Simeon the Hermit of Mount Ceahlau and his disciples

Simeon was a hieroschemamonk and abbot of the Hermitage of Ceahlău, from 1650 to 1704, who died together with his disciples under an avalanche on the night of Pascha in the year 1704. 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 apart from the night of the Resurrection.

The Hermitage of Ceahlău, a wooden skete dedicated to the Transfiguration, near the summit of the mountain, was one of the oldest monastic settlements on the Bistrița Valley; according to tradition it was founded by Prince Dragoș. Between 1650 and 1704 Simeon lived there, at first as a hermit below the mountain's summit, enduring many temptations and becoming a known practitioner of the Jesus Prayer. Then the monks elected him abbot of the skete, which he guided wisely for more than thirty years. He renewed the wooden church and gathered twenty disciples.

The skete's rule was this: every day the seven praises were sung, with Matins at midnight, and on feast days the Liturgy was served, when the other hermits of the mountain came. Confession and Communion were weekly, the meal once a day. During fasts the monks withdrew to their dugouts in the mountain and struggled alone until the great feasts. They loved most silence, humble thinking, fasting and unceasing prayer. Simeon taught them above all to love one another and to pray for the salvation of people.

At ninety, in the spring of 1704, on the very night of the Resurrection, when the fathers were in church, a great avalanche of snow came down from Ceahlău onto the skete. One father shouted that they should take the icon of the Mother of God and flee onto the ridge, but the others did not believe him. He alone took the icon and went out. The avalanche covered the church and all the others, after Simeon had read the Paschal Gospel. The next day the abbot was found under the snow, asleep with the Gospel on his chest and his disciples beside him. The only survivor was the monk with the icon.