Sisoes the Hermit of Rarau

Sisoes was a hermit in the Rarău Mountains at the end of the eighteenth century, founder and abbot of Rarău Skete, which he moved in 1800 from Austrian rule into Moldavia. He fell asleep a few years later. 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.

His name was known in all the surrounding villages. The hermits of the forests held him as guide, known as an ascetic and practitioner of the Jesus Prayer, while the believers of the villages asked him for counsel and considered him an intercessor with God. The monks of Rarău Skete elected him abbot and he was their guide, gathering several disciples.

Seeing that Orthodox churches, monasteries and sketes in northern Moldavia were under pressure from the Catholic Austrian authorities, Sisoes resolved to move the skete to the southern part of the mountain, which remained in Moldavia. In the summer of 1800 he gathered thirty peasants with mountain horses and loaded on them the church's iconostasis, treasures, service books and the skete's few belongings. After prayer to the Mother of God, together with the whole community, they crossed the border at night, unseen by the Austrians. The abbot went ahead with the wonderworking icon of the Mother of God and prayed with tears.

At dawn they halted in a mountain clearing near Piatra Zimbrului, set the icon in a fir trunk, kept vigil and a Liturgy of thanksgiving and raised a wooden church dedicated to the Dormition of the Mother of God, which can be seen to this day, with cells beside it. So Sisoes restored Rarău Skete. He gathered more than twenty monks, taught them love of God and after a few years passed to the heavenly dwellings.