Glorification 2020

The formal recognition of St. Joseph the Hesychast as a saint by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in March 2020, some sixty years after his repose on the Dormition of the Theotokos in 1959; the establishment of his feast; and the meaning of the act — what the Church claims, and does not claim, in glorifying such a saint.

Tradition: Greek Orthodox / Athonite

The Repose

St. Joseph the Hesychast reposed on the Holy Mountain on 15/28 August 1959 — the feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos — at New Skete, where his brotherhood was then living, after decades of ascetic struggle in the caves of the Athonite desert (Joseph of Vatopaidi, Elder Joseph the Hesychast, Vatopaidi, 1999, on the date and circumstances of his repose). The coincidence of his death with the Dormition — the great feast of the Mother of God to whom the Holy Mountain is dedicated as her “garden” — has been read within the tradition as a mark of grace, and it fixes the anchor for his commemoration (ibid.).

The Glorification

For some sixty years after his death Joseph was venerated informally — by his disciples, by the monasteries they came to lead, and by the growing readership of his letters — as a holy elder, in the manner by which the Orthodox Church’s recognition of a saint typically begins from below, in the veneration of the faithful, before it is formally ratified (on this pattern of ecclesial reception, compare the repository’s flagship discussion in St. Xenia of Petersburg: Methodology). That informal cult was fed by the flourishing of his spiritual lineage across Athos and North America (see The Repopulation of Athos) and by the wide diffusion of his writings.

The formal act came in March 2020, when the Holy and Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, under Patriarch Bartholomew, decided the canonization (glorification) of Elder Joseph the Hesychast, entering him into the calendar of the saints of the Church (Ecumenical Patriarchate, Announcement of the Holy and Sacred Synod, March 2020, as reported by the Orthodox press; Joseph of Vatopaidi, Elder Joseph the Hesychast, 1999, on the informal cult that preceded it). [Disputed: the precise session date is given in the reports as early March 2020 (commonly 9 March 2020); this collection reports the month and year as securely attested and the exact day as reported by the Orthodox press rather than verified against the synodal act itself. Per METHODOLOGY §2.3, the aggregating news reports are used to locate the act, which is the Ecumenical Patriarchate's own synodal decision of March 2020.] The glorification was received with particular joy on the Holy Mountain and in the monasteries of his lineage, for whom it was the Church’s ratification of the elder they had long venerated as a saint.

The Feast

With the glorification, a day of commemoration was appointed. Because his repose fell on 15/28 August — the Dormition itself, one of the greatest feasts of the year, on which no other commemoration can be prominent — his feast is kept in proximity to that date rather than on it. [Disputed: sources indicate that St. Joseph the Hesychast's memory is commemorated in connection with the anniversary of his repose (15/28 August, the Dormition), with his feast observed on or about that date; the exact appointed day is reported variously in the derivative literature, and this collection reports the anchor (his repose on the Dormition) as secure and the precise feast-day as not uniformly given in the sources consulted.] The connection of his commemoration to the Dormition binds his feast to the Theotokos and to the Mountain that is her garden — a fitting association for a hesychast of Athos.

What the Glorification Claims

It is worth stating, in keeping with the collection’s methodology, what a glorification does and does not claim — a point developed at length in the repository’s flagship treatment (see St. Xenia of Petersburg: Methodology). 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 person’s life (this ecclesiology is set out fully in the Xenia methodology file). In Joseph’s case the fruits were unusually visible: the manifest holiness attested by his disciples, the profound teaching preserved in his letters, and — in the order of external effects — the extraordinary revival of Athonite monasticism that flowed from his brotherhood (see The Athonite Renaissance).

This is why the glorification and this collection’s source-critical discipline are not in tension. The collection pins Joseph’s visionary claims to his own testimony under §3.5 and declines to certify them as adjudicated fact (see Experiences Pinned to Testimony); the Church’s glorification does not require it to do otherwise, for the glorification ratifies the holiness of the life and the authenticity of the cult, not the historian’s certification of each interior event. The collection 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.

A Recent Saint

Finally, the recency of the glorification bears on how the collection writes about Joseph. He was recognized only in 2020, within living memory of his disciples, at a moment when the practice of his spiritual descendants is itself a subject of contemporary discussion (see Hesychasm in the Modern World). The Church’s long reception of a saint — the sifting and settling by which a cult matures over centuries — has, in Joseph’s 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).

See Also

References

  • Joseph of Vatopaidi, Elder. Elder Joseph the Hesychast: Struggles, Experiences, Teachings. Mount Athos: The Great and Holy Monastery of Vatopaidi, 1999. (The date and circumstances of his repose on the Dormition, 1959; the informal cult that preceded glorification.)
  • Ecumenical Patriarchate, Announcement of the Holy and Sacred Synod, March 2020 (as reported by the Orthodox press; used per METHODOLOGY §2.3 to locate the synodal act of glorification).
  • METHODOLOGY.md §2.3 and §3.5, this repository.