“…And he became a Saint, the great martyr Daniil”

– Father Ioan, you were a student of Abbot Daniil from Rarău. Tell us your first memory of Father Daniil?

– The first memory… when we first went to the monastery in Rarău, when we first met. I don’t know if I can use the word “great”… it was something very special that impressed me very much. I saw such an old man, with a white beard – like me now – in a dock, with a cloth on his back and a lot of soul love, a lot of generosity…

He welcomed me with love and gave me my first instructions for life in the monastery. I had come from Alba-Iulia, from the monastery of St. John the Baptist; I stayed there for about six months, then I returned, I came to Rarău. I remembered these beautiful mountains, this clean air and the spiritual life in these parts. Father Daniil Tudor was very famous almost everywhere, and that’s what attracted me and I came.

As I settled in, I saw young people, all of them with their Masses in their hands, all of them saying: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”. Very serious, humble and full of love! And I joined them. I tried to adapt myself to the spiritual conditions created in the Rarău Hermitage. Hieroschemamonk Daniil was present at the masses, at the word… A book was read in the dining room, and he would comment on it, talk about the lives of the saints, about patience, about spiritual virtues. It was always a spiritual word. And I was very impressed by the listening – it was half an hour of work, half an hour of prayer. Everyone had a little book on their shoulders and a book: either the Paterikon, the Prologue, the Horologion or the Psalter. (…) Hieroschemamonk Daniil was always looking for this, for uninterrupted prayer, which disturbed Satan in hell and he began to persecute him until he ended up in prison and the communists crushed him. And he became a saint, a great martyr, Daniil…

– What can you tell us about the order in the monastery under Father Daniil?

– He was the only priest and he only celebrated Liturgy on Saturdays and Sundays. In fact, he also ate – only once a day. Apart from that, there were all the ordinances that are necessary in any monastery, starting with Liturgy, the Eucharist, Vespers, Akathists. (…) Liturgy was celebrated once a day, without oil, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and twice on the other days. This schedule was observed.

– How do you remember Father Daniel, what did he look like?

– He had a very beautiful face. Imagine an elderly man, with a reddish face, with a white beard and white hair, with sideburns hair. And being as he was, soulful and spiritual, he always had the expression of an inner joy – a joy that showed outwardly.

The state of a person’s soul is always reflected outwardly. And our Orthodoxy shows that the inner life is translated outwardly. (…)

– What was Fr. Daniil’s cell like?

– The cell was simple. There was a table, a chair, and it was full of books – and bookshelves, and books on the table, and books everywhere. He was always writing, always reading, always praying. He was a man who never took a break, he was uninterrupted in his spiritual life. The man who, like St. Paul, converted to the faith, from an unbeliever as he was – the son of a landlord who had a lot of land, about 300 hectares, had two 12-storey blocks in Bucharest, had his own plane… A man who studied a lot, had an immense intellectual capacity. I can’t even find the words to express it, and I don’t even know his real capacity, because he was a great man – he had no opponent in any discussion, in any kind of conversation, in any religious manifestation… At that time the Patriarchate did not have as many books as Daniil Tudor: about 6,000 volumes – I heard that nobody counted them. He also had books in Bucharest, in Câmpulung, in the monastery, he knows where he still had books for people to use. He knew about five foreign languages and read all the books, and he was a man who always worked for the glory and praise of God. That was his only purpose…

He sent the Communist Party’s so-called men of culture to fight him. And as soon as they came to the monastery, they left changed! The discussions were social, political, religious, dogmatic and national – and he converted them all. All of them! Not one of them left the way they came. This angered the communists, and they arrested him and sentenced him to twenty years in prison without charge. And he went to prison, and in Aiud he ended his earthly life and went to heaven – because he was the most persecuted of all the prisoners.

He was the man who never gave up his faith. The Communists had this tendency in prisons, especially with political prisoners, to drive them away from God and the faith. Fr. Daniil never accepted this, and he was very harsh in his answers and everywhere, which brought hatred and enmity against him. Every day he wrote that he was being beaten. And when the decree for the release of political prisoners came, that’s when they killed him. That’s what the commander said: “Daniil Tudor must not escape, we must kill him! They pulled his living teeth out of his mouth, beat him until he collapsed – I heard that they stuck a hair in his head, and then God knows what they did with him… in the mass grave, holy relics…

He went to the Holy Mountain in shorts

He didn’t talk much about his life, because he was always reading and praying. When he went to the table, we would eat and he would listen to the word that was read at the table and then he would interpret it. He ate only on Saturdays and Sundays, once a day. We don’t even know what he ate and how he lived…

When he was converted, he went to Mount Athos – but he went there as a tourist, in shorts, shaved, with a backpack, as people were then, who were libertines and had no spiritual thoughts. And when he arrived there, as someone who was very studious and attracted by literature and culture, he began to read books and to attend all the services regularly. And he was converted… When he left, he left with the prayer of the heart, which he had already received as a gift from God. And with a beard. He stayed about eight months…

And when he came to Bucharest, in the elite society where he lived, everyone laughed at him, they said: “Sandu Tudor has gone mad, he has grown a beard!”. He grew a beard because one night he made up his mind! He was sitting at the all-night vigil and saw an old hermit coming towards him, leaning on a hermit crutch. He wanted to say something to him and turned away, sat down where he had been sitting, came back, wanted to say something, but didn’t dare speak – because he was already known as a distinguished and cultured man. And when he came a third time, Daniil said to him, “Father Evloghie, come a third time! If you have something to say, say it, don’t go back!” and the priest said to him: “Mr. Sandu Tudor, why do you throw your beard in the dustbin? The face of Christ, why are you throwing it away?”… Then he stayed up all night thinking about these words and other spiritual thoughts, and he stopped shaving. He had a beautiful face, but also an imposing one. (…)

Father Daniil was a firm believer in the Orthodox faith.

Now there is this satanic thing that tries to mix light with darkness, the true Orthodox faith with heresies – they think that every heresy is a church, or a part of the church. (…) Father Daniil was a firm believer in the Orthodox Christian faith. And although he was a son of the Neamț hermitage – that’s where he was educated, where he lived in the wilderness, in the Coroi gorge, for about three years, eating mushrooms or raw potatoes once a week – he introduced the Order of Mount Athos. Then he came to Slatina Monastery and did the same thing. From Slatina, about 30 monks went to Putna and did the same thing. And from there to the hermitage in Rarău.

And it was very drastic as far as the impurity of the soul and body of the inhabitants was concerned. Confession was compulsory once a week – and as often as necessary, and every day. We had to have a piece of paper, a notebook, and write down our sins every day, and then you would go and he would confess you immediately. He made a special confession, he was the man who saw you and knew what was in you, you couldn’t get around it. He knew what you were thinking.

He was a special man. Here is the power of prayer and the grace of Orthodoxy. And miracles happen. I had chronic meningitis for thirty years and got up without a doctor…

– You told us about Father Daniil’s conversion… But how did he decide to enter the monastic life?

 

– He had promised to go to the monastery, but as he had a daughter and a son[1] who were students, he thought he would marry his daughter first and then his son would finish university – and then he would go to the monastery. But his plane caught fire, 2000 metres up, and he fell in pieces. And at that moment, as he was falling, he said, “God, when I get out, I’m going to the monastery! He fell from 2000 metres, he doesn’t even know how he touched the ground, he didn’t even have a parachute, he had nothing – the plane broke up and he had nothing! He got up and went straight to Antim Monastery. He didn’t even go home, nothing! And he stayed in the bell tower of Antim Monastery for seven years, as a novice, teaching everyone the Jesus Prayer. He was a man of total humility and unparalleled religious devotion.

– What was Father Daniil’s arrest and life in prison like?

– That’s the least I know… It just happened that I wasn’t in the monastery when they arrested him. The secret police came and surrounded the monastery, tied him up and took him away, arrested him – and put him on trial. That’s all I know: that they asked him why you gathered so many young people in the Rarău Mountains and didn’t let them work in the factory. Hieroschemamonk Daniil replied: “I gathered them to teach them to say: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. “Sit down,” the judge told him, and sentenced him to twenty years’ imprisonment without a criminal record. He had always been accused of being a legionnaire. But that was a lie. A big lie told by the communists, who hated the faith, and the faithful, whom they considered to be legionaries!

There was also persecution during Gheorghiu-Dej’s time, during Ceaușescu’s time – when you went to the monastery, the police stopped you, gave you an identity card, threatened you, checked your luggage, as if you had brought who knows what. Just to stop you! Then there was the decree of 1959 that stripped the monks of their habits, cut their hair, shaved them – it was a persecution, a communist persecution: atheism against the faith of Christ…

Even now the persecution is not far away. And now they speak against icons, against Christians, against monasteries (…)

– Did Father Daniil have a vision for the future of Romania?

– He was not a political man, he was a man of faith, that’s all. He was the general director of the newspaper Faith – and the Communists couldn’t carry Faith!

(Fr. Ioan Larion – Orthodox Family Magazine no. 11(46)/2012, pp. 58-62)

[1] Some inaccurate or anachronistic biographical details about Fr. Daniil are circulating. In this regard, we doubt that Fr. Daniil had any children in his married life. It is true that the absence of proof is not proof of absence, but given the well-known personality of Sandu Tudor, both in the inter-war period and especially after the establishment of the communist regime, any children should have been known at least at a minimal level (name, occupation, etc.). We have no evidence that Sandu Tudor (the future father Daniil) had children. If he had, it would have been natural for them to be known to the public, as was the case with Măriuca Vulcănescu, daughter of the martyred philosopher Mircea Vulcănescu, Șerban Mironescu, son of the confessor Professor Alexandru Mironescu, or Horia Bernea, son of the confessor sociologist Ernest Bernea.