Monk Lives on a 140ft Rock to Get Closer to God [Photos]

Maxime Qavtaradze 59-year-old monk lives on top a stone pillar in Georgia, scaling a 131-foot ladder in order to leave and enter his lofty home. Photographer Amos Chapple ascended the cliff to photograph his life there.

The Katskhi Pillar has long been venerated by locals in the area, though it's been uninhabited since around the 1400s.

Maxime Qavtaradze

When climbers ascended for the first time in centuries in 1944, they found the ruins of a church and the 600-year-old bones of the last stylite who lived there. The stylite tradition is believed to have begun in 423 when St. Simeon the Elder climbed a pillar in Syria in order to avoid worldly temptations, but the practice has since fallen out of favor. However, Qavtaradze is a modern devotee.

Qavtaradze making the 20 minute climb to the top of the rock after praying with others in the monastery at the foot of the cliff. Once he is too frail to use the ladder, he intends to remain at the top until his death.

Though isolated, he is not a total hermit, coming down once or twice a week to counsel the troubled young men who come to the monastery at the bottom for his help. After all, he was once one of them. Though he now lives at the top of the world, Qavtaradze found his vocation when he was the lowest he's ever been, doing prison time after he "drank, sold drugs, everything" as a young man.

He took monastic vows in 1993, and has been working to rebuild the monastery complex, chapel, and hermitage for the last fifteen years, according to the makers of "The Stylite," a documentary about Qavtaradze and his community. Watch trailer below


Credit : Huffpost