Here is a photo taken at Sihastria monastery in Moldova last summer. Pictured are Archimandrite Simeon (?) on the right, Priest-monk Ioannichie (Yo-ahn-NEE-kee-ye) Balan (+11/20/2008: Memory Eternal!), Priest Tudor Ciocan (Cho-KAHN) in the foreground, and my unworthiness on the left of the photo. We had just concluded the celebration of the sacrament of the Healing Oil (Holy Unction) for the servant of God, our brother in the Spirit, Ioannichie. We are in the cell where he dwelt in monastacism for over sixty years. He told us (during our visit in 2005) that he had crafted the door of the cell himself as his first obedience in the monastery. I am not sure, but I believe I recall him telling us that when he died he would be carried from the cell on that same door.

Fr. Ioannichie is remembered chiefly as a scholar of Romanian monasticism, having written extensively about the history of monasteries in Moldova and throughout Romania, about the universal Orthodox pracitice of Hesychasm, or the Prayer of the Heart, (which made it's revival in Moldova with St. Paisius Velichkovsky of Neamts and spread from there to his Russian disciples in Valaamo Monastery and from there with St. Herman to Alaska and the New World), and about the life of Fr. Cleopa Ilie, past Starets (abbot) of Sihastria and modern Romanian spiritual elder.

May God rest his soul in peace and grant to us a life long enough for our repentance, through the prayers of our holy fathers.