Monk Mark Dumitru – facts and words of wisdom

This great ascetic was born in the commune of Hătcărău, Prahova County, into a blessed family of 13 children, and was named Constantine. When his father died in the First World War, his mother raised all her children alone. Later, having renounced marriage, Constantine finished school and dedicated his life to Christ, praising Him day and night.

Since he was very zealous for the right faith and led many young people on the path of salvation, pointing them to Christ, he suffered much, being accused and thrown into prisons, where he suffered enourmeously.

Through his patience and the mercy of God, he was led to the monastic life and entered the monastery of Slatina – Suceava, where he became a monk in 1951.

In 1968 he was consecrated in the monastery of Sihăstria and in 1975 he was called “Monk Mark” and found peace in obedience and unceasing prayer.

In 1999, after 30 years of total obedience and devotion, the blessed monk Mark, knowing in advance his end, gave his soul peacefully into the arms of the Lord, whom he loved and carried in his heart all his life.

Facts and words of wisdom:

1. About his mother, whose name was Anna, Fr. Mark said “She lived the life of a nun. She slept two hours a night. After she had put all her children to bed, she would go into a small room and pray in silence. The next day she would be the first to get up and prepare everything for everyone, because a new day was beginning”.

2. Fr. Mark was a man of great nobility of soul. When he was in prison, the guards called him “the fakir” because he never cried, no matter how much he was tormented. God’s mercy covered him, but the jailers knew nothing of such things. Once, however, he burst into tears. “Enough! I’ve beaten the fakir!” they cried with joy. But it was far from that. Father Mark was crying out of compassion for the man being beaten next to him.

3. Father Mark told us: “When I was in prison, I used to retreat to a corner of my cell and say to the others: ‘Forgive me, I have my duties as a monk’, and there I would do my own.

4. The disciples once asked him: “But what shall we do, Father Mark, if persecution comes?” The Father replied: “Then, for each one, the power of grace and his faith will prevail. The Holy Fathers say that only the grace of God can strengthen you. Even I would not have been able to survive all the trials I went through for so many years if God had not helped me. I used to say to myself: ‘You too can fall if grace does not help you'”.

5. Fr. Mark once said: “Only grace can save and help us. I have made mistakes like everyone else, more or less. But there was one time when my conscience rebuked me very strongly. What’s wrong with me, I asked myself. I fell down and cried to God and to the Mother of God: “Lord, help me to get up!” And then grace came. As the Holy Fathers say: “Let us take one step towards God and He will take two towards us”. He can’t wait for us to come back. And He comes and helps us. Grace comes to awaken our conscience, to help us straighten up and so on”.

6. And Father said: “Let us be attentive to God’s grace, because it alone can straighten us out, can open the eyes of our spirit to understand things. And here we come to the problem of the eye of the soul, or the mind. With the mind you can understand many things deeply, but if it does not touch the heart… So when the feeling of the heart comes together with the enlightenment of the mind, then you feel the grace of God working through your whole being. So let us always pray to the Saviour not to let us down”.

7. He also told us about the enlightenment that comes from God: “I have now begun to enlighten myself about all the prayers I make. As much as I can, because the words of God are like a diamond; if you show one face to the sun, all its other faces are illuminated. So every word of God has many meanings. And then I ask myself why I say “Heavenly King”, “Blessed Trinity”, “Our Father”… to get my facts straight. And I still come to the conclusion that unless the Holy Spirit enlightens you, you cannot understand”.

8. Fr. Mark once said: “The Abbot Silouan the Athonite was a chosen one of God and had to say certain things. Among other things, this: “Keep your mind in hell and despair not”. And that’s basically for us too, you know. I’ve experienced that state myself in one way or another. That it’s a great thing to live. And the brother he was talking to asked him: “But we are in a different situation, in different circumstances. Should we create this atmosphere of hell?” “No,” said the father. When you pray, God understands you and knows what you will do. God knows more about each one of us than we know about ourselves. God knows from eternity what we will become, and from the moment we are born He knows what we will do with our free will. God knows from now on what I am doing with my free will. And in relation to what He knows I will do with my free will, He also gives me a kind of “life” or “life programme”.

So I don’t know what will happen to me in the future. I may be wrong. But if God knows that I am going to fight as hard as I can as a human being against what I know is wrong, then His grace is bound to come and help me get through it. Even if it leaves you sometimes. Because God has left me in many circumstances in my life until the last moment when I was supposed to die. But at that moment He saved me. Once I was going to die of frost, another time of hunger…”.

9. Father Mark says that when he was in the extermination prison, one winter there was a very severe frost. And there were special cells for punishment. There was a massive wall tower with these cells, 7-8 metres high, all around the tower. The cells had little windows at the top, with bars, no windows, so that there would be a draught, not just frost. And they took the priest there. When the guard opened the massive iron doors, which made a deafening noise, and saw the total darkness inside and felt the freezing cold, he shuddered and said: “It’s like hell in there!” Another prisoner had frostbite on his nose, cheeks and ears while he was there. There they locked up Fr Mark, and he – being a monk – began to do poklons and prostrations, and then he moved around, doing poklons and prostrations again… And he went on like this for three days and three nights.

On the third day he collapsed, unable to pray or say anything, anymore, he was barely aware of himself. Father did not know how long he remained in this state; but when he awoke he felt rested, physically restored, and there was a stove-like warmth around him.

10. Also from prison, he told us the following story: “It was around 1948-1950. We were all very weak because of the lack of food and the horrible quality of the existing one. At that time he took us to work on farms. They took the money and you had to work. And because they didn’t have any food either, they gave us the first juice from the beans – which you throw away, it’s full of poison – and from the military units they took rotten cucumbers, which the soldiers couldn’t eat either, and rotten cornstarch. That was our food. And once, on the eve of the Holy Mother, after a long time on such a diet, I was so weak that I couldn’t even stand up, but I could hardly get back on my bed. I was not ill, I had nothing wrong with me, but I was completely weak, I was on the verge of death. And as I was lying on the bed, I said, “My brothers, I am ready to die.” And I turned to the wall and cried. And a good friend who was at my bedside said, “Uncle Costică’s youth are to be renewed like the eagle’s”.

It was a prophecy that came true. The next morning, Theotokos’ Day, a miracle happened; we all had beans for dinner, hearty food; the same in the evening. And a few more days in a row. What had happened? The prison authorities had sent a wagon full of beans to the prison, to be used as food for the prisoners, with the instruction that they should be eaten immediately. So he started giving us beans, twice a day, until the wagon ran out. It was a miracle of Mother Dornn. She found a compassionate Christian who bought a wagonload of beans, spoke secretly to someone in our prison and gave it to the inmates – as if on behalf of the prison authorities – saving their lives.

One of the chaplain’s disciples said that whenever he brought him beans to eat, his holiness would rejoice and say: “What’s for dinner? Beans? Oh, how good!”, remembering the miracle that had saved him from certain death.

11. Another disciple once asked Father what life was like in prison. Fr. Mark first showed him his head, which was covered with marks and bruises. Then he said: “Look, do you see what they did? They grabbed me by the hair and banged my head against the walls. Once, while the one who was investigating me was banging my head against the wall as hard as he could, another investigator shouted from the next room, not knowing what he was doing to me: “What are you doing? What are you hitting the wall with? Do you want to break it?” And after all this, Fr. Mark resisted that they wondered how he was still sane, and came out with a clear head.

12. In prison, Fr. Mark’s nails and teeth fell out. After a while his nails grew back. A doctor there who examined him said to him: “You do not have a body of flesh, but of iron”.

13. Father Mark also worked as a prisoner in Bicaz, where they were put in the most dangerous places: Many were even afraid to leave the camp to work. They protested, sometimes even cried out of fear. He had a dream in which he was sitting on the trunk of an elephant that was gently rocking him. And some of the prisoners asked to work with him, saying: “I’m going with Uncle Costică, because where he is, God is!”

14. Many of the prisoners in the camp said that they had to sabotage those in power, work as little as possible, and so on. Fr. Mark did not agree with them and said: “Please forgive me, you do what you want, but I consider this as a canon for my sins”.

15. A brother once asked Fr. Mark about his time in prison. “You don’t know what it was like,” he replied. The books that have appeared so far can only give you a vague idea of what it was like. I think what happened was what the fathers and even the Saviour said. You know that in the Egyptian Paterikon, one of the things that a brother asked his father was: “Father, we live as we live (it was around the time of St. Anthony the Great). But what will those who come after us be like?” “They will earn about half as much as we do,” said the old man. “And what about those who come after them?” asked the brother. “Those who come after us will do nothing like we do, but they will have such great and terrible trials that if they endure them, they will be greater in the kingdom of God than we are.” Well, that’s what happened. They were great trials. And not only torments and trials, but also temptations, for temptations that come from the enemy both in your mind and in your deeds and in your words, are they not a horror in themselves?”

16. Father Mark said to a disciple, “Tell me, do you know the difference between humility and modesty?” “No,” said the disciple. “I learned from someone in prison that humility is the consciousness of nothingness, and modesty is the consciousness of sinfulness”.

17. In a moment of silence, Father Mark told a disciple that once, during the persecution in the Caraiman Mountains, he saw the Holy Trinity in a vision and the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, entered his heart.

18. After his release from prison, Father went to the monastery of Cernica. Once, when he was with the bees of the monastery in the Bărăgan, they were dying of drought. So he cried and prayed to God: “Lord, give us some rain, for the bees are dying of hunger!” And on the same day, God gave rain, and all around gave thanks to the Lord. That year so much honey was collected that the whole monastery was amazed at its abundance. And the surrounding beekeepers marvelled and said, “Look, look, as soon as this monk came to Bărăgan, it began to rain!”

19. From the monastery of Cernica, Fr. Mark was transferred to the monastery of Sihăstria, where he was also given obedience as a beekeeper. Once a brother came and asked him how to pray, since his mind was occupied with the obedience. Fr. Mark said to him: “Brother, here I have beehives in my care and sometimes I have to inspect them. To see how the hive is, how the brood is, how the honey is… I can no longer pray with words. I have to look after these things. But let’s not forget that we are in a monastery and we do everything out of obedience. So, first of all, let’s do everything as if it came from God. Then we must know that we are before God and that we do everything for God. So from God, before God and for God. That’s what we have to do”.

20. Around 1980, while being a beekeeper, he once climbed a tree after a swarm of bees. As he reached out to the swarm, suddenly a whirlwind, stirred up by the devil, came towards his sanctity. Father retreated, then tried again, but the whirlwind came again. This happened three times. The last time, the powerful whirlwind threw him down of the tree. Father fell right on his head, and he was crippled for the rest of his life.

But even though he found it difficult to move as a result of this devilish temptation, Father was punctual in church, where he went every day, winter or summer.

21. Throughout his life, no matter how late he finished his obedience, Father Mark said all his prayers in the monastic canon. He ate very little and mixed his wine with tea.

22. A brother said to him, “Father, I cannot humble myself and cut off my will. What should I do?” Father Mark said to him, “Well, whether you like it or not, you will have to humble yourself in the end!”

23. Father Mark once said to a brother who had come from the world with heavy sins: “When God abandons you and you feel this abandonment on His part, you experience a state so terrible that you cannot express it in words, but then your sins are most forgiven”.

24. A brother told the father that he sometimes felt troubled in church. The father asked him, “Why do you judge the brethren?” This made the brother think because he had no idea what the root of these temptations was.

25. Many brothers and fathers came to Father Mark with their problems, even though he was a simple monk. He would give them advice and help them with his prayers. Sometimes, when there was a particular problem, the Father would give them advice, but he would ask the brother to ask his confessor (or, if he could not, another wise confessor) whether he agreed with his advice or not. And if the confessor did not agree with what Fr. Mark had said, the priest would immediately humble himself and try to help the brother in some other way, even if only through prayer.

26. Once a disciple asked him: “Father Mark, why did you not become a priest?” The priest replied: “It was God’s will”.

27. Father Mark had a very orderly and clear mind. At the age of 88, he noticed and corrected mistakes in the books he read (which were typos, but also changed the meaning of the sentence). Father also kept his cell in perfect order. Everything had its place. Even the pencil; if the apprentice used it and put it back on the table, but not in its place, the priest would call him and tell him to put the pencil back in its place.

28. Father was always very attentive to every word of the prayer and its meaning. Once he urged a novice brother to pray the “Prayer for Salvation” every day. Then he explained the meaning of each word.

29. A disciple told us that shortly before his father’s death he found him in his cell pondering the words: “All our righteousness is before God like the wasted rag of a harlot”. And the old man said: “Do you realise, brother? Like a wasted rag. And not only that. But that of a harlot!”

30. Just before he died, the priest dreamt that he was climbing a ladder. And he had very few steps left to climb.

Also at that time, Father Mark told a disciple that he had a dream that he was on a very beautiful plain and an angel came from behind and took him by the hand and they walked a long way together. The father wished he could stay there forever, but the angel told him he had to wait a little longer. And then Fr. Mark awoke. These two dreams signified his approaching end, in Christ’s rest, after a life of suffering.

31. A few months before his departure for eternity, Father Mark, feeling that his end was near, called on his parishioners to ask for forgiveness and to reconcile with everyone.

32. A brother, shortly before Father’s humble end, asked the old man to pray for him, both here and in the hereafter, so that he would find the courage of God. The father replied: “Brother, I need your prayers now, all of them, because I am preparing to leave. Ask those you know to pray for me too”.

33. On Friday, the first week of Lent 1999, feeling that his end was near, Father Mark received the Body and Blood of the Lord in the morning and at twelve o’clock he committed his spirit to the hands of Christ.

O Lord, rest with the Saints, your servant, Monk Mark!

(Archimandrite Ioanichie Bălan – The Romanian Paterikon, Publishing House of the Romanian Diocese, 2001, pp. 763-769)