5/24/2022
Bogdan Lupescu
In this community, which Church chronicles of those times called “wondrous,” the monks abode in perfect harmony and obedience, loving silence, humility, and material poverty, and faithfully following the rules of their Elder: no meat, no glasses of wine.
St. Basil was called here by the icon. That’s what the old-timers around Dălhăuți believe today. After all, the icon brought him from Russia.
I never saw him again, but our meeting turned my life around. I started persistently asking the Patriarchate for a transfer somewhere deep in the mountains, to a remote monastery: “Anywhere! Anywhere where it will be more difficult and more secluded,” I asked.
The last three hermits arrived here in 1998 and have remained in the caves ever since. They haven’t seen anyone from the outside world except him, and even he sees them rarely, when he brings them rusks and Holy Communion.
