“Father Daniil had the most special and powerful personality”
Father Daniil had the most interesting way of maintaining relations with his friends. He had the most unique and powerful personality. He had a mental structure of incomparable strength, armed with a vast culture, benefiting from a highly selective spirit. He had a particular way of understanding the mission of a Christian. According to him, the Christian must know how to be in life both lion and eagle, ox and angel. Man had to unite in his being the holiness and purity of the angel, the obedience and patience of the ox, the high thinking of the eagle and the fighting power of the lion. Indeed, if there was anything that characterised Father Daniil, it was his combativeness.
He loved controversial discussions, he loved to defend the basic principles of Christianity, and he could not refrain from fighting Marxism in his sermons. More directly, more roundabout, with more subtle or biting irony, he would denounce the ideology of the state leadership in his sermons.
We became friends at a party when he threw the most contemptuous words I had ever heard in my face. He had a small circle of friends with whom he had a fruitful exchange of data and ideas. Father Daniil suggested a ten-day “spiritual retreat” at the Rarău hermitage, where he was abbot. I was in my second year at university, I had finished my exams, and after the month of military service was over, I, Nae and Miluca, my closest friends and colleagues, met at the Slatina Monastery, dedicated to the Transfiguration. Together we set off on foot, over the mountain, towards the hermitage of Rarău. […]
Arriving at the Rarău Hermitage, we began the very next day the “spiritual retreat” programme organised and led by Fr. Daniil. There were me, Nae, Milucă and Șerban, the son of Professor Mironescu, a literature student, who was joined a few days later by Tanțu Ghindoc, a medical student.
We got up at 5:00 a.m. and attended the Akathist and the Liturgy, then the sermon, in which the other residents of the hermitage took part, followed by the meal at about 10:00 a.m., after which we entered the monastery, where Father Daniil spoke to us according to his well-established programme. At 15:00 we had an hour of relaxation, followed by Vespers at 16:00, between 16:00 and 19:00 we met again in the living room of the monastery, where we continued the ideas interrupted before; at 19:00 – dinner and at 20:00-21:00 – bedtime. In the evening, at midnight, the bells rang for the evening service – which lasted until 2:00, then the sermon, and then sleep again, if there was time, until 5:00 in the morning – when the bells called us again to the Akathist and the Liturgy. For 10 days Father Daniil developed his ideas. What he said could be summarised as the symbol of the evolution of the silk worm, which closes itself in its hole and there, far from the world, in a state of introspection and total recollection, spreads its wings and is ready to fly.
In fact, the idea was supported by the “ascent” of Mount Tabor, where the “transfiguration” takes place, the change that makes man benefit from the light of grace, through which he sees the world with new eyes, with a different understanding. Fr. Daniil conceived of flight as the final stage to which man is called in order to benefit from divine grace, the source of spiritual flight. But in order to get there, one had to reach Worthiness, i.e. the flight had to be preceded by an entrance into a closed world of recollection, study, spiritual experience and knowledge, a phase that had to take place under the guidance of a spiritual father who knew the steps of this ascent.
The idea of Worthiness was of great importance to Father Daniil. It is this idea that is illustrated by the seventh kontakion of the “Altar of the Burning Bush”, written by Fr. Daniil, which, in connection with the marriage of the Great Bridegroom, clarifies the concept of Worthiness:
“For at the wedding of the Great Bridegroom
is the care of perfect righteousness!
No impurity of the eyes or of the clothes is permitted.
None but those who are unlearned
shall not touch such mysteries as these!
Who shall feed the swine with the pearls
and dogs lick holy vessels?”
The pearls that Fr. Daniil mentions in the Akathist are nothing but the mystery of prayer. The way to escape is solved by a “mystery science” of the prayer of the heart, in which Father Daniil saw the only way to reach that “DREAM” of union with Christ the Bridegroom. […]
For 10 days the preaching and the counselling were directed towards the mastery of the technique of prayer. First of all, it was a question of a peaceful atmosphere, a certain resting position on a stool that would put the person in the foetal position (the second birth in the Spirit), a certain place above the heart where the thought should be placed and, finally, the utterance of the prayer of the heart, that traditional call of the Hesychast Fathers: “Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me!” […]
These ten days have been true feasts of clarification and deciphering of many meanings. We marvelled at this attention, this devotion of Father Daniil to us. But we also found out why. Because of a dream of his. He dreamed of a hermitage, an enclosure of cells, with a uniform wooden architecture, there on the top of a mountain, on Mount Rarău…
He dreamed of a hermitage with special people, educated in every way, knowledgeable in culture, art, science and theology. He saw us who had come to him as future members of the choir he wanted to lead. He said to us: “We don’t have to be many. Few, but of quality. Twelve of us, united in thought and action, would overthrow a whole country, even the whole world”.
The penultimate day of our stay there was a total black fast and we went for confession. The next day, 14 September, the Feast of the Holy Cross, he celebrated Holy Liturgy and gave us Holy Communion. […]
Fr. Daniil’s advice was to be in the midst of the world like the snail that carries its house on its back, that is, we too should be like him, learning to make our own soul’s house, a shell in which to retreat and to follow persistently and patiently the call of the name of the Light of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
(George Văsîi – In Search of the Meaning of Life, Solteris Publishing House, Piatra Neamț, 2006, pp. 28-34)