The Two Ephraims

St. Joseph’s two great spiritual sons, both named Ephraim: Ephraim of Katounakia (1912–1998), the hidden hesychast who inherited Joseph’s desert cell and his prayer of obedience; and Ephraim of Arizona, formerly of Philotheou (1928–2019), the abbot and monastic founder who repopulated Philotheou and planted some twenty monasteries across North America. The one kept the desert; the other carried it to the world.

Tradition: Greek Orthodox / Athonite

Ephraim of Katounakia

Elder Ephraim of Katounakia (1912–1998) is remembered as the disciple who most fully embodied Joseph’s teaching on obedience and hidden prayer. He had come to Athos and settled at Katounakia under an elder named Nikephoros, a harsh master; but for his spiritual nourishment in prayer he attached himself to Joseph the Hesychast, whom he obeyed as his true guide in the inner life, so that his formation combined a demanding external obedience with Joseph’s instruction in the noetic prayer (Joseph of Vatopaidi, Elder Joseph the Hesychast, Vatopaidi, 1999, on Ephraim of Katounakia’s discipleship; Middleton, Precious Vessels of the Holy Spirit, Protecting Veil, 2004, on the life of Elder Ephraim of Katounakia). After Joseph’s repose he remained at Katounakia in the desert life, and became in his own long lifetime one of the most revered hesychasts of the Mountain — a hidden elder sought out by many, but himself remaining in the eremitic obscurity he had chosen (Middleton, Precious Vessels, 2004).

Ephraim of Katounakia represents the branch of Joseph’s legacy that stayed in the desert: the unbroken transmission of the pure eremitic hesychasm, elder to disciple, in the caves where Joseph had lived it. It is largely through him that we have independent confirmation of how Joseph taught the prayer, for his own teaching — recorded, for instance, in Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos)’s account of a night’s conversation with him on the Jesus Prayer — reproduces Joseph’s doctrine in the same concrete terms a generation on (Hierotheos [Vlachos], A Night in the Desert of the Holy Mountain, 1991, recording Elder Ephraim of Katounakia’s teaching on noetic prayer; on the continuity, see Nepsis and the Jesus Prayer). He was especially celebrated for his own radical obedience — the virtue Joseph had made the foundation of everything — and is often held up as its living icon (Middleton, Precious Vessels, 2004).

Ephraim of Arizona (of Philotheou)

The other Ephraim — Elder Ephraim of Arizona, born in Volos in 1928, long the abbot of the Monastery of Philotheou, and in his last decades the founder-elder of the Athonite diaspora in America (d. 2019) — represents the branch that carried Joseph’s hesychasm out of the desert into the coenobitic monasteries and across the Atlantic (Joseph of Vatopaidi, Elder Joseph the Hesychast, 1999, on Ephraim [of Philotheou] as Joseph’s disciple; Speake, Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise, Yale, 2002, on Ephraim’s abbacy of Philotheou and the American foundations). He entered Joseph’s brotherhood as a young man and was formed directly under the elder in the desert, later setting down his memories in the memoir My Elder Joseph the Hesychast — one of the principal sources for this collection (Ephraim of Arizona, My Elder Joseph the Hesychast, St. Anthony’s Monastery, 2013).

After Joseph’s death, Ephraim eventually became abbot of the ancient but depleted coenobium of Philotheou, which he repopulated and reformed on the strict coenobitic and hesychast lines he had learned from Joseph, transforming it into one of the flourishing monasteries of the revived Mountain (Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002, on the repopulation of Philotheou under Ephraim). From Philotheou his influence radiated: brotherhoods drawn from it or inspired by him repopulated other monasteries (see The Repopulation of Athos). Then, from the late 1980s and especially through the 1990s, Ephraim turned to North America, where he founded a remarkable network of Orthodox monasteries — commonly numbered at around seventeen to twenty — the best known being St. Anthony’s Greek Orthodox Monastery at Florence, Arizona, established in 1995, which became his own seat and the publisher of Joseph’s Monastic Wisdom and Ephraim’s own works (Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002, on the American foundations; Ephraim of Arizona, My Elder Joseph the Hesychast, 2013, publisher’s note). [Disputed: the number of monasteries founded by Elder Ephraim in North America is usually given as roughly seventeen to twenty; the exact figure depends on which foundations are counted and on the date, and sources differ slightly. The best-attested facts are the founding of St. Anthony's in Arizona in 1995 and the establishment of a substantial network of men's and women's monasteries across the United States and Canada (Speake, *Renewal in Paradise*, 2002).]

One Root, Two Branches

The two Ephraims together display the range of Joseph’s legacy. Both were formed by the same elder in the same desert on the same principles — the noetic prayer, the vigil, above all obedience — yet their lives diverged completely: Ephraim of Katounakia remained a hidden hesychast of the cliffs, transmitting the pure eremitic tradition to a few; Ephraim of Arizona became a builder of institutions, carrying Joseph’s spirit into great coenobia and across an ocean to thousands (Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002, on the two forms of the legacy; Middleton, Precious Vessels, 2004). Neither is more Joseph’s heir than the other. The desert branch preserved the intensity and purity of the source; the coenobitic and diaspora branch gave it reach. It is characteristic of the hesychast tradition that both are needed — the hidden life that keeps the flame and the public life that spreads it — and that Joseph, the cave-dweller who taught obedience, should have fathered both.

The influence of Ephraim of Arizona in particular has made Joseph a presence in American Orthodoxy far beyond what a Greek desert hermit might have seemed likely to become: the monasteries Ephraim founded have shaped the piety of a generation of American Orthodox faithful, transmitting the Jesus Prayer, frequent confession, and the ascetic ethos of Athos to a new continent — a transmission traced further in Section 08 (see Hesychasm in the Modern World). Both Ephraims have themselves become objects of veneration within the tradition since their deaths, and their reputations have contributed to the recognition of their common elder, Joseph, whose glorification in 2020 crowned the line (see Glorification 2020).

See Also

• The Repopulation of Athos — the wider revival of the coenobia by Joseph’s line
• Spiritual Fatherhood and Obedience — the obedience the Ephraims embodied
• Nepsis and the Jesus Prayer — the prayer Ephraim of Katounakia transmitted
• Hesychasm in the Modern World — the American mission of Ephraim of Arizona
• The Sources for His Life — Ephraim of Arizona’s memoir as a source

References

• Joseph of Vatopaidi, Elder. Elder Joseph the Hesychast: Struggles, Experiences, Teachings. Mount Athos: The Great and Holy Monastery of Vatopaidi, 1999. (Ephraim of Katounakia’s and Ephraim of Philotheou’s discipleship under Joseph.)
• Ephraim of Philotheou (of Arizona), Elder. My Elder Joseph the Hesychast. Florence, AZ: St. Anthony’s Greek Orthodox Monastery, 2013. (Ephraim’s own memoir of the elder; publisher’s note on St. Anthony’s Monastery.)
• Middleton, Herman A. Precious Vessels of the Holy Spirit: The Lives and Counsels of Contemporary Elders of Greece. Thessalonica: Protecting Veil, 2004. (The life of Elder Ephraim of Katounakia and his radical obedience.)
• Hierotheos (Vlachos), Metropolitan. A Night in the Desert of the Holy Mountain. Levadia: Birth of the Theotokos Monastery, 1991. (Elder Ephraim of Katounakia’s teaching on the Jesus Prayer.)
• Speake, Graham. Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. (Ephraim’s abbacy of Philotheou; the repopulation of Philotheou; the North American foundations, including St. Anthony’s, Arizona.)