Nectarius of Almas

Nectarius, born in 1835 in the Trotuș Valley, was a hieroschemamonk and confessor of Almaș Monastery in Neamț for thirty years, a great hesychast. He fell asleep in the summer of 1912. He is named in the Romanian Paterikon and venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization; the sources available to us give no day of commemoration beyond the summer of that year.

After military service he became a monk at Bogdana Monastery in Târgu Ocna. Very zealous for stillness, he withdrew into the Cașin Mountains and lived there more than twenty years as a hermit, where other monks also struggled. He learned the secret practice of the Jesus Prayer. In 1882 the abbess of Almaș Monastery, schemanun Suzana Ștefănescu, was left without a priest and asked her brother, Bishop Melchisedec of Roman, for a good confessor. The bishop called Nectarius from Mount Cașin, ordained him priest and sent him to Almaș.

For thirty years he was the only minister, counsellor and spiritual father of the monastery, which numbered up to forty nuns. He served the Liturgy and the whole order daily with devotion, and spent the rest of his time alone, in thought of God and the Jesus Prayer. In his cell he received no one; the community confessed to him weekly in church. No one saw him laugh or speak idle words. He ate only once a day and gave what remained to the poor and the old nuns. He spent the night in prayer and reading Scripture and slept two or three hours toward dawn. Believers sought him out, and some were healed, according to his disciples.

In 1910 his legs became ill and he could no longer go to church. On the last night of his life he spent many hours on his knees, speaking with someone unseen. In the morning, asked by the nuns with whom he had spoken, he answered that he had seen on a broad plain a multitude of naked people whom he had confessed in life, but who had died under canon without having done it, and all begged him to release them so that they might be worthy of the crown. After an hour he gave up his spirit into the Lord's hands and was buried beside the church, in the summer of 1912.