They said of Abba Gelasius that he had a parchment book worth eighteen solidi, containing the whole Old and New Testament. It was kept in the church so that any brother who wished could read it. A visiting brother saw the book, desired it, stole it, and left. The elder understood what had happened but did not pursue him to catch him. The brother went into the city and sought to sell it. Finding a man who wanted to buy it, he asked sixteen solidi. The buyer said, “Give it to me first so that I may have it examined, and then I will pay you the price.” He gave it to him. The buyer took it to Abba Gelasius for examination and told him the price the seller had named. The elder said, “Buy it. It is a good book and is worth the price you said.” The man returned to the seller but spoke differently from what the elder had said: “I showed the book to Abba Gelasius, and he told me it is expensive and not worth the price you named.” When the brother heard this, he asked, “Did the elder say nothing else to you?” The buyer said, “No.” Then the brother said, “I no longer want to sell it.” Struck with compunction, he came to the elder in repentance and begged him to take the book back, but the elder did not want to receive it. The brother said to him, “If you do not take it, I will have no rest.” The elder said, “If you cannot have rest, then I will receive it.” The brother remained there until his death, having been helped by what the elder had done.
A certain elder, himself a monk living near Nicopolis, left Abba Gelasius a cell and the field around it. A farmer belonging to Bacatus, who at that time was a leading man of Nicopolis in Palestine, was related to the elder who had died. He approached Bacatus and asked to receive the field, claiming that by law it ought to come to him. Bacatus was a violent man and tried to take the field from Abba Gelasius by force. But Gelasius would not hand a monastic cell over to a layman and would not yield. When Bacatus noticed Gelasius’s animals carrying olives from the field left to him, he seized them by force and took the olives to his own house, barely sending the animals and their drivers back after insulting them. The blessed elder made no claim at all to the harvested fruit, but for the reason already stated he would not surrender ownership of the field. Enraged against him, Bacatus set out on foot for Constantinople, being drawn there also by other lawsuits, for he was a litigious man. When he came near Antioch, where Saint Symeon was shining like a great lamp, Bacatus heard the things told about him and, being a Christian, desired to see the saint. Saint Symeon saw him from the column as soon as he entered the monastery and asked, “Where are you from, and where are you going?” He answered, “I am from Palestine, and I am going to Constantinople.” Symeon asked, “For what reason?” Bacatus replied, “For many matters. I hope, through the prayers of your holiness, to return and venerate your holy footprints.” Saint Symeon said, “Do not wish, wretched man, to hide from me that you are going against the man of God. Your journey will not prosper, nor will you see your house again. If you obey my counsel, return at once to him and repent before him, if you can reach your own place alive.” Immediately a fever came upon him. His companions put him in a litter, and he hurried homeward so that, according to Saint Symeon’s word, he might repent before Abba Gelasius. But when he reached Beirut, he died and did not see his house. His son, also named Bacatus, later told these things to many trustworthy men after his father’s death.
Many of Abba Gelasius’s disciples also related this. Once a fish was brought to the brothers. While the cook was frying it, an urgent need called him to the cellarer. He left the fish with a young man whom blessed Gelasius was raising, telling him to guard it for a little while until he returned. The young man greedily began to eat the fish. When the cellarer returned and found him eating it, he became angry and, without thinking, kicked the boy as he sat on the ground. Through some demonic activity the blow struck a vital place, and the boy collapsed and died. Terrified, the cellarer laid him on his own bed and covered him. Then he went and fell at Abba Gelasius’s feet, telling him what had happened. Gelasius instructed him to tell no one else and ordered that, when everyone had gone to rest, he should carry the boy into the diaconicon, lay him before the altar, and leave. The elder went into the diaconicon and stood in prayer. At the hour of the night psalmody, when the brothers had gathered, the elder came out, and the young man followed him. No one knew what had happened, except the elder and the cellarer, until the end of Gelasius’s life.
They said of Abba Gelasius, not only his own disciples but also many who often visited him, that when the Council of Chalcedon was being held, Theodosius—the one who began the schism in Palestine on behalf of Dioscorus—came to him before the bishops had returned to their churches. Theodosius had first come from Constantinople, driven from his own country as a troublemaker. He opposed the council and claimed that it had confirmed the teaching of Nestorius. By this means he hoped to draw the holy man into fellowship with his revolt and schism. But Gelasius, from the man’s bearing and from the discernment God had given him, recognized the corruption of his opinion and did not join his apostasy, as almost everyone else did then; instead he rebuked him appropriately and drove him away. Bringing forward the young man he had raised from the dead, Gelasius said with solemn dignity, “If you wish to dispute about the faith, you have this one who can hear you and speak with you. I have no leisure to listen to your concerns.” Ashamed by this, Theodosius went to Jerusalem. There, under the appearance of divine zeal, he drew all the monks to his side, and also the empress who was there at the time. Having gained this support, he seized the throne of Jerusalem through murders and committed many lawless and uncanonical acts which are still remembered. Once he had gained power and ordained bishops to sees whose rightful bishops had not yet returned, he also summoned Abba Gelasius and invited him into the sanctuary, speaking both threateningly and flatteringly. When Gelasius entered, Theodosius said, “Anathematize Juvenal.” Gelasius did not fear but said, “I know no other bishop of Jerusalem but Juvenal.” Theodosius, afraid that others might imitate his holy zeal, ordered that he be driven from the church with mockery. The schismatics surrounded Gelasius with wood and threatened to burn him. But when they saw that he neither yielded nor was afraid, and they feared a popular disturbance because he was widely renowned—and above all because of God’s providence—they sent him away unharmed. In intention he had become a martyr, offering himself to Christ as a whole burnt offering.
They also said of Abba Gelasius that in his youth he lived in poverty and as an anchorite. At that time there were many others in those places who embraced the same way of life. Among them was an elder of extreme simplicity and poverty who lived in a single cell until his death, although in old age he had disciples. He had trained himself never to own two tunics and, together with those who lived with him, never to worry about tomorrow, even until death. When Abba Gelasius, with God’s help, established a cenobium, many fields were offered to him, and he acquired pack animals and oxen necessary for the monastery. For the One who had instructed the holy Pachomius to establish a cenobium also assisted Gelasius in all the needs of the monastery. Seeing Gelasius occupied with these things, and preserving genuine love for him, the elder said, “I am afraid, Abba Gelasius, that your thought may become bound to the fields and the rest of the monastery’s possessions.” Gelasius answered, “Your thought is more bound to the awl with which you work than Gelasius’s thought is to these possessions.”
They said of Abba Gelasius that he was often troubled by thoughts urging him to go away into the desert. One day he said to his disciple, “Show me love, brother. Whatever I do, bear with me, and say nothing to me this week.” Taking a palm-wood staff, he began walking around his little courtyard. When he became tired he sat down briefly, then got up and walked again. When evening came, he said to his thought, “A man who lives in the desert does not eat bread but plants. Because of your weakness, eat a little vegetable.” After doing so, he said again to his thought, “A man in the desert does not sleep under a roof, but in the open air. So do the same.” He lay down and slept in the courtyard. After walking in the monastery for three days, eating a little chicory each evening and sleeping outdoors at night, he became exhausted. Then he rebuked the thought that was troubling him, saying, “If you cannot do the works of the desert, sit in your cell with endurance, weep for your sins, and do not wander. Everywhere the eye of God sees the works of human beings; nothing is hidden from Him, and He knows those who do good.”