the confessions of the faithful as usual, he passed into eternal rest, leaving what is in the world, and being near the Lord God.

Translated from Greek, with some modifications by Brother Youssef Kaba.