Joachim the Hesychast

Joachim the Hesychast was a monk of the Skete of St Anne on Mount Athos, a former kleft and band leader in Crete under Turkish rule, who fell asleep in 1889. He is honoured by the faithful as a hesychast ascetic, without synodal canonization. Tradition says he had the gift of foresight and of healing.

In Turkish-⁠held Crete a terrible pasha persecuted the Christians without pause and subjected them to horrible tortures. The kleft John, as he was then called, swore to avenge the sufferings of his fellow believers. He guarded a pass and killed the pasha, but took none of the money the tyrant had with him and forbade anyone, on pain of death, to take it. The pasha's body was eaten by vultures. John became the target of all the Turks.

Christians and even some Turks who valued his virtue saved him from the terrible retaliation by sending him away from the island to Thessaly, where he became the guardian of the property of a Turk. There he went into a small church, almost buried in the ground, and prayed with contrition, shedding rivers of tears for his afflicted brethren. His piety moved the Turkish landlord, who sent him to become a monk at the Skete of St Anne on Mount Athos. Others say that Saint Anne herself appeared to him in Crete and called him to Athos, but this is unconfirmed.

When he arrived at the skete he asked to be tonsured with the name Anna. The fathers rejected the name, since it was a woman's, and gave him the name of Saint Joachim, the husband of Saint Anna. He lived in a cave, in very hard asceticism, in vigil and prayer, fighting with the elements of nature and the demons. Once, to stop him coming to the vigil of the Akathist Hymn, the demons threw him into a cliff; when the fathers felt his absence they rushed to look for him, found him and pulled him out with ropes. They forbade him to stay away from the skete and gave him a cell above the cemetery. There he served until old age in the daily Liturgy, and received from God the gift of foresight and of curing deafness, blindness, paralysis and other illnesses. It is said that the Russian Church regarded him as a saint for the healing of deaf and blind children of Russian faithful; his deeds are recorded also in Russian lithographs.