The Brotherhood at Katounakia

After Elder Nikephoros’s death, Ephraim became in his turn the elder of the little brotherhood at the hut of St. Ephraim the Syrian — a hidden community of a few monks living the strictest eremitic hesychasm on the cliffs of Katounakia. He fathered disciples in obedience and prayer, transmitting to them the tradition he had received, while himself remaining in the eremitic obscurity he had chosen.

Tradition: Greek Orthodox / Athonite

From Disciple to Elder

For the greater part of his monastic life Ephraim was a disciple, not an elder — decades of obedience under the severe Nikephoros in the hut of St. Ephraim the Syrian (see The Two Elders and Elder Nikephoros). Only after Nikephoros’s death did he become, in his turn, the elder (gerontas) of the little brotherhood at Katounakia, gathering a few monks around him in the same hut and desert where he had himself been formed (biography Elder Ephraim of Katounakia, trans. Vassiliadou-Christodoulou, Katounakia, 2003, on his succession as elder; Middleton, Precious Vessels of the Holy Spirit, Protecting Veil, 2004). The Athonite kalyva under an elder is the smallest and most intimate form of monastic life — not a great coenobium of hundreds but a spiritual family of a handful, living hand-to-mouth on the labor of their hands and the alms of pilgrims, bound together by obedience to the elder and by the common round of vigil, prayer, and Liturgy (on the eremitic kalyva life, see Orthodox Monasticism; Mount Athos).

That Ephraim had spent so long as a disciple before becoming an elder is significant for the kind of elder he was. He fathered his own monks in exactly what he had received: unconditional obedience, the noetic prayer of Joseph the Hesychast, severe asceticism, and the daily Liturgy at the center (Elder Ephraim of Katounakia, 2003, on his eldership; on the prayer transmitted, see The Meeting and Noetic Prayer). He transmitted, that is, a tradition he had not invented but inherited and lived — the mark, in the Athonite understanding, of an authentic elder, who hands on what he has been given rather than a spirituality of his own devising.

A Hidden Community

The brotherhood at Katounakia was, throughout Ephraim’s life, deliberately hidden. He was not the abbot of a famous monastery nor a public figure; he was the elder of a tiny hesychastic household on the most remote cliffs of the Mountain, and he guarded that obscurity (Elder Ephraim of Katounakia, 2003, on his hiddenness; Middleton, Precious Vessels, 2004, on his eremitic obscurity). The sibling collection on Joseph the Hesychast captures the contrast precisely: of Joseph’s two great disciples named Ephraim, “the one kept the desert; the other carried it to the world” — Ephraim of Katounakia being the one who “remained at Katounakia in the desert life… a hidden elder sought out by many, but himself remaining in the eremitic obscurity he had chosen” (Joseph of Vatopaidi, Elder Joseph the Hesychast, Vatopaidi, 1999; see St. Joseph the Hesychast: The Two Ephraims). His community was small and remained small; its influence flowed not through numbers or institutions but through the intensity of the life lived in it and through the pilgrims who found their way to the hut.

For all his desire for hiddenness, Ephraim’s reputation as a discerning and God-bearing elder spread in his later years, and Katounakia became a place of pilgrimage for those seeking his counsel — monks, clergy, and laypeople who climbed to the remote hut to lay their souls before him (Elder Ephraim of Katounakia, 2003; Middleton, Precious Vessels, 2004). The sources present this fame as something he neither sought nor welcomed — an intrusion he bore, as he bore everything, in obedience to the will of God, but which never altered his own hidden manner of life. The very hiddenness became part of his draw: he was sought precisely because he was not a public man but a genuine hermit, one of the last of the old Katounakia hesychasts.

The Disciples and the Sources

It is Ephraim’s own disciples — the fathers of his hesychasterion — who are the source of nearly everything we know of him. After his death they compiled the biography and the counsels that preserve his memory, out of the veneration in which they held their elder (Elder Ephraim of Katounakia, 2003, compiled by the fathers of his hesychasterion; on the source-cluster this creates, see The Katounakia Cluster). This is the ordinary way of Athonite tradition: an elder writes little or nothing, and it is his spiritual children who, after his repose, set down what they saw and heard, so that the elder reaches posterity through the community he fathered. The strength of this transmission is its intimacy and its continuity — the witnesses lived with him for years; its limitation is its devotional character and its single source — the community that venerated him is essentially the only voice we have. The collection weighs both throughout (see The Katounakia Cluster).

Through his disciples, the specific tradition of the hut of St. Ephraim the Syrian — the pure eremitic hesychasm of Katounakia, elder to disciple — continued after his death, one strand of the wider renewal of Athonite monastic life in the second half of the twentieth century (see His Place in the Athonite Renewal). His brotherhood did not become a great monastery or plant daughter-houses across continents, as the brotherhood of the other Ephraim, of Arizona, would (see below); it kept the desert. But keeping the desert — preserving unbroken the most intense form of the tradition in the caves where it had been lived — is, in the hesychast understanding, no lesser thing than spreading it, and it is the particular vocation Ephraim of Katounakia fulfilled (Joseph of Vatopaidi, Elder Joseph the Hesychast, 1999; see St. Joseph the Hesychast: The Two Ephraims).

The Other Ephraim

Any account of Ephraim of Katounakia’s place among the disciples must guard against a persistent confusion, and so it belongs here. St. Joseph the Hesychast had a second and quite distinct disciple also named Ephraim — Elder Ephraim of Arizona (formerly of Philotheou; born in Volos in 1928, died 2019) — with whom Ephraim of Katounakia is often confused and who must be kept sharply distinct (Joseph of Vatopaidi, Elder Joseph the Hesychast, 1999; see St. Joseph the Hesychast: The Two Ephraims). Elder Ephraim of Arizona was the branch of Joseph’s legacy that left the desert for the world: he became abbot of the ancient coenobium of Philotheou, which he repopulated and reformed, and then founded a large network of Orthodox monasteries across North America — commonly numbered at around seventeen to twenty — the best known being St. Anthony’s Greek Orthodox Monastery in Arizona (1995), his seat (Speake, Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise, Yale, 2002; Ephraim of Arizona, My Elder Joseph the Hesychast, St. Anthony’s, 2013; see St. Joseph the Hesychast: The Two Ephraims). He was a builder of institutions where Ephraim of Katounakia was a hidden hermit.

Two points must be stated plainly, exactly as the sibling collection frames them. First, Elder Ephraim of Arizona has not been glorified: he is venerated by many but is not, at the time of writing, a canonized saint, and the collection refers to him as “Elder,” not “Saint” (a distinction observed throughout; cf. St. Joseph the Hesychast: The Two Ephraims). It was Ephraim of Katounakia who was glorified in 2020 (see The Glorification). Second, the two are not rivals but complementary branches of one root: “the one kept the desert; the other carried it to the world,” and “neither is more Joseph’s heir than the other” (Joseph of Vatopaidi, Elder Joseph the Hesychast, 1999; see St. Joseph the Hesychast: The Two Ephraims). This collection concerns the desert-keeper; the world-carrier is treated in full in the Joseph collection’s dedicated file, and the disambiguation is set out in the README.

See Also

References

  • Elder Ephraim of Katounakia [Ὁ Γέρων Ἐφραίμ ὁ Κατουνακιώτης]. Compiled by the fathers of his hesychasterion. Trans. Tessy Vassiliadou-Christodoulou. Katounakia: Holy Hesychasterion of St. Ephraim, 2003. (His eldership; his hidden brotherhood; the pilgrims; the compilation of his memory by his disciples.)
  • Joseph of Vatopaidi, Elder. Elder Joseph the Hesychast: Struggles, Experiences, Teachings. Mount Athos: Vatopaidi, 1999. (The two Ephraims — desert and world; “neither is more Joseph’s heir than the other.”)
  • Middleton, Herman A. Precious Vessels of the Holy Spirit. Thessalonica: Protecting Veil, 2004. (His eremitic obscurity and the pilgrims who sought him.)
  • Speake, Graham. Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. (Ephraim of Arizona’s abbacy of Philotheou and the North American foundations.)
  • Ephraim of Arizona (of Philotheou), Elder. My Elder Joseph the Hesychast. Florence, AZ: St. Anthony’s Greek Orthodox Monastery, 2013. (The other Ephraim’s memoir; not glorified.)