[1] Born Timothy Richard Ware on 11 September 1934 to an Anglican family in Bath, Somerset, England,[2] he was educated at Westminster School in London (to which he had won a King's Scholarship) and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he took a double first in classics as well as reading theology.

While still a layman, he spent six months in Canada at a monastery of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad.

[3] Thoroughly conversant in modern Greek, Ware became an Eastern Orthodox monk at the Monastery of Saint John the Theologian in Patmos, Greece.

[4] In 1966, Ware became Spalding Lecturer at the University of Oxford in Eastern Orthodox studies, a position he held for 35 years until his retirement.

[6] In 2017, Ware was awarded the Lambeth Cross for Ecumenism by the Archbishop of Canterbury "for his outstanding contribution to Anglican–Orthodox theological dialogue".

Together with G. E. H. Palmer and Philip Sherrard, he translated the Philokalia; and with Mother Mary, he produced the Lenten Triodion and Festal Menaion.