Michael Badila of Ialomicioara Cave

Mihail Bădilă, born in 1880 at Moeciu, in Brașov, was a protosyncellus and abbot of Ialomicioara Cave Skete for twenty-⁠seven years, from 1925 to 1952. He fell asleep in 1957, on the day of the Holy Martyr Ignatius, 20 December. He is named in the Romanian Paterikon and venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.

He entered monastic life at Peștera in 1900. Being obedient, gentle and God-⁠loving, the fathers made him a monk, then, after ten years, deacon and priest, and he became a skilled confessor. In 1925 he was named abbot and spiritual father of the skete, which he guided with humility and gentleness for twenty-⁠seven years. In 1952 he withdrew to stillness, and five years later passed in peace.

His choicest virtue was zeal for prayer and the church services: for more than fifty years he was never absent from the services of day and night, whether reading, singing in the choir, serving, or praying in secret. His disciples say that for his goodness and piety he had received the gift of prayer and spiritual wisdom, so that many monks, hermits and laity confessed to him.

The Paterikon tells some incidents. One winter night, after Matins, going over the mountain to Sinaia, a few wolves came out in his path; he made the sign of the cross, told them that if they had a command from God to eat him, here he was before them, and if not, to go their way, and the wolves bowed their heads and left. Another winter, caught by a fearsome storm on the mountain peak, he prayed on his knees with tears and found himself walking on the road toward Bușteni. In the summer of 1938, hearing a voice at night that twice commanded him to fetch the hermit from the Obârșia clearing, he climbed with his confessor, the hieromonk Antonie, and they found a dugout and in front of it an unknown monk, dead, seated on a log; they brought him down and buried him in the skete. In the spring of 1950 a large boulder crashed onto his cell, but stopped in the attic above his head.

Toward the end of 1957 he asked his disciple, Father Pimen, how long it was until the Holy Martyr Ignatius, and said that on that day he would depart this life. That evening he read from Scripture, then told his disciple to go and rest. After an hour the disciple found him fallen asleep in the Lord, with the Bible in his arms.