The Skete is centered on the ‘Jesus Prayer.” One of its foremost practitioners was the Elder Ephraim, a disciple of the Elder Joseph the Hesychast, Abbot of Philotheou Monastery on Mt. Athos. Elder Ephraim lived an ascetic life. He became Abbot of Philotheou following the repose of the Elder Joseph. At the request of the council of Mt. Athos, he took the direction of several monasteries on Mt. Athos. Following a visit to North America for medical treatment, he realized the grave need of North America for monastic living. With the assistance of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, and, later the Patriarch of Constantinople, he began planting monasteries in the United States and Canada. The Abbot of Holy Archangels Monastery in Kendalia, Texas, the Abbot Dositheos, is the spiritual director of the Skete.
Archbishop Andrew Rymarenko of Novo Diviyevo Monastery in Rockland, New York, was the spiritual director of Abbot John at Holy Theotokos Monastery in North Fort Myers, Florida. Both were influential in promoting interest in monastic life. The essence of the Orthodox life is “godliness” (piety), the entrance of God into every aspect of life. The “conscious spiritual struggle of the man for whom the Church and its laws are the center of everything he does and thinks. The shared, conscious experience of this way of life, centered on the daily Divine services, produces the genuine Orthodox community, with its feelings of lightness, joy, and inward quietness.”
[Orthodox Word, July-August (1975):135].