Saint Ioan Iacob the New Chozebite

Saint Ioan Iacob Hozevitul

The fifth of August in the Orthodox Church is also the feast-day of Saint Ioan Iacob Hozevitul, a twentieth-century monastic of Palestine. Because he is the second sainted John to live in the desert of Wâdî al-Qalṭ in the Dayr al-Quddis Jûrj – the first being one of the monastery’s two blessed patrons – he is known as ‘the New Chozebite’. As we can see from his life, the true monastic ideal in the modern world has not changed despite the modern world’s pressures. As Saint Ioan Iacob shows us, the true Orthodox monk is called to be dispassionate and gentle, not to be macho. The true Orthodox monk suffers at heart, even bleeds, for those who are themselves suffering. The true Orthodox monk may also be called to distant places, and his service and prayer for the world may look very different from how the world believes that service and prayer ought to look.

Saint Ioan Iacob [as mentioned before, also Eng. John James] was born Ilie, the son of working-class parents Maxim and Ecaterina Iacob, on the twenty-third of July, 1913, in the Horodiştea commune of Moldavia, what is now Păltiniș in northeastern Romania. He lost both of his parents at a very young age, leaving him an orphan. His mother died six months after his birth, and his father was killed in action in the First World War when he was two. He was thereafter raised by his grandmother Maria, a nun, who taught him the prayers and the fasts of the Church, and who encouraged his daily devotions. She raised Ilie until he was eleven years old, after which she reposed in the Lord and he was sent to live with his uncle Alecu. He was educated in the public middle school in Hotin, and later at the public high school in Cernăuți (both of which were forcibly incorporated into the USSR and are now in the Ukraine).

The upbringing his grandmother left him had an indelible impact on young Ilie, who had an intense love for Christ and the Church and who was drawn to the examples of the Desert Fathers in particular. His uncle and his aunt and cousins told Ilie that he ought to study theology to become a priest. But hearing this he told them flatly: ‘No. I shall become a monk.’ He was thoroughly sincere in his desire. When he was twenty, after hearing a voice from heaven, the young man went to his priest for absolution, then packed his icons and his prayer books and left for the monastery at Neamț. Ilie was received there and was given work in the monastery’s infirmary.

He took to the monastic life as a fish to water. His hagiography says that ‘his soul was nourished by the beauty of the services, the experienced spiritual instructors, and the silence of the mountains’, and that he ‘loved prayer, vigils, spiritual reading, and solitude, and soon he surpassed many experienced monks in obedience, humility and patience’. The abbot at Neamț, observing this, made use of Ilie’s talents by placing him in charge of the monastic library. There he took pleasure in recommending to the brother-monks books which they ought to read. Then he would advise that they ought to read attentively, make confession and attend to their prayers.

While still in his novitiate he was draughted into the army, but after his service he was welcomed back to Neamț, and the Archimandrite Valeriu (Moglan) saw fit to tonsure him as a monk on the eighth of April, 1936. He was given the monastic name of Ioan, and he was placed under the spiritual obedience of the elder Ioachim Spătarul, one of the most renowned spiritual fathers of Moldova, who would become the eremitical abbot of the nearby Pocrov skete.

With the blessing of his spiritual father, Saint Ioan, together with two fellow-monks of Neamț, embarked on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, driven by a desire to walk where our Lord walked during his earthly life. After visiting the Holy Sepulchre and the other holy sites, they stayed for the winter at the Dayr Mâr Sâbâ. Here Saint Ioan would spend the next ten years, and he would struggle through many temptations among the Sabaites, ‘conquering the temptations of the demons, and progressing on the path of salvation’. He cultivated an attitude of humility, mercy and love towards everyone he met: it did not matter if they were Romanian like himself, Slavic, Arabic, Bedouin, Christian or Muslim. Again being placed in the monastery’s infirmary, he tended the ill and the wounded. During the Second World War his skills were put very much to test.

Here his spiritual father was a Yugoslav whose name was Sava, who deeply cherished and cared for the Romanian monks at the monastery. Again the literary talents of Saint Ioan were noticed and put to use. Here he taught himself Greek and began to read the texts written by the ancient Fathers, to ask his fellow-monks for commentary, and then translate them into Romanian. He also wrote akathists and troparia in Romanian, and gave them to Romanian pilgrims when they came to visit the monasteries or the other sites in the Holy Land. He lived as a hermit in the desert as well for some time in the late 1930s, and made the acquaintance of his closest spiritual disciple, Ioanichie Pârâială, who later wrote down his Life and many of the miracles attributed to him.

With the permission of the Romanian Orthodox hierarchs, Saint Ioan was ordained a deacon in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and then later as a priest in May of 1947. He served as an archpastor over a Romanian skete in the deserts of the Holy Land in honour of Saint John the Forerunner, again employing his remarkable talents for language in translating numerous works from Greek into Romanian for the benefit of the Romanian faithful who came to the Holy Land as pilgrims. He gave his homilies in Romanian every day, took confessions and gave communion, and continued in every way to minister to his people in the Holy Land.

In 1952, Saint Ioan resigned the abbacy of the Skete of Saint John, and he and his disciple Ioanichie Pârâială entered the monastery of Saint George Chozeba, which was close to the cave where Saint Anna was traditionally held to have prayed for a child. Here Saint Ioan and his disciple Ioanichie spent seven years in solitary prayer, fasting and vigils, fighting the temptations of the dæmons. Saint Ioan let no one into his cell in that time, and did not come out himself – in a manner similar to some of the Syrian Desert Fathers, he would communicate with petitioners and pilgrims by way of letters passed by and from his apprentice. He continued to work on his translations from his cell, and he and Ioanichie would hold the Divine Liturgy and partake of the Mysteries on important feast and fast days. The diet of Saint Ioan at this time consisted of a few biscuits, olives, wild fruits and some water, and he slept with a bare stone as his pillow.

Saint Ioan’s health went into decline during the summer of 1960, but he bore it without complaint. He took the Holy Eucharist one last time on the fourth of August that year, knowing that his earthly end was near – he had knowingly carved the date of his death into the wall of his cell. The following morning he reposed. He was buried with all due reverence in his cave by the abbot at Saint George Chozeba’s monastery. In witness to his sanctity, wild birds – of the kind he used to feed crumbs from his biscuits when they flew by his windows – flew into the cell during the funeral and perched tamely among the heads of the mourners who gathered near him. In 1980, over 20 years after his repose, his relics were exhumed from the cave and found to be incorrupt. They were translated reverently into Saint George’s monastery where he still rests. Holy Saint Ioan Iacob, beloved monastic father and patron of the Romanian and Moldovan people, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Apolytikion to Saint Ioan Iacob, Tone 8, Plagal 4:

In you, through zeal the one created in the image of God was saved, oh Father,
For forsaking the world and leaving your homeland,
You took up Christ’s cross,
And you have dwelled in the valley of Jordan to labour.
Wherefore, oh Righteous Father Ioan,
Your spirit rejoices now with the angels.
Intercede with Christ our God to save our souls.