Home at the heart’s supplicant

You tremble before the pious lovers of God! How many of them have not desired the monastic life? And how many have not unknowingly followed its path, fulfilling to the end their duty towards God and their fellow men! Some of them suffered for decades in communist prisons – humble devotees of unceasing prayer!

And here is the parable of their end:  “Father, I am a sinful man! I could not even say a word to those close to me, for they would rightly accuse me: What, are you a priest? In matters of faith, Father, I have always felt like an impostor…”.

Read Ioan Ianolide’s Return to Christ… When I read the book, I couldn’t believe that this confessor was born in the neighbouring village of my childhood. No one had ever told me about him… The day after Easter that year, I couldn’t wait any longer; I really wanted to go home to Ioan Ianolide…

Ioan Ianolide’s Dobrotești

I travelled the road to Dobrotești with the fear in my heart that I might not find out anything concrete about the confessor Ioan Ianolide; that there might be some mistake in the middle…. I kept asking myself: is there anyone else in the world who knew him?

The forest of the Berindei family, up until Ioan Ianolide’s Dobrotești, seemed to go on and on… In the “manor house”, in the forest Beucii, the architect Ion Berindei worked on the project of the Palace of Culture in Iași. “The palace was born in our forest”, the old people of the village used to tell me. Why didn’t I hear about Ianolide from them? – I used to reproach myself on the way. In the meadow near Drobotești, I asked a shepherd about Ianolide’s house. He paused for a moment and thought. “Well, Niculache Ianolide had a house right here where we are, in the meadow… He had a lot of land, but he also managed the Berindeilor estate. He was a very good man”. “Not Polimeride’s estate?” – I ask, surprised. “No, the Berindeilor’s!” – replies the man, sure of himself. There was no sign of the house. “The houses of Mr. Niculache and Mr. Dumea Berindei are gone! But Mr. Niculache still has a house in Doage (Dobrotesti). Ask about the house of Niculache Grecu or that of Maria Ciobanu”. “Which Maria Ciobanu?” I shudder. “The teacher, Niculache’s daughter. Ioan Ianolide’s sister had been a teacher at the school I went to!

The advice of the old women

The priest didn’t remember Mr. Ionel from Grecu very well: “He was mostly in prison, he left home a long time ago”. But he knew that Ianolide’s sister had married a Bessarabian and had stayed in her parents’ house until she died.

As soon as we entered the village, we began to ask around.

Dobrotești is half a village of Transylvanian shepherds who crossed the Carpathians with their flocks in the time of Maria Theresa. Hardworking and enterprising people… In the cemetery we meet a kind of old women’s council, as is customary in the country at Easter: “And you say, ma’am, that you want to know where Niculache Grecu’s house is? “Was he really Greek? – I ask in amazement. “Well, whether he was Greek or Macedonian, I don’t know, but he didn’t speak Romanian like us,” one of the women replied. An old woman immediately sent for Mrs Valica. When she arrived, she commented with the others: “Our Valica has become a great boyar!” Mrs. Valica is in charge of the house where Ioan Ianolide was born, entrusted to the granddaughters of Count Niculache. They set off with some of the old women’s family, along a narrow lane, as narrow as a path, with fences embroidered all the way to the top with the hand of the Mother of God. I kept asking myself how to start the conversation…

“I burned Mr. Ionel’s clothes…”

Mrs. Valica invited us to enter the courtyard of the Niculache convent. “I would like to ask you about Ioan, his son, I dare say? Mother Lixandra, one of the old women, flinches when she hears this name: “About Mr. Ionel, Mr. Ionel, who spent 23 years in prison?! “Exactly. Did you know him? The woman was silent for a while, then, as she began to tell the story, tears welled up in her eyes: “Mother, I see him as if it were yesterday! He came home after 23 years and we cried, Coana Ispasia, Ionel’s mother, Niculache’s wife and all the neighbours. His clothes were torn and he was thin… thin! But it seemed that Mr Ionel, the way he was, was radiant… Coana Ispasia gave me his clothes. Go, Lixandra, and burn the boy’s clothes so that I won’t see them again! I filled them with gas and set them on fire here in the barn. I can still see Mr Ionel’s clothes burning…”

“I had a creed… That’s what Mr. Ionel told me”.

The old woman knew Ioan Ianolide’s family well. Mother Lixandra tells the story again: “Why didn’t you sign, Mr. Ionel, why didn’t you come home earlier like the others?” – I asked him. “I had a creed, Lixandra. If I had given up my belief in God, I wouldn’t have been a Christian, I wouldn’t have been a Romanian anymore… I would have been a shadow on the face of the earth. A shadow! I wouldn’t be the Ioan you see before you now”. That’s what he told me. In Gherla there were bars over the water with snakes underneath…” Mother Lixandra is silent again. Her thoughts take her far away… Aunt Valica opens the door of the house where Ioan Ianolide was born. The house is almost deserted, where we are afraid to go. I find out that Mr Ionel didn’t come home very often after his release from prison. Family photos and paintings hang in empty rooms, forgotten for ages. I tell myself that this could be the first and last time I see them. Mrs. Valica takes them out one by one, outside in the courtyard. She wiped them gently, with a trembling hand, urging me: “If you like, take a picture of them so you’ll preserve them”.

A symbol of Romanian faith

It would be a pity if this house were to be expropriated. Looking at the paintings and the delicate grass in Ioan Ianolide’s courtyard, I even think for a moment that a monastery could make a small metoc here. A symbol of our Romanian dignity. If you’ve read “The Return to Christ”, you’ll realise that these are not just random words.

Mother Lixandra looks at the portrait of a beautiful woman with a dignified gaze: “Ispasie, Ispasie!… How you suffered while Mr. Ionel was locked up! “The faithful woman was Mrs Ispasia! She came from Tecuci, a neighbouring village. Respected by everyone and very merciful!” – Mrs. Valica describes Ioan Ianolide’s mother.

I bow my head in silence, listening to the wise words of the old women. It’s like living a dream. I ask them again, just to be sure: “Was Mr Niculache the manager of Berindei?” “In the meadow, mother, in Berindei. He spent most of his time there in the summer. Mr. Ionel also went there. And after he got out of prison, he used to go there.”

I was just wondering, crossing the forest on the way to Dobrote;ti: What made me come to the meadow, to the silence, the first time I was given a volume of the Philokalia? Perhaps it was the prayers of this unknown confessor, raised in the darkness of communism, for the people of his homeland who were about to lose their faith. He had come to know Christ through unimaginable sufferings in the Communist dungeons and through unceasing prayer of the heart. At that time, an entire nation was being led to the depths of destruction. I firmly believe that the appeal to Ioan Ianolide is more relevant today than ever.

(Gheorghiță Ciocioi – World of Faith, year VI, no. 6 (59) June 2008)