The Blessed Ioan David
In the vicinity of the village of Strungari at the foot of the Sureanu Mountains, there once lived a shepherd in his hermit cell who, for the purity of his life, became a great miracle worker. He had disciples among laymen and monastics and everyone who knew him speak of him as a saint.
Sureanu Mountains. Photo credit: Adrian Petrisor
“One day I came to his cell. His door was slightly opened and I saw brother Ioan reading the Psalter, with a candle burning beside the book. And what do you think? A bird flew in and he begins to talk to it! I stopped in my tracks outside. He tells the bird:
‘Be careful, don’t burn your wings!’
So, the bird flies closer to extinguish this candle with its wing, then circles around the room and flies away. He then notices me and says:
‘Listen, don't you be surprised at what you've just seen, I'm not a sorcerer.’
Everyone calls me a sorcerer, but I never read anything except the Bible and the Book of Hours
He said this because the villagers were saying he was the sorcerer because of the miracles he performed.
‘Everyone calls me a sorcerer, but I never read anything except the Bible and the Book of Hours. Tell me: doesn’t God have power? Or only the devil?’
Oh dear oh dear! And this is only one of such examples.”
Shepherding the sheep with the Psalter in hand
He was of short and gaunt stature, always dressed in a white shirt. He never spoke much with anyone, usually whispering something to himself, as the Strungari villagers saw his lips moving. He seldom walked along the street, because when he wasn’t in the mountains herding his sheep, he would simply sit quietly in his little hut. No one knew what he was doing there or why he never showed up at a local tavern to chat with folks, to share news and chase away boredom. He was a serious and hard-working man, who kept to himself and avoided worldly customs. It seemed really odd.
Now, for as long as the villagers knew him, he never lost a single sheep in the mountains. Besides, not a single one of his flock had been struck by lightning or mauled by the wild beasts that killed sheep elsewhere. Moreover, as if on purpose, he never owned sheep dogs. He shepherded his sheep with his Psalter in hand, or when he didn’t have it, he prayed barely moving his lips.
Blessed shepherd Ioan David He loved all creation, and people who knew him personally told me how he took pity on wild birds and always fed them. But still, he loved his sheep more than anything else. He never kept more than twenty or twenty-five of them, and cherished them as the apple of his eye. Never in his life would he touch mutton, and he gave names to all newborn lambs as if they were his own children.
In summer, when he wasn’t with his sheep up in the mountains, he would entrust them to other shepherds. But he never marked them with paint, like all other mountain folk have done since time immemorial. He needed no tags to recognize his sheep. In the fall, when they were taken to winter in their native folds in the village, Ioan walked straight inside the herd and called out his sheep by their names. And they recognized him and ran towards him with joy. When he tended his sheep in the mountains, he guided them in just the same ay, always with prayer; and once they heard him, they’d come running back to him.
As for the Strungari residents, they kept talking about what this power of his over the animals meant. They would gossip about him in the tavern, picking his life to pieces to find out his secret. But the problem was that he had no secrets in his life. He lived his life right in front of them and they knew absolutely everything about him.
The bear and the sheep
Ioan David was born on February 15, 1920 in the mountainous hamlet of Plaiuri, upwards from the village of Strungari. He was a desolate child, beaten by fate and comforted by no one. He had never seen his father, while his poor mother, who dared to give birth without a husband, died when he was three. Thus he remained in the care of his aunt and uncle.
He was still very young when his uncle fell ill and his aunt sent him to a hermit, a monk known for his holiness who lived in a nearby valley. His aunt relied on a miracle happening, but when Ioan came in, Father Simeon looked at him ruefully and told to return to his home right away to tell his aunt that her husband had only three more days left to live. Not more! And that he would go to heaven after that.
Strungari village
This encounter was seared in the child's memory. From that day on, he grew attached to the hermit and often visited him.
As the years went by, his aunt who raised him died, and Ioan continued to live in her house, which he owned according to the will. But his relatives sued him, won, and threw him out of his house. He worked as a servant, slaving away here and there. But one day he became a shepherd, went to the mountains and surrendered his whole soul to the advice of the hermit Simeon and his faith in God. That may be why he never got married. In his heart, filled with prayer and zeal for God, there was no room for any sweetheart.
Over time, his pure and simple love, where only Christ shone, began to bear fruit of the first miracles
Over time, his pure, simple love, where only Christ shone, began to bear the fruit of his first miracles. There were some that are simply hard to believe, ones that happen only to great saints, so they could in no way fit in the minds of simple peasants from the village of Strungari. So much so that these miracles were the reason why the whole village envied him.
“Once, brother Ioan went to the mountains and there were three flocks of sheep from different owners up there at the time. One was his and the other two were herded by two brothers from Strungari. A storm broke out and the brothers decided to protect their sheep in a ravine. So they did, driving them into a shelter at the bottom of the ravine and leaving Ioan at the mouth of the ravine to stay without shelter. Suddenly at night, a bear shows up, passes right through brother Ioan’s herd as if it were not there, and tears into the herd of these two brothers.
They met together in the morning to share how many sheep the bear tore up in their herds. Then, they also asked brother Ioan how many were killed in his herd. And then Ioan tells them that not a single one of his has been killed.
“Why didn’t it kill a single one in your herd? But it ran right through your sheep! Are yours inedible, or what?”
Later on, when they went down from the mountains and shared the story with the villagers, everyone decided in one voice that he is a sorcerer, a werewolf, because, how else!
A bird and a colored egg
A valley of the Sebes River
At the beginning of that summer, scorched by the sun or beaten down by the stormy weather, I walked around the hilly valley of the Sebes River in search of testimonies about brother Ioan, the humble shepherd so revered by the monks of the Afteia monastery that they had his icon painted in the church next to the canonized saints. Besides, the testimony about him from ordinary people like Nicolae and Dumitru and the distinguished clergymen, such as the Mother Superior Ierusalima, a long-time abbess of the Ramet monastery, happened to be so striking, as if a flame of the spirit flared up inside them as they talked about him.
Based on their accounts, I learned more of a spiritual impression rather than of a man of flesh and blood, a spirit able to pierce not only through space, but also time, with the eye of his heart. The spiritual power of this man accompanied me for days after this journey. It also accompanies me right now as I am writing these lines, as I try to recreate his portrait from the testimonies of people who knew him. Some of them knew him very intimately, like Nicolae, one of his most devoted friends.
“I first saw him in 1985. I went to the Afteia monastery and I really wanted to see holy people. That's how I met brother Ioan, because the fathers in the monastery told me about him. Every week, for ten years, in order to visit him, I had to run away from the factory, but no one caught me. It was during the time of Ceausescu, and I only left work to see him when there was no workload. But no one knew anything about it. He told me, ‘If you come here, you do it because you want it, not because someone sent you.’
Afteia monastery
“Anytime I went to his cell, there was always a bowl of warm soup and a piece of bread waiting for me on the table. The soup was lukewarm, so all I had to do was eat it! And this happened every single time I went to see him! Every time! So I asked him:
“‘Brother Ioan, how did you know I was to come today? Who told you to wait for me and have the food ready?’
“‘Well, but I just thought of you last night and knew by then that you would be coming!’
“To be honest, I've never had better food than at brother Ioan's, not even the food cooked by my wife! What he did with it, I don't know, because he was really poor. But the soup I had at his place, I’ve never-ever tried any better in my life! What’s more, I've never seen him eating, not once in those ten years. It has remained a mystery to me what he ate.
“I should also tell you that I have never seen such man, a man of holy life as him, and I have never heard about a man like him, except for the saints from the Lives of The Fathers. When Fr. Ioanichie (Balan) from the Sihastria monastery was still alive, he would keep calling me, saying:
“‘Brother Nicolae, please give me materials about brother Ioan, he is truly unique in Orthodoxy!’
All his life, brother Ioan was neither a priest nor a monk, but a simple shepherd
“He said this since brother Ioan was neither a priest nor a monk, but a simple shepherd all his life. Speaking about him, I can tell you only one thing: humility, humility, humility, humility, and humility ad infinitum! That’s who brother Ioan was.”
As he was saying this, Nicolae, a stout man with a meek look, tapped his finger on the table as if trying to chisel the word “humility” on the wood.
During those few hours of my conversation with him, I saw many times how tears welled in his eyes. I sensed his burning desire to find the right words that burst forth from his passionate heart to describe brother Ioan in a true and lifelike manner. His feelings, so passionately contagious, took me over as well.
I have rarely witnessed (and I have spoken to many) in a spiritual kinship such deep love for a spiritual mentor. His almost feverish state of mind was constantly fueled by the recollection of facts one can really only find in the hagiographies—or in Fr. Arsenie (Boca), the saint of Ardeal, whom the humble Ioan, a shepherd from Strungari, had known and to whom, it seems, he was equal in the power of clairvoyance.
The icon of Blessed Ioan David in the Strungari monastery
“Brother Ioan had reached such a spiritual measure that he could read people's minds. I’ve seen it often. I once came to his cell, put my bag by the door, and the first thing he told me was the following:
“‘Those thoughts you cradle in your mind right now, get rid of them, because they are not good.’
“Next, he began talking to me as if I had already confessed to him everything that laid heavily on my mind. But I didn't say a word! He possessed a great power from God.
“Once on Easter he didn't even have a colored egg to eat, because he was so poor. And so, he prayed to God to send him an egg, and what do you think? A bird flew in and gave him an egg! It laid it on his windowsill! He treated the birds very tenderly and they flocked to his burial.
“I'll tell you something else that I experienced myself. One day, I came to him and then went to the forest to collect firewood for him for winter. Then I began to chop it, because he, poor soul, was so sick he couldn't do anything. While I was chopping it, it dawned on me that I had spent too much time here, and I was about to miss the bus that was to take me home. I was already one in the afternoon and I should have gone a quarter of an hour ago to catch it. I got scared and went to him saying:
“‘Brother Ioan, I'm late for my bus, and you know I'm going to get in trouble at work and at home because of this!’
“And what do you think he did? I could see him as if it were today: he lifts himself up on the bed, clasps both hands together and says:
“‘Lord, stop it right now!”
“I heard how he said that! Then, he lowers himself back on his cot and tells me:
“‘Now you can go unhurriedly, because the bus will be waiting for you at the bus stop.’
“But who would believe such things? Of course, I didn’t, so I grabbed my bag and left in a hurry, and, as the result, I tumbled down, fell and hurt myself badly.
“So, I am entering the bus station covered in dust, but the bus isn’t there yet… Another hour and a half has passed…It was already half-past one, and then twenty-five past two, and then I hear: the bus is coming! I crossed myself and stood there wondering: ‘What’s going on here?’
“Later on, a driver named Nicolae whom I’ve known for a long time, told me:
The village of Pianu de Sus. Photo: Voikitsa Coman
“‘Listen, I don't know what it was, but as soon as I left Pianu de Sus, a tire blew out!’
“‘What time was it?’ I asked him.
“‘One o'clock,’ he replied.
“It was right at the moment brother Ioan raised his hands and said his prayer! Then I told Nicolae:
“‘Forgive me, brother, it happened to you only because of me.’”
To be continued…
