The Romanian village, spiritual foundation in the formation of great spiritual leaders

The Saint Father had a sweet story about those times of living in the village and about the peasants. He saw, in their lives, the manifestation of a major spirituality, grouped around God and all the ordinances that the village had acquired over time. Mom and Dad were the brightest figures in his memory. My mother, Rebekah, was a simple, illiterate peasant, who had never said bad words to anyone, who had urged him to become a priest, and who then warned him "to be a proper priest and not to be ashamed" of his family. ”He remembers his father, Irimie, as he was mumbling around the room and murmuring psalm 50, while the children tried to extend their sweet morning sleep, and on Sundays, after returning from church, the entire family was reading the Ceaslov. As a child, before the beginning of school, and later on holidays, the Saint Father was trained in the different household tasks, went to gather the hay, or he went to the forest to cut wood or to look after the plants in the garden or even to soirees, where he read about the Saints' lives.

He used to evoke the beauty of the carols and the ancient charm of carolling, the rich spiritual content of all the other songs in the village whenever he could, but especially on Christmas Eve, to those who came carolling. The Saint Father himself murmured the words in a low voice, together with the carols singers. The carols meant, for the advisers, an eloquent expression "of the infinite delicate man – God [4]"the theology of the carols seemed to be of an "extraordinary subtlety”[6].

The village of Saint Father Dumitru's memories, so close to the Church, was wonderful in itself. The relations between the peasants were structured by old ordinances, preserved with wisdom and tenacity. People stuck to the Church and to its traditions, the church they were trying to extend over the whole village and its surroundings: “The village and the church have the same meaning, in our country. The life of the Romanian village is presented today, as it has always been, deeply involved in the life of the church. "This way, Saint Father Staniloae agrees with Nicolae Iorga, who called the Transylvanian Church "a Church of villages and priests" [6]. The Romanian peasants’ characteristic relatioships are based on humanity, a quality that means "consideration for people, common sense, attention, kindness, mercy, avoiding everything that is shameful and ugly, striving to earn through trustworthiness, good propriety, honesty, solidity, moral trust” [10].

We mention here the work of Saint Father Dumitru Stăniloae „Reflections on the spirituality of the Romanian people”, in which the Saint Father stopped on some specific features of the Romanian ethos.

Thus, speaking of ”balance” as a general dimension of the Romanian spirit, he brings as a testimony "the teachings of Neagoe Basarab to his son Theodosius", writing "Here is the teaching of Neagoe Basarab about personal balance, absolutely necessary for social cohesion", but also the work of Ion Heliade Rădulescu, which has contributed to our orientation from East to West, advocating for maintaining our own balance [11, p. 70].

Another feature of the Romanian ethos was seen in the complex harmony or the grace and seriousness of the long-lasting ethnic creations of our balance. "The balance of the Romanian spirit, manifested in its more relevant externalities, says Saint Father, appears as a varied harmony from the aesthetic point of view, paradoxically linked to seriousness. The costumes, the music, the dance, the dwellings or the religious place, the sculpture and the painting as their adornments – all this show this unique harmony and grace" [11, p. 72].

It is amazing how Saint Father Dumitru can see the whole world of the village from the perspective of community communion. It does not abstract from this "key" neither the dwelling house nor the Romanian courtyard thought in the same spirit of synthesis, with the opening towards the secret horizon of existence. "The courtyard is fenced, but not hermetically isolated. In particular, prople are looking at what is happening in the street from the porch” [11, p. 88], in fact the porch maintains the opening of the house to the village and the need for contact with those in the street [11].

The old churches and monasteries present a rich synthesis of native Eastern and Western motifs in an original harmony from which the spirit of communion radiates. Saint Father Stăniloae believed that the size of the Romanian churches [11, p. 90] was not given in the first place by the lack of material means but by the spiritual necessities, explaining that, in the East, the church was called to maintain the spirit of communion between the believers, to strengthen the community in prayer, so that it may be strengthened on all levels: "Our little churches are the expression of man’s delicacy, transparency and the fragility of his work in front of the divine, which goes hand in hand with man’s transparency and sensitivity in the relations of communion and familiarity with their peers" [11, p. 91].

Another feature of the Romanian ethos is seen by the adviser in ”lucidity and tenderness”[11, p. 99] talking about the paradoxical nature of the Romanian soul, which synthesizes the lucidity and western realism with the intuitive reality and the living being of the East [11, p. 72]. In Romanians, lucidity is at the same time tenderness [11, p. 105]. For sweetness is the lucidity of the heart that illuminates and realizes the normal state of the interpersonal domain. The Romanian understands by pitying, says the adviser, and pitying by understanding. He is understanding in the delusional or affective sense of the word, because he is intelligent; or he is smart because he "understands" in the affective sense of the word [11, p. 105].

The Saint Father then mentions irony and humour - other features of the Romanian ethos that are in continuity with the cleverness [11, p. 111]. The irony proves a sharp spirit of observation, a fine sensation of any trait that deviates from the appropriate measure, an astonishing gift characteristic of that deviation. Humor holds an imcostumeant place in the life of the Romanian people. The Saint Father sees it as an almost permanent smile through which his spirit is externalized; Through it, the Romanians make proof of a robust spirit, undaunted by hardships, this is their way of fighting. „If meeting is a celebration (Saint Exupery), smiling expresses the joy of this celebration” [11, p. 120].

Longing could not be absent from this pantheon of the Romanian ethos. Seen as "an acute feeling of the absence of those belonging to his own horizon, who bears their traces, which cannot be filled by others” [8, p. 130]. The Romanian longing is related to the communitary personalism of our people and, perhaps, the people of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe share it as part of the same Thracian-Slavic-Byzantine spirituality [11, p. 139].

Besides longing, the father speaks of humanity, a word with a strong meaning only in Romanian because it is fundamentally related to man, to be "man of humanity" [11, p. 72] means to be a true man.

Another feature that concerns the community aspect of the Romanians in the village is hospitality, seen in relation with the foreigners through the prism of which one sees the awareness of one's own value [11, p. 151].

The "universal" could be omitted from these features, seen as an opening of the Romanian soul to all the creations of the human spirit everywhere. It is open to the West but has links with the East [11, p. 156]. He is interested in technique, but also in spiritual culture. It assimilates and adapts any literary and artistic tendency, receives everything that has an imcostumeance somewhere, but auto-tunes everything.

Our monks used the knowledge of Greek, more accessible to us during the Phanariotic period, to translate the wonderful texts of Byzantine spirituality. The connection with Byzantium stimulated the painting of our monasteries with autochthonous spiritual subtlety [11, p. 158] and the atmosphere of communion between the believers gathered in them [11, p. 158].

As a last feature of the dimension of the Romanian ethos, the father stops on the transfigurative spirituality of the Romanian village, integrating all the features mentioned so far in the Romanian village hearth.

The Saint Father recognizes that all forms of national manifestation are felt by the presence of the Christian faith, by their sense of mystery, by their union in it, by the clean morality and by the living spirit of communion. These "forms of national manifestation" are perverted in the Romanian village today because the village has lost its connection with faith in modernity. Perhaps that's why we no longer naturally feel the depth of the ancestral traditions related to the village life: the song, the game, the costumes, the customs of marriage and funeral, because they have lost their common source which was the faith. By virtue of it all made sense because they were transfigured by the purity of the faith. The community around the church is preventing our peasants from speaking in vicious words. Everyone is careful not to de "mocked at in the village" and each one is prized for what he brings to life in the village: by his joking nature, by his patience, his moral seriousness.

In a modernity that disputes its extremes between religious syncretism and religious fundamentalism, between secularization and the thirst for authentic spirituality, between globalism / cosmopolitanism and the multiplication of nationalist attitudes and inter-ethnic conflicts, Father Dumitru Staniloae "connects" us to the traditional values of the village through - a new breath related to the rediscovery of the "mystery of the person" [11, p. 166].

As a conclusion, we notice in this whole study about the features of the Romanian ethos the deep knowledge of the countless nuances that modify the spirit of the Romanians according to the circumstances very meticulously lived by Saint Father Stăniloae, having a jeweler’s vocation in analyzing the complexity of the phenomenon.

THE VILLAGE OF FATHER TEOFIL PĂRĂIAN – THE ARK OF CHURCH TRADITIONS AND RITUALS

Father Teofil Părăian was born in Topârcea (1929-2009), receiving the name of John and being the first of the four brothers. the Metropolitan of Transylvania, Nicolae Colan, said about his father that "he was a man without sight, but enlightened". Father Theophilus always remembered with joy his advisers who taught him to lift his mind to heaven: "I came to earth, thinking of heaven," but they also taught him the value of hard work: "To work in such a way that no one else will work for you”, as well as the hometown that represented a universe emerged in prayer and filled with the sweat of human labor.

Father Teofil recommended, at all times, a program of spiritual life. About this program, Father Teofil said: “The spiritual life is not expected, but it is realized. Whoever does this program can do other things as well” [7].

Topârcea village had a hill in the middle of which was the church. From everywhere in the village, you could see the church and from the hill of the church you could see most of the village. Father Theophilus said that the life of the village was related to the church.

When he asked his father's grandfather why he should go to church on Sunday, he replied, "Well, how can you not go to church on Sunday, what to do if you don't go to church on Sunday?" Well that's the law, kid!" [2, p. 251].

Before going to church, his mother would cook and dress him up in clean clothes and have him show his handkerchief, always having a new one ready.

Father Teofil later found that there was a tradition that kept man around the church ordinances, without a theological foundation, while today there is a theological foundation, but from which, in most cases, a proper attitude does not emerge. Father Theophilus loved his mother, Elizabeth, and defined himself as a "male edition of the mother". The mother taught the children prayers and told them to cross on the pillow. If they were ever tired and did not pray in the evening, he would say to them: "My children, get up to prayer, do not go to sleep like that!" [2, p. 254].

His father Ioan, before eating, used to call the children: „Come along to your Father, so we may start eating” [2, p. 254].

All his life Father Teofil remembered the prayers learned in his childhood. In the dialect of the people of his native village, he addressed the Holy Cross, then the Holy Spirit, afterwards Christ, the Mother of the Lord, as taught by his mother: "Holy cross, put me to sleep, Spirit, awake me, Son, shadow me, Precesto, watch me!” [2, p. 255]. All the Holy Cross addressed as follows: "Holy Cross sweet weapon, be with me wherever I may go.".

In addition to the prayer scheduled in the morning, at noon and in the evening, there was in the family the idea of a permanent connection with God through prayer, as a source of safety and well-being during the day. My mother always told her father when she went to school: "Don't forget God, don't forget about prayer." The spiritual program recommended by Theophil's advisers was based on the basic practices of our Orthodox faith, which the people of the village during his childhood were respecting as a “law” [2, p. 251].

Father Theophil once asked his grandmother why he should fast, and she replied: "How not to fast, kid, that's the law!" [2, p. 258].

Later, the adviser, when he was a student of Theology, made the connection between the exhortation of the mother and of Saint Mark the Ascetic in Philocalia: "When you remember God, multiply prayer, that, when you forget Him, the Lord will bring Him remember you. ”Also, we recall that Father Teofil, from the age of 13, was guided by Father Arsenie Boca, then spiritually at the Brânco¬veanu Monastery in Sâmbăta de Sus, to say the most frequent prayer: "Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner” [3].

However, the story told the adviser that a brother of the father who returned from America told them that no one is fasting in America and then he somehow shook the faith of the family.

Father Theophil's grandparents, like many other villagers, did not know how to read, but they listened to the Apostle and the Gospel, read and explained by the village priest, in the ministry, and oriented themselves in daily life following these teachings.

Father Teofil remembered that, as a child, he heard the Letter to the Romans in the church: ” we owe the strong to bear the weaknesses of the weak and not to like ourselves. But each and every of us should please the others for the good in order to develop. On hearing these words, he obeyed them when when he found himself in circumstances where he didn't want to do the good the situation imposed on him. His mother was going to the field, his father was not at home, and his mother had to go together with another woman to work. His mother asked him to take care of that woman's children. He said he didn't like that but he remembered the words of the Saint Apostle Paul. ” we should not please ourselves but we should act in order to please the others” and he carried on his mother's request.

Once he gladly remembered how, at his brothers suggestion, he climbed alone from a mulberry tree to the roof of a house in order to be able to pick up ripe mulberries. As he was blind, they all panicked until he managed to get down from the roof, guided by a boy in the village. A woman in the village, seeing him sell naughty, told his mother:” good mother he has not been baptised well. You should take him to the priest to read something to him because he hasn't been told everything yet!” [2, p. 501] Father Teofil used to say later on that he read to himself whatever he could.

He also said to that during his childhood his native village was supported both by a religious idea and practice. People were thinking of God, the Holy Mother, the saints and God's law, which they respected gladly and usefully. They loved their folk costumes and they had good thoughts. The children knew they were not supposed to make breadcrumbs because „God's cheek was painted on the grains” [2, p. 252].

Later, in more recent times, as a monk, he also visited his hometown accompanied by the advisers from the Sâmbăta de Sus Monastery, but with deep pain he said that the village from which he started had turned to a village without a future, demolished, because he no longer had young people in it. The young people left the village, either to go abroad or to the city, where they had found their meaning.

However, he considered that the most serious demolition of the village Topârcea was not the material one, but the moral and spiritual one, which had been achieved with the departure of the Romanian costume and the abandonment of the basic practices of our Christian-Orthodox faith (the walk). at church, fasting, prayer). With sadness he found that the people of the village had abandoned their old faith and accepted a radical change in thinking and living: "there were people in the church ... now they are not so now, that village was torn down, from which we started. I” [2, p. 25].

In telling about Father Theophilus, we can see in it a real bridge between us and the world of the Romanian village of the past. The village has made its mark on the becoming of Father Theophilus, in which many saw a "godless peasant, a peasant united with God." The father often said "this was the Orthodoxy of my childhood: in life, in word, in thought ... a real Orthodox experience" [2, p. 254].

DEVOTION IN SAINT FATHER CLEOPA FAMILY AND VILLAGE

Saint Father Cleopa Ilie (1912-1998) was born in the commune of Suliţa, Botosani county on April 10th 1912. His parents, Alexander and Ana Elijah, were a living example of Christian life, loving God, church and children, being blessed by God with 10 children. They were never absent from the holy services, they did mercy, they prayed long with the children, and they led a clean and blessed life to Christ. Their house was like a church, as Saint Father Cleopa also told: "We had an entire room with icons only. Some kind of paraclis. There we used to pray. Even at midnight we got up and prayed." They did not hear of swearing, drunkenness, judgements for wealth and abortions, but daily life flowed smoothly as a fresh spring water, for it was inherited from ancestors and so was the Christian tradition in the place. The house in which Saint Father Cleopa Ilie was born was "like a living church" , but did not replace the one in the village, where the famous priest of that time, Gheorghe Chiriac, served. For, as Cuviosia himself said, the inhabitants of the village of Suliţa listened to their priest as Christ himself and nothing did without His counsel and blessing. Therefore, the daily life flowed naturally, the church was full of believers, and the children, very numerous, formed the adornment of the village.

    According to tradition, his father's ancestors were dressed as shepherds, originally from the commune of Sălistea Sibiului, who, due to the religious persecutions of the 18th century, were forced to leave Transylvania and relocate to Moldova, settling in Botosani county. This memory is kept from the elders, as the Carpathian Mountains in Moldova passed through three brothers of a mother with the surname Ilie. One of them settled in Botosani county, becoming the ancestor of Saint Father Cleopa.

    Alexander, the father of the father, was mainly engaged with agriculture, cattle breeding and animal trading, being among the first households in the village. They had 150 sheep, over 20 large cattle and 30 hectares of land. About his father, Alexander, Saint Father Cleopa said the following: "God forgive my father. He was a tall, plump man, with a large white beard and very faithful. Every holiday he went with the children to church and helped the poor. No one saw him drinking or swearing or smoking or doing anything else.

    In the morning, when we went to school, my mother would tell us to eat something or get somethin to eat in our schoolbags, but my father was saying, "No! Leave them, babe, they won't die!" And when I came from school, we would take Saint Anaphor and then eat. My brothers, especially Brother Michael, didn't eat anything until they finished reading Psaltirea. Until we asked for a watch, he didn't give us food, nothing. Even if he wasn't fasting, he would say, "Don't eat now. When you come from school, at noon. You're not a pig to eat in the morning."

He was illiterate, but he was afraid of God. To sleep in the evening without saying your prayers? Or to sit at the table until he said "Our Father"? Or not go to church on Sunday? Or to hear that he cursed or smoked or stole something? That you wouldn't see him do, not ever. It had a strap in it, called "St. Neculai". If it caught you, keep away from God! He said, "Well, look at "Saint Neculai "! Go to prayer! You have two eyes, you know how to read, read the Psalter and the prayers in the book!" [1].

Once coming from school I found a harness in the middle of the road. I gladly took it home. But when my father saw me, he asked where I had stolen it from, and I told him I had found it and I had thouht it might be useful to us. But my father told me: ”Take it back, you are not the one who has put it there!”

He was the candle in the house. He was a ruler over us. "At the age of 72, Alexander Ilie died into the hands of Christ, on February 23, 1943. Ana Ilie, the mother of Saint Father Cleopa, was born on October 10, 1876 from advisers farmers and good Christians. In 1902 he marries Alexandra, with whom he gives birth to ten children. Of these, five children - four boys and one girl - entered the monastic life. Ana was a simple woman, small in stature, without a book, but with a special memory. She often cried, for she had the gift of tears. Her biggest pain was that almost all the children died at an early age. The only one who survived to reach old age was Saint Father Cleopa. Three boys and a daughter left for the monastery and the others in the hometown. However, she was strengthened by God with His gift, so that she could carry the cross that was had been ordained to her. Being a widow in 1943, she was brought by Saint Father Cleopa to the monastery and then haircut in monasticism to Agapia Veche in 1947, under the name of Agafia. After more than twenty years, in the autumn of 1968, on September 15, Schimonahia Agafia Ilie died, aged 92.

THE VILLAGE OF FATHER ARSENIE PAPACIOC – „THE SPIRITUAL LEADER OF THE NATION FROM THE SEASIDE”

Father Arsenie Papacioc (1914-2011), his real name Anghel, was born on August 15th the feast of the Assumption of Virgin Mary, from his faithful parents, Vasile and Stanca. Father Vasile was a sanitary agent over six villages and one of the main founders of the village church. Papacioc's name is derived from his grandfather's father, who was a priest in Macedonia, in northern Greece.

From his childhood, Father Arsenie was very devoted, being attracted to the spiritual wealth of the Church. The father himself confesses: “Due to our family education, I was still aware of the presence of God near us. And that helped me tremendously. I was small, but I was thinking of getting older. I went to church, I was the only one from the family who was fasting.

"Little Anghel was not a child like any other, he distinguished from the others by his humble demeanor, who did not try to stand out with anything, most of the time giving in to them. The father tells how, one day, the children from the neighboring villages, who used to jump, beat him and with a branch of acacia with barbs they blew his legs. Although he could take advantage of his father's authority, little Anghel did not rush to rob his wicked men. He told himself that it was better to endure than to justify, feeling, from that young age, that revenge does not please God. His talent as an artist has been shaped by him from now on.     While in the first grade of primary school, where he took the first prize, he composes poems and learns the craft of sculpture. He is also a member of the Vraja magazine where his older brother was an editor. In 1938, because of his legionary activity, he was arrested under Carol II and taken to the labour camp in Miercurea-Ciuc. Two years later he was released, being arrested again in 1941 and sentenced to 6 years in prison in Aiud.

About this period of imprisonment, the Father says it was "a garden of heaven," because it brought him closer to God as it would not have happened in freedom. In 1946, after being released from Aiud prison, he was received at the Cozia Monastery, then taught civic education at the Turnu Monastery, then came to the Cioclovina Shrine, near Tismana and, finally, to the Sihistria Monastery, where he had a close spiritual friendship with Father Ilie Cleopa. In 1949 he was called as a sculptor at the Bible Institute in Bucharest. He is a monk at the Antim Monastery under the name of Arsenie (the man of God) and begins to attend the mystical meetings of the "Burning Prayer". He returns to Sihastria, then he is sent to the monasteries of Calamfideşti - Rădăuţi, Agafton, Slatina-Suceava, where he was. Father Ilie Cleopa.

    In 1958 he was arrested for the third time. He is taken to Aiud. He was beaten, tortured, starved and kept mostly "chilling." Everywhere he was in prison he confessed to his fellow sufferers. He was pardoned in 1964, and from 1976 he was appointed priest and spiritual at the monastery of Techirghiol, where he remained until the end of his earthly life.

Father Arsenie was called by his spiritual sons "spiritual of the nation." He remained in the souls of the Father's exhortation: "To love well, to love beautifully, to love the wound and the one who inflicted the wound."

IN THE VILLAGE OF CRĂINICENI – IN THE HEAVENLY JERUSALEM [9, P. 47]

    Saint Ioan Iacob from Hozeva (1913-1960) was born in the Village of Crăiniceni, Păltiniş, Botoşani county, in a family of faithful peasants, namely Maxim and Ecaterina, being their only son. He received the name of baptism Ilie, but was called Iliuţă by the family. Six months after his birth, his mother died of illness, and little Iliuţă remained in the care of his grandmother, after the father, Maria Jacob, who cares for him as a true mother, for ten years. In 1916, when the child Elijah was three years old, his father died on the front, and in 1923 his grandmother died, being taken care of by his uncle, Alecu Jacob, who had six children [9, p. 5].

    We can find the gratitude that Ioan Jacob brought to his grandmother Mary in the poems written in her honour, where she calls her "holy old woman", "with the image of the Saints". We mention here the poems "The grandmother's longing", "In memory of my grandmother who was called Mary", in which in verses of chosen simplicity he evokes the image of the grandmother: "On the porch of the house she sits in the sun / The old woman with her nephew / Fall the white brushes under the tulle / The old woman her nephew asked / To read from a book / With the Passions of Jesus. It is revealed to us from the lyrics that his grandmother wanted to embrace the monastic life, but she had to take care of the "little orphan": "But leaving your advisers / I needed to raise you / And I didn't get the poor part / Of the monk's dinner” [9, p. 45].

    After attending the first years of school in his native village, he continued with the gymnasium at Lipcani - Hotin and then graduated from high school at Cozmeni - Cernăuţi. From then on, the Cuviosul lives more and more away from his birthplace and his adviseral home, especially since the year 1932 is defining for his entry into the monastic life. Thus it is that until 1936 he works at the Neamt Monastery, to which he adds another 10 years to the "Saint Sava" Monastery near Bethlehem. On May 13, 1947, he was ordained deacon in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. It is needed in the Holy Land 24 years, both in the Jordan Valley and in the Hozeva Desert.

    For the last 7 years of his life, he prays incessantly and privately watches in a cave in the land of Hozeva. At only 47 years old, in 1960, Father Ioan Jacob enters the world of the righteous. After 20 years, on August 8, 1980, his body is discovered whole. The Romanian Orthodox Church passed it among the saints on June 20, 1992, with the feast date August 5. Also, the Patriarchate of Jerusalem proclaimed the canonization of Saint Ioan Iacob from Neamț on January 31, 2016.

    The old village of Crăiniceni, which has been mirrored for centuries in the water of the Prut river, has always had a special place in the heart of John the monk. Nostalgia after his village poured into his poetry Forgotten Tears, "The Little Orphan" [9, p. 47], "To Other Shores". The father evokes in his lyrics the world of his village: "The secret scent" / From grass and flowers. / The orchards are dressed / In a beautiful dress.

    He carried in his prayers the people of his village, with all his breath, and now he helps people even more, from above, from the heavens. Many of the believers who come to the house in the traditional Moldavian style talk about the quick responses to the prayers addressed to Saint John.

    By evoking the village's world of these great spiritual advisers, we strengthen our belief that the Romanian village is a faithful keeper of the church tradition and national culture, being over time the space in which the spiritual, cultural and moral values of the country have been developed and perfected. to our nation.

    We can say that the Romanian village is for each of us the place of our roots, reality and symbol of wisdom, faith and tradition, it is for many of us the village of childhood, parents, grandparents, elderly people, ancestors and forefathers.

    Through the topic discussed we strengthen the belief that if we dig at the root of any valuable man, we would discover a peasant, as is the origin of these spiritual advisers, emerged from a "hump" of the village, from whose offspring of spiritual endeavors many generations will be nourished.