The Glorification, 2020

On 9 March 2020 the Holy and Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople formally glorified St. Ephraim of Katounakia — in the very same synodal act that glorified his master, St. Joseph the Hesychast, and St. Daniel of Katounakia. The three great Athonite spiritual fathers were entered into the calendar of saints together, some sixty years after Joseph’s death and twenty-two after Ephraim’s.

Tradition: Greek Orthodox / Athonite

The Synodal Act

The formal glorification (canonization) of St. Ephraim of Katounakia came on 9 March 2020, when the Holy and Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, under Patriarch Bartholomew, in its regular March session, entered him into the calendar of the saints of the Orthodox Church (Ecumenical Patriarchate, decision of the Holy and Sacred Synod, 9 March 2020, as reported by the Orthodox press: orthodoxtimes.com, “Three Canonizations by the Holy and Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate”; orthochristian.com/129177.html, “Elder Joseph the Hesychast, Elders Daniel and Ephraim of Katounakia officially added to calendar of saints”; used per METHODOLOGY §2.3 to locate the synodal act). The decisive and consistency-critical fact is that this was not a separate act for Ephraim alone: the same synodal decision of 9 March 2020 glorified three of the great twentieth-century Athonite spiritual fathers together — St. Joseph the Hesychast, St. Daniel of Katounakia, and St. Ephraim of Katounakia (orthochristian.com/129177.html; orthodoxtimes.com, per METHODOLOGY §2.3). Ephraim was thus glorified in the very same act as his own master, Joseph — the disciple entered into the calendar alongside the elder whose noetic prayer he had received and transmitted (see The Meeting and Noetic Prayer).

This scope must be stated precisely, and the collection is careful to do so. The 9 March 2020 act comprised those three names — Joseph the Hesychast, Daniel of Katounakia, Ephraim of Katounakia — and this collection’s account agrees exactly with the sibling collection on Joseph, which records the same March 2020 synodal decision as the act of Joseph’s glorification (see St. Joseph the Hesychast: Glorification 2020). [Disputed: a fourth elder, Ieronymos (Hieronymus) of Simonopetra, is sometimes named in loose reports alongside these three, but he was in fact canonized in a separate act (dated in the reports to 27 November 2019), not in the 9 March 2020 decision; the collection reports the March 2020 act as comprising Joseph the Hesychast, Daniel of Katounakia, and Ephraim of Katounakia, and notes Ieronymos as a distinct, earlier glorification (orthochristian.com/129177.html, per METHODOLOGY §2.3).]

The Preceding Announcement of October 2019

The March 2020 synodal decision was preceded by an informal announcement. During a visit to the Holy Mountain in October 2019 — the reports give 20 October 2019, at the Protaton church in Karyes — Patriarch Bartholomew announced the intention to canonize these great Athonite elders, an announcement received with joy on the Mountain before it was formally enacted by the Synod the following March (orthochristian.com, “Feast of St. Ephraim of Katounakia celebrated for first time since his canonization,” and related reports of the October 2019 announcement at the Protaton; en.wikipedia.org, “Ephraim of Katounakia”; per METHODOLOGY §2.3). [Disputed: some sources date Ephraim's canonization to the October 2019 announcement at Karyes and others to the March 2020 synodal act; these are best understood as two stages of one process — the Patriarch's informal announcement on the Mountain in October 2019, and the formal decision of the Holy and Sacred Synod on 9 March 2020. This collection reports the 9 March 2020 synodal act as the formal glorification, consistent with the sibling collection's dating of Joseph's glorification to March 2020, and notes the October 2019 announcement as its precursor.]

The two-stage pattern — veneration and announcement preceding the formal synodal act — is the ordinary way the Orthodox Church’s recognition of a saint proceeds: the cult arises from below among the faithful, is voiced by the hierarchy, and is at length ratified by the competent synod (on this pattern of ecclesial reception, see the flagship discussion in St. Xenia of Petersburg: Methodology). In Ephraim’s case the informal veneration had grown around him in his last years and after his death in 1998; the Patriarch’s 2019 announcement voiced it; and the 2020 synodal act ratified it.

What the Glorification Claims

In keeping with the collection’s methodology, it is worth stating what a glorification does and does not claim — the point developed at length at the repository’s flagship treatment and echoed in the sibling collection on Joseph (see St. Xenia of Petersburg: Methodology; St. Joseph the Hesychast: Glorification 2020). When the Church glorifies a saint, it does not certify a biography, adjudicate the objective occurrence of each reported vision, or resolve every historical question about the person’s life. It receives and ratifies a cult — the testimony of the faithful that, through this person, the grace of God has been and is at work — and recognizes a holiness already manifest in veneration and in the fruits of the life. This is precisely why the glorification of Ephraim and this collection’s source-critical discipline stand in no tension: the collection pins Ephraim’s visionary claims to his tradition’s testimony under §3.5 and declines to certify them as fact, while the Church’s act ratifies the holiness of the life and the authenticity of the cult, not the historian’s certification of each interior event (see Experiences Pinned to Testimony).

In Ephraim’s case the fruits the Church weighed were the things best attested about him: the manifest holiness his disciples witnessed over decades, the daily Liturgy served with tears, the sound and undeluded teaching on obedience and noetic prayer recorded by a competent theologian (see Obedience and Prayer), and the veneration that gathered around him despite his own flight from reputation. That the Church glorified the hidden desert-hermit alongside his famous master is itself significant — a recognition that the renewal of Athos ran as much through the hidden hesychasts of the Katounakia cliffs as through the public elders of the age (see His Place in the Athonite Renewal).

A Recent Glorification

Finally, the recency of the act bears on how the collection writes about Ephraim. He was glorified only in 2020, within living memory of his disciples; the Church’s long reception of a saint — the sifting and settling by which a cult matures over generations — has, in his case, barely begun. This collection therefore treats his stature and legacy as genuine but not yet fully weighed, and offers its own assessment as a contemporary judgment rather than a final one (see Assessment). It receives the glorification, venerates the saint the Church has given it, and continues to report the evidence with the honesty that makes the confidence level of each claim legible (METHODOLOGY §3.5, §6).

References

Ecumenical Patriarchate, decision of the Holy and Sacred Synod, 9 March 2020 (glorifying St. Joseph the Hesychast, St. Daniel of Katounakia, and St. Ephraim of Katounakia), as reported by the Orthodox press: orthodoxtimes.com, “Three Canonizations by the Holy and Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate”; orthochristian.com/129177.html, “Elder Joseph the Hesychast, Elders Daniel and Ephraim of Katounakia officially added to calendar of saints.” Used per METHODOLOGY §2.3 to locate the synodal act.
Reports of Patriarch Bartholomew’s October 2019 announcement at the Protaton, Karyes, and of the first post-glorification feast (with the Liturgy at Ampelochori): orthochristian.com; en.wikipedia.org, “Ephraim of Katounakia.” Per METHODOLOGY §2.3.
Elder Ephraim of Katounakia [Ὁ Γέρων Ἐφραίμ ὁ Κατουνακιώτης]. Trans. Tessy Vassiliadou-Christodoulou. Katounakia: Holy Hesychasterion of St. Ephraim, 2003. (The life and cult that the glorification ratified.)
METHODOLOGY.md §2.3, §3.5, §6, this repository.