Saint Joseph the Hesychast (1897-1959) was a rare man, endowed with many natural gifts who from a young age was completely dedicated to the love of God. He struggled with perfect self-denial and achieved sanctity. Throughout his life, he was strict and merciless with himself but lenient, accommodating, and filled with love for his brethren, which is a testament to genuine Orthodox asceticism. He was devoid of worldly education, but became wise in divine matters through ascetic practice and the vision of God.

He lived in a period when Athonite and generally Orthodox monasticism was in decline and going through a crisis. There were certainly individual saintly and ascetic figures at Mount Athos even then, whom he knew and greatly benefited from, but Saint Joseph brought back to his contemporary monastic and ecclesiastical environment, experientially and methodically, the teachings of Saint Gregory Palamas, the hesychastic life, which forms the basis of Orthodox Tradition. The blessed Elder Gabriel Dionysiatis, a respected, trustworthy, and accepted figure by all Athonites and the fullness of the Church, a contemporary of Saint Joseph, wrote about him: "Public opinion regards him as the most ascetic of our time, prescient and a hesychast, being an exceptional figure among our generation of eighth-century monks" (Lavra of Mount Athos, p. 218).