02 — The Cave of the Hesychasts
The desert setting of St. Joseph’s life: the austere, sun-scorched cliffs of Little St. Anne’s and Katounakia at the southern tip of the Athonite peninsula, where he and his brotherhood lived in caves in extreme poverty and unceasing prayer; and Arsenios the Cave-dweller, the older monk who placed himself under Joseph and remained his fellow-struggler for nearly forty years.
Tradition: Greek Orthodox / Athonite
This section describes where and with whom Joseph lived the ascetic life. The where is the wildest quarter of Mount Athos — the near-vertical southwestern face below the peak, where hermits have clung to the rock since Byzantine times, and where Joseph settled first at Little St. Anne’s (Mikra Agia Anna) and later at Katounakia and other desert cells. The with whom is above all Arsenios, the companion of the previous section’s search, whose lifelong obedience and shared hardship make the two men almost inseparable in the tradition.
Together these two files establish the physical and human frame of Joseph’s asceticism — the frame within which the teaching of noetic prayer (Section 03) and the life of the brotherhood (Section 04) unfolded. The details rest on the biography of Elder Joseph of Vatopaidi and the memoir of Elder Ephraim of Arizona, and are given with the caution those devotional sources require.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| the-cave-life-at-little-st-anne-and-katounakia.md | The austere desert of the Holy Mountain; the caves and cells of Little St. Anne’s, Katounakia, and (at the end) New Skete; extreme material poverty, manual labor, fasting, and the rhythm of the eremitic life. |
| elder-arsenios-the-companion.md | Arsenios the Cave-dweller (Spelaiotis), Joseph’s lifelong synergos: the older monk who submitted to the younger, shared every hardship, and outlived him by four years. |
See Also
- The Search for a Living Elder — how Joseph and Arsenios came to the desert
- The Typikon of Vigil — the daily rule lived in these caves
- Monasticism — the eremitic tradition of the Christian East
References
- Joseph of Vatopaidi, Elder. Elder Joseph the Hesychast: Struggles, Experiences, Teachings. Mount Athos: The Great and Holy Monastery of Vatopaidi, 1999.
- Ephraim of Philotheou (of Arizona), Elder. My Elder Joseph the Hesychast. Florence, AZ: St. Anthony’s Greek Orthodox Monastery, 2013.
- Speake, Graham. Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.