Venerable Joseph the Priest of Khevi, Wonderworker (+1763)

We have very scant information about the holy priest Joseph. We know that he was a man of Khevi and served there as a priest.

The men of Khevi — “warlike men, strong, valiant, of fine stature” — were always distinguished by zeal in the faith; the churches and monasteries there astonish us with their beauty and inaccessibility. It is as if churches were built there on purpose in places where merely to get there was already equal to confessing the faith.

The beauty and symbol of Khevi is Mqinvari (Kazbek), “ever silvered with ice”, on whose slopes the monastery of Sameba was built, “a fair building in a fair place”, where the cross of Saint Nino was once kept.

On Mqinvari, among the ice, in a place no man could reach, a cave had been cut, which was called Bethlehem. The cave could be entered only by means of a chain let down from it. According to “The Life of Kartli”, many wonders were kept there: “They say that the Lord’s manger is there, and the tent of Abraham, standing without pole and without rope, and other wonders.”

According to Prince David (1776–1819), the eldest son of King George XII, Joseph of Khevi “was a great lover of holiness and a faster, so that his virtue became known everywhere. By the will of God he climbed Mount Mqinvari, which no man could reach, and saw there the tent and the manger of the patriarch Abraham, where no one had yet been on that mountain, and he brought King Erekle a piece of that tent. And he too attained the measure of working miracles, and so fell asleep in the Lord.”

He reposed in 1763.