Joseph the Hesychast

Saint Joseph the Hesychast was a Greek monk and elder of Mount Athos, spiritual father of many Athonite monks, who led a small band of monks and taught the Jesus Prayer. The Ecumenical Patriarchate numbered him among the saints in 2020, and he is remembered on 16 August.

Early life and calling

He was born on 12 February 1897, in the village of Lefkes on the island of Paros, as Francis Kottis, the third of the seven children of Georgios and Maria Kottis. His father died when he was a child, and his mother carried the care of the household. He went to school until second grade and helped with the work of the village, then, about sixteen, left for Piraeus, where he worked as a street vendor, and he served in the navy. In Athens he began to read the lives of saints and ascetics, which fired him with zeal. On Mount Penteli, then uninhabited, he spent nights in prayer in caves or even in trees, like the ancient ascetics. Reading those lives and a dream of his stirred in him a longing for monastic life, and he resolved to go to Mount Athos.

Monastic life

In 1921 he came to Katounakia on Athos, where he stayed for a time in the skete of Saint Daniel Katounakiotis of Smyrna, under his guidance. He left with the elder's blessing, for he wanted a stricter struggle, the stillness of hesychia and the prayer of the mind. After a year, on the feast of the Transfiguration, celebrated in the chapel on the summit of Athos, he met Father Arsenios, a monk of Stavronikita, who would become his disciple and constant fellow-⁠struggler. In 1924, looking for a tested elder, the two went to the Cell of the Annunciation at Katounakia, to become disciples of the two elders, Ephraim and Joseph. On 31 August 1925, at the age of twenty-⁠eight, he was tonsured a monk with the name Joseph, in the cave of Saint Athanasius the Athonite.

By his own account he was sorely grieved because he could not find a spiritual father and many monks were careless of unceasing prayer. In those circumstances he was granted to see the Uncreated Light and received the gift of unceasing prayer. He tells that he was filled with light within and without, no longer knowing whether he had a body, and the prayer began to say itself within him.

In the middle of 1928 Joseph and Arsenios moved to a more mountainous and remote place near the Skete of Saint Basil. After about ten years of struggle, fasting and prayer, and after many experiences of divine grace, Father Joseph agreed to be the spiritual guide of any monk who would follow him. In that time he was also the spiritual father of Ephraim Katounakiotis, and his brother, Nicholas Kottis, left the world and joined the band with the name Athanasios. In January 1938 the group settled at Little Saint Anne's, in caves near a chapel of the Forerunner that they had built themselves. The first disciple there was the Cypriot monk Sophronios, who later, with the name Joseph, was elder at Vatopedi until his death in 2009. Other disciples were Ephraim, later abbot of Philotheou and founder of over nineteen monasteries in the United States and Canada, and Haralambos, later abbot of Dionysiou. In 1953 the band moved to the New Skete, the last place of his life.

Death and veneration

A month earlier he said that the hour had been announced to him by the Mother of God herself. On 14 August 1959 he attended the vigil of the Dormition of the Mother of God and received Communion. He died of heart failure on 15 August and was buried the same day, in the chapel of the Annunciation at the New Skete. His relics are kept in several monasteries, among them the monastery of Saint Anthony in Florence, Arizona. His tomb, in a chapel, can be visited at the northern edge of the New Skete, and his hut, on a cliff above the sea, lies north of Little Saint Anne's.

On 20 October 2019 Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew announced his glorification at Karyes on Athos, and in March 2020 the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate entered him in the calendar. His teaching is preserved in sixty-⁠five letters published by the monastery of Philotheou and in books. His disciples renewed six of the twenty Athonite monasteries and many convents in Greece.