Father Arsenie Praja, the hermit of the Apuseni Mountains

There are only a few Carpathian hermits whose lives still have witnesses. Arsenie Praja, better known as the “Hermit of the Apuseni”. Father Nicodim Dimulescu, of the Crasna monastery in Prahova County, who was his student, told us some of his memories and gave us some photos. Sometimes retired from the world, sometimes down among the people, Father Arsenie Praja is living proof that the measure of holiness can be reached even in our wandering times.

The Apuseni Mountains have certainly remained a mysterious hearth of hermitages. From an unknown past, there have been and there still are, even if we, the noisy passers-by of our time, do not know or do not want to know about them, fathers who, withdrawn in the hollows of the mountains, respond in a perfect way to God’s call to holiness. They carry on a unique and unmistakable tradition, a life in the sight of God, down through the ages. From these hermits we can draw inspiration for our own lives, which are linked to a modernity that expels the Creator from His own creation, insights into life, models of morality and, who knows, whether we owe God’s patience to their prayers.

If only the awareness of the existence of these fewer and fewer fathers today were enough to rejoice in the resurrection. The garments of light in which Christ’s resurrection has clothed us, which they see and experience so directly, so intimately and so deeply.

To our great gain, however, we are left with a few almost faded photographs, a book, memories and very few witnesses who knew Father Arsenie Praja, the hermit of Apuseni. In the following lines, with their help, we will sketch, as best we can, the face and the extent of his life and work. For Avva Arsenie carried with him “the inheritance of the divine gift of the hermitage, as a blessing transmitted from Avva Neophytos the Hermit”, who, as we know, was also a hermit, into eternity, the tradition of the Christianisation of the last Dacian priest by Saint Andrew, as we learned some years ago from the writings of Father Ghelasie of Frăsinei, also a disciple of the hermit Arsenie Praja.

Prayer, sleep and hermit bread

The 1st of December 1948 was the moment when God led Father Nicodim Dimulescu, from the monastery of Crasna, Prahova County, then a novice in monastic life, to meet “Brother Aurel Praja” in the monastery of Râmeț, in the Apuseni Mountains. From that moment on, his life changed and everything that followed was guided by this wonderful father.

“I looked at him for the first time with the admiration and sincere love of a child, but because of the warmth with which he welcomed me, I did not see him as someone I had just met, but as someone very close to me”, he wrote in the book he dedicated to him, “Father Arsenie Praja the Hermit”.

And this is what the ascetic life of this hermit looked like when he was canonising his body and purifying his senses, preparing his interior for the Lord to make Himself at home there: he wore a coat torn in the lap, without buttons, girded with a hemp rope with several knots, and around his neck something that had once been a scarf. He had grey woollen trousers, torn at the ankles, and over them a sort of apron made of a piece of matting, tied in the middle with a string. He always walked bare headed and always, whatever the weather, barefoot. His poor clothes bore the marks of his obedience everywhere: lime, mortar, paint.

He always ate only vegetables and fruit, and when he fasted, no oil. During his long retreats from the world through the Râmeț gorge, he was probably nourished by the “kitchen in the wilderness”, which he knew had been passed on orally among the Apuseni ascetics by the hermit Neophytos the Carpathian, who lived around the year 1.000 and who also knew it from his ancestors: greens and berries, bread made from crushed cereals, made into a crust that dried in the air and sun, called hermit’s bread. Father Ghelasie said that traditionally hermit bread had become a “law of the hermits”. Whoever did not eat this bread could not stay in the hermitage, or either became weak before his time and fell ill, or “spoiled” the holy life of the hermitage.

When he was in the monastery, “Brother Aurel”, as Father Nicodim Dimulescu called him at the beginning, slept dressed, had for his bed an ordinary chair with a support, and when he disappeared through the mountain woods, he rested directly on the ground or on a stone. In the church, he would sit and pray “by the door, standing with his head slightly bent forward and both hands on his chest”.

The bag with cards, holy water, cross and a thread of basil

Father Arsenie did not speak much. However, it was learned that he was born in 1911 in the village of Cheia Râmețului, in a middle-class family with three brothers and a sister. When he was 18 or 19, he left the village and visited several monasteries and confessors, meeting them “when I really needed their advice”, as he sometimes confessed. In 1940, he met Father Evloghie Oța, who had come from Mount Athos, with whom he settled in the monastery of Râmeț, which had been abandoned by Catholics some 200 years earlier.

In his book, Father Nicodim Dimulescu speaks of Father Arsenie as a ” holy unmercenary”, “a seer of the spirit”, who did not judge anyone, who did not shun the praise of people from whom he never received anything, who prayed in tears, who respected the rules, who was kind and generous, around whom “an incomparable happiness” was born in the soul. A father who, although he did not go to school, read the Psalter, the Ceaslov and the Molitfelnic, which he never left, knew the Masses by heart and had a great devotion to St. Ghelasie of Râmeț, about whom he told unknown things, “preserved by the people from father to son”, but also about “other discoveries”. He loved nature, the water of certain springs which he considered sacred, and he cared for the mentally ill who came to the monastery, epileptics and the sick. He was calm and gentle, but also strict, especially with those who mystified the “truth of the faith”, he spoke fervently, especially about three sins: abortion, smoking and drunkenness, he had a special respect for the saints, the cross, the church, the icons, the anaphora, the relics, the apostles, etc.

After a few years in the monastery, he received the abbot’s blessing to retire “in peace” to the caves and huts in the rocks around the monastery. He probably practised mental prayer, but he didn’t like to admit it. But he spoke of it fervently, saying that “even the devils would become angels again if they said this prayer”.

In the bag in which he carried his three books, he also carried a wooden cross, a sprig of basil, a bottle of holy water and a sprig of thyme. He never broke a flower, because they tell us “of God’s boundless goodness and greatness”. He prayed a lot, he cried, especially at night when he was in his chapel, kneeling before the icons, whispering by candlelight.

Father attached great importance to spontaneous prayer: “Many people became saints without ever laying their hands on a book, because they had no books, and others because they did not know any books, but they constantly spoke to God through prayers they composed on the spot”.

“In 1945 or 1946, Father dug a cave in the ground somewhere on the hill, among the blackberry bushes, on the north side, not far from the monastery, and he often went there at night to be quiet and to pray. This cave was preserved for many years under the name of the Hermit’s Cave,” Father Nicodemus recalls in his book. Other monks, less prepared for temptations, also went there, but they could not resist the night and returned to the monastery in fear, because “the devils tried to frighten you, to scare you, so that you would stop praying”, as Avva Arsenius told them, because “hermitage means hand-to-hand combat with the devil”.

In the Poșaga Monastery, Securitate and St. Ghelasie

In the early 1950s, together with Father Ghedeon, he built the Poșaga Monastery, which soon attracted people from all over the Apuseni Mountains. From 1953, the Securitate began to monitor the missionary activity of Father Arsenie Praja, and in June 1954 he was arrested in Turda and subjected to a harsh investigation. He was then transferred to Cluj and after some time, after praying to St Gelasius, he was miraculously released, together with the other prisoners of the Poșaga lot.

The episode he spent in his cell with some Jehova’s Witnesses, whom the priest managed to make more tolerant towards the Orthodox, remains memorable, giving one of them his daily portion of tea in order to cure himself of a serious kidney disease.

At the beginning of Lent in 1955, he returned to the monastery of Râmeț and was ordained a monk, becoming Father Arsenie, then a deacon, then a priest, immediately receiving the right to be a spiritual father.

A disturbance in the monastery of Râmeț led to the expulsion of the monks from the monastery, some of whom ended up in prisons, others in other monasteries, and the priest retired to his parental home. The nuns who had been brought in to replace them were also later expelled under Decree 410 of 1959.

In the village, the Apuseni hermit again began to walk modestly dressed, with rubber boots on his bare feet, an old overcoat in winter and a faded overcoat in summer, and a shabby hat on his head, whatever the season. A photograph we have reproduced dates from this period.

But he never lost touch with the monastery of Râmeț, which had become a cottage with a restaurant and the chilies, accommodation for tourists. He often came and prayed in the old church, took water from the spring under the Holy Mass and went on his way among the rocks of Râmeț. He used to meet Father Dometie Manolache, who worked in the parish church below the monastery, with whom he would talk about the past.

He spent most of his time in a hut near his father’s house, which he had built near the forest. Here the faithful would come to listen to his advice. Father Nicodim also came here to meet him, his arrival having been secretly announced in advance by Avva Arsenie.

He retired to Crasna for the Hermitage of Eternity

In 1967, Father Nicodim Dimulescu settled in the monastery of Crasna, in the county of Prahova, together with Father Ghedeon Bunescu, where he would spend the last part of his life, and Father Arsenie Praja, in 1973, in January, after his return from Moldavia, from Father Pahomie.

Sick and weak, refusing to see a doctor for days on end (“Don’t we have the Great Doctor here?” he used to reply to his fathers who begged him to see a specialist), Father Arsenie spent his last days on earth confessing and receiving Holy Communion two or three times a week.

Given by God the grace of the fore-sight, the hermit knew beforehand when he was going to heaven, and with a smile he told the fathers who looked after him that they would give him an alms of “roasts and cakes” because “Easter is coming and it will be even better”.

And indeed, in the afternoon of Good Friday 1973, encouraged by his brothers, he went to see the doctor Ioan Maciu from Slănic Prahova and agreed to be admitted to hospital. On Easter Saturday, in a hay cart pulled by two oxen, lying on a carpet and wrapped in a blanket, he went to the centre of the village of Schiulești, from where an ambulance took him to the hospital in Slănic. He seemed peaceful and at peace with everything, even cheerful, and everyone thought he would get up and return to his cell.

The miraculous Resurrection, where death thinks it is in charge

It’s Easter night. The church bells of Slănic announced the Resurrection. Sister Sofia, who accompanied the hermit from Apuseni to the hospital, leans over to him and says loudly in his ear: “Father, do you hear the resurrection bells? Christ is risen!” “The father, with his eyes closed and his voice subdued, said to him: “Yes, indeed, the Lord is risen!” This was the Father’s last word, and in a few minutes he died in humility, holding the lighted candle in his hand, just as on the night of the Resurrection”.

“This, then, was the long-awaited and much prophesied Easter of the Father, of whom, without our knowing why, he kept saying: ‘Easter is coming’. And it came!…” recounts his disciple Nicodemus Dimulescu in his book, feeling in the words of his holiness the salt crystal of tears held in the corner of his eyes.

The hermit from Apuseni was buried in the cemetery of Crasna Monastery, according to monastic rites, dressed in monk’s clothes. He did not have a monk’s shirt, because he had not taken one with him when he came to Crasna, but he was dressed in the shirt of his disciple Nicodemus, who said to him: “Father Arsenius, I give you my monk’s shirt, but I ask you to intercede with God to help me go to the Holy Places, so that I too may receive the baptism of the Jordan by bathing in it, and that he may bury me in this shirt”.

Father Arsenius fulfilled this prayer for his spiritual son.

Today, the Apuseni hermit sleeps his eternal sleep next to his brother in need, Father Ghedeon Bunescu. His sleep is marked by a holy stone cross with the inscription: “Hieromonk Arsenie Praja, died on 30 April 1973. Aged 63”, and under it the following words: ““Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life. ” (John 5:24).

Indeed, the hermit Arsenie Praja passed from death to life, and as he left a testament to another of his disciples, Father Gheorghe Ghelasie of Frăsinei, we also learn what he surely saw: “The secret work of Isis will come down from the mountains and caves, even to the heart of the cities, and many young people, apparently ignorant, will awaken with strength to a life of the spirit similar to that of the ancients. Wonderful will be this resurrection where death thinks it is master! The Most Holy Spirit will show you strength above all… I leave you the blessing of the Isisha, which you keep burning in your own candle, as a spark from which many others may be kindled. Do not be surprised to discover how this miracle will be. The mystery work of Isisha will be the mystery of the future of our world. The coming history will be the most terrible confrontation between light and darkness, between the spirit of life and the spirit of death. But the power of the Light will be so great that it will transcend all the laws of nature. Be part of this great spiritual ignition of the Work of Mystery…”.

And the hermit Arsenius of Apuseni made himself a participant, sharing with us the power of the Light and making us say, with great hope and serenity, as he did: “Easter is coming and it will be even more beautiful!

(Dumitru Manolache – Lumina Newspaper, Tuesday edition, 24th May 2011)