Venerable Joseph of Volokolamsk (+1515)
The Venerable Joseph of Volokolamsk (in the world John Sanin) was born in 1439 near the town of Volokolamsk into the family of the devout parents John (as a monk, Joannicius) and Marina (in the schema, Maria). When he turned seven, the boy was given to be brought up by Arsenius, a devout and educated elder of the monastery of the Exaltation of the Cross at Volokolamsk. The boy, distinguished by rare understanding, learned the Psalter by heart in one year, and the Holy Scriptures the next. He became a reader and singer in the monastery church. His contemporaries were amazed at the saint’s wonderful memory: he recited by heart the readings from the Psalter, the Gospel and the Apostle appointed by the Typikon.
The blessed one was twenty when he resolved to offer his life to the Lord and left his home. He went to Borovsk, and in February 1460 was tonsured a monk by the Venerable Paphnutius of Borovsk.
The saint spent eighteen years in this monastery. In 1477, after the death of Paphnutius of Borovsk, he was ordained hieromonk and, according to the holy abbot’s testament, the leadership of the house was entrusted to him. Father Joseph resolved to correct the monastery’s rule and make it stricter according to the typika of the Kiev Caves, of Sergius’s Holy Trinity and of the Kirillo-Belozersky houses, which the brotherhood received with displeasure. Then the blessed one left the monastery with seven like-minded monks and made for the forests of Volokolamsk to found a new house. Their arrival there was marked by a miracle: a storm that suddenly arose flattened the forest, as though clearing a place for the monastery. The brethren set to building diligently. The Venerable Joseph himself laboured side by side with them. Worn out by the day’s toil, the elder spent his nights in prayer. In a short time the number of the monastery’s monks reached a hundred. Abba Joseph tried to give his spiritual children an example of restraint and moderation in everything, and outwardly he differed from them in nothing. He came to church before anyone else, read and sang together with the others, preached, and was the last to leave. At night the abbot went round the church and the cells, a faithful guardian of the brethren’s peace and watchfulness. If he heard idle talk, he knocked to let the monks know he was there, and then humbly went away.
The Venerable Joseph gave his chief attention to ordering the inner life of the monks. He watched strictly over the keeping of the monastery’s rule, whose foundation was complete poverty, the cutting off of one’s own will and constant work. The brethren had everything in common. Without the superior’s blessing no one could bring anything into his cell, not even books or icons. By common agreement the monks left part of their meal for the poor. Work, prayer and personal labour filled the life of the brethren. The Jesus Prayer never left their lips. Abba Joseph regarded idleness as the chief weapon of demonic temptations. The abbot himself always took upon himself the heaviest obediences. Many monks of the house were occupied in copying service books and the works of the holy fathers, thanks to which the book repository of Volokolamsk soon became one of the best libraries among the monasteries of Russia.
The Lord’s chosen ascetic reposed on 9 October 1515, at the age of seventy-six.
