Pimen of Cernica

Pimen, born in Bucharest in 1762, was a hieroschemamonk and confessor of the Cernica community, the spiritual father of Saint Callinicus of Cernica. He fell asleep on 29 August 1831. He is named in the Romanian Paterikon and venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.

He entered monastic life in 1784, a disciple of Elder Gheorghe, was tonsured after three years and a little later was ordained deacon and priest. He remained beside Elder Gheorghe twenty-⁠two years, learning from him stillness, gentleness, humility, zeal for the house of the Lord, serving with fear and trembling, the craft of confession and the Jesus Prayer. Cernica kept him as Gheorghe's first disciple, a man of high life, as his disciples testify.

In 1807, when Callinicus came to Cernica, Elder Timothy entrusted him to Pimen as a precious treasure. Pimen guided him until 1812, when he left for the Holy Mountain with his disciple Damaschin, where he lived six years in stillness, in a desert place, in vigil and prayer. In 1818 Archimandrite Dorotheus, the elder of Cernica, called him back, and he remained the community's confessor to the end. The Paterikon adds that the fathers of Cernica could not agree to have him as abbot, because he wanted a coenobium like Athos, harsh for them, and chose his disciple Callinicus as abbot.

Withdrawn to the small island of Cernica, he struggled many years in silence and prayer. The obedience given by Callinicus was to hear confessions and console people, and monks and laity came to him to confess and ask for a word. He was a monk of stillness and prayer, never absent from church or obedience; in his free time he carved crosses and gave them to the brothers. With his hands he worked, and with his mind he said the Jesus Prayer. It was said of him that he was wise and skilled in speech, and Callinicus, in times of danger or perplexity, came to him and never went against his word. Through prayer, word and example he guided him so well that in a few years the disciple surpassed him.

The Paterikon recounts that in July 1829 Saint Callinicus had a fearful vision and ran to Pimen, who told him that the same vision had appeared to him three times that same night: Elder Gheorghe, with two men whom he likens to Saint Nicholas and Saint George, asked him to tell Callinicus to build a church on the island, in the name of Saint George, so that the monks should not be mixed with the laity.

He died on 29 August 1831 and was buried beside the old church of Saint George on the small island.