Venerable Joseph (IV)

The Venerable Joseph Analites, of Raithu, “was wise and learned in every work, and God was with him”. Once a monk who came to the saint for spiritual instruction “saw him through a chink in the door wholly, from head to foot, like a flaming fire, as he stood in his prayer”. When Father Joseph learned that “his work” had been revealed, he “was afraid lest the brethren should trouble him”, and besought God to hide his labours. From that day the saint appeared to no one.

Six years later Saint Joseph knocked on the door of the cell of his disciple, Abba Gelasius. “And Abba Gelasius went out, and found his teacher standing at the door.” Gelasius reproached his teacher: why did you leave me an orphan? And the holy father answered: the Lord knows, I have gone nowhere, nor have I been deprived of Holy Communion, but “none of you saw me”. Then he revealed the reason for his coming too: “Today I depart from this wretched flesh to my Lord, and I desired that thou shouldst bury it.” Abba Gelasius listened attentively to his teacher’s last instruction “for the profit of the soul and the expectation of the good things of the age to come”. At last Father Joseph lay down on the floor, folded his hands on his breast, and reposed. “His face shone like the sun.”

The monks buried the holy body with honour. This happened before the slaughter of the fathers of Raithu, in the fourth century.