Akylina of Drama
Akylina of Drama (1921 - 2006) was a Greek Asia Minor Orthodox nun who lived in the Monastery of the Ascension of the Savior in Drama, serving as Abbess. He showed significant action during the National Resistance.
Biography
The nee Erasmia, daughter of Georgios and Eftychias Parmaxidou, was born in Theira, Smyrna, on April 23, 1921. During the Asia Minor Catastrophe, seven of her relatives were martyred on the gallows, while she and her family left Asia Minor. Refugees came to Piraeus on 14/09/1922 and a little later they settled in the city of Drama.
The young Erasmia moved with her family to Thessaloniki due to the harsh Bulgarian Occupation in Drama. He offered significant help to people by leading the sissitsa for the hungry in the Lagada region. She participated in the National Resistance and at the risk of her life took over the feeding of the detained resistance Greeks in the Pavlos Mela camp in Thessaloniki which had been turned into a place of detention and torture by the Germans
In the 1950s he organized common meals in Drama to address the wounds of the Bulgarian Occupation and started the camps of the Metropolis of Drama in Granite.
She formed a brotherhood with women for the purpose of consecrating them to monasticism. The brotherhood headed by Akylina, in April 1970, settled, with the supervision and support of the Metropolitan of Drama Dionysios, in the then abandoned area of the Taxiarches of Drama (Sipsa) where there was a nadir of the Ascension of the Savior. On July 17, 1970 and at the age of 50, she assumed the great and angelic shape and was named Akylina nun. Abbess Anna Makkavaiou of Asia Minor, who greatly appreciated Abbess Akylina, joined the brotherhood.
Abbess Akylina, alongside her main spiritual duties, worked for the construction of the Monastery. The entire edifice of the Monastery is the work of her activity together with the first brotherhood and the younger nuns. On April 25, 1971, the inauguration of the Holy Monastery took place.
Abbess Akylina died on November 16, 2006.
Saint Paisios characterized her as "Old Woman of Old Women" and Saint Porphyrios of Kausokalyvite called her "Cherub with golden wings".