Arsenios the Cave Dweller

Geronda Arsenios the Cave Dweller (1886-1983) was a Pontic Greek monk and Athonite elder, a fellow-⁠ascetic of Saint Joseph the Hesychast for nearly forty years. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.

He was born in 1886 at Samsun, in northern Anatolia, as Anastasios, the son of Demetrios and Sotiria Galanopoulos. At twelve his family was taken to the Caucasus because of the Turkish persecution of the Pontic Greeks. He spoke Pontic Greek, Turkish and Russian. In his youth he served at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and at other holy places, where he met Elder Hieronymos, from whom he learned the ascetic life. He then went to the Holy Mountain and stayed some years at Stavronikita Monastery, where he received the great schema with the name Arsenios. Dissatisfied with the idiorrhythmic life, he left for the wilderness of Athos, in search of the great ascetics. On the peak of Athos, at the feast of the Transfiguration, he met Francis Kottis, the future Joseph the Hesychast, and from then on they were inseparable.

The two lived in caves, hence the epithet "cave dweller." From Father Daniel Katounakiotis they learned to eat only dry food once a day, and to keep vigil. Arsenios worked with his hands, carrying stones and what was needed to build shelters not only for themselves but for all the ascetics of the area; when asked how he managed, he answered that he said the Prayer of the Heart, and a higher power came to his aid. They went barefoot and in rags, so that many took them for fools, but they were fools for Christ.

For nearly twenty years he lived with Joseph at the Skete of Saint Basil, then in 1938 they moved to Little Saint Anne's Skete, where they stayed until 1953; after that they went down to New Skete. After Joseph's death, in 1959, Arsenios moved to a cell of Hilandar Monastery called Burazeri, where he lived twelve years. In 1980 he moved to Dionysiou Monastery. He fell asleep in the Lord there on 15 September 1983 (2 September by the old calendar), at the age of ninety-⁠seven.