St. George Hozeva and the Romanian Community

The pastoral middle of John Jacob’s last years: after his ordination he was appointed superior of the Romanian hermitage of St. John the Baptist near the Jordan (1947–1952), caring for the Romanian pilgrims of the Holy Land; and in November 1952 he entered the ancient Monastery of St. George of Choziba (Hozeva) in the Wadi Qelt, the house whose name he now bears.

Tradition: Romanian Orthodox (20th-c. hermit of the Judean desert; glorified 1992)

The Romanian Hermitage by the Jordan

Ordained priest in 1947, John Jacob was drawn out of the pure solitude he desired into a work of pastoral care for his own people. The Romanian accounts record that he was appointed superior (egumen) of the Romanian hermitage of St. John the Baptist, situated near the Jordan River in the region of the Lord’s Baptism, and that he held this charge in the years 1947–1952 (Romanian synodal Life, Viața Sfântului Cuvios Ioan Iacob de la Neamț; parohia-sf-ioan-iacob-hozevitul.ro, “Viața Sfântului Ioan Iacob Hozevitul”). The hermitage served the growing number of Romanian pilgrims and monastics in the Holy Land, for whom a Romanian-speaking priest and a Romanian house of prayer near the holy places were a great consolation (synodal Life; and see the-romanian-presence-in-the-holy-land.md). In this office his gentleness, his learning, and his gift for the written word were turned to the care of souls: he preached, confessed, guided, and — significantly for his later fame — wrote, so that a good part of his surviving letters and counsels belongs to these years of pastoral service (Bălan, The Romanian Patericon; and see the-spiritual-writings.md).

The period is important for understanding the shape of his sanctity. John Jacob was not only a hermit but, for these years, a superior and a pastor, and the tradition remembers him as a mild and self-effacing one, reluctant to command, ruling by example and by patience rather than by authority. Yet the pastoral charge sat in tension with his deepest vocation, which was for the desert and for solitude; and when the political and ecclesiastical circumstances of the Holy Land in the early 1950s made his position difficult, he took the opportunity to lay down the superiorship and withdraw to a more hidden life (synodal Life). [Disputed: the accounts connect his departure from the Jordan hermitage both to his own longing for solitude and to the unsettled conditions of the Holy Land after 1948; the devotional Lives emphasize the former, and the collection reports both without adjudicating which weighed more.]

The Monastery of St. George of Choziba

In November 1952, John Jacob — together with the disciple who would attend him to the end, Ioanichie Pârâială — entered the Monastery of St. George of Choziba (Hozeva), from which the saint takes the surname Hozevitul, “the Chozebite” (synodal Life; Romanian Wikipedia, Ioan Iacob de la Neamț, as locator; and see the-cave-of-st-anne.md). The monastery clings to the northern cliff of the Wadi Qelt, the deep desert gorge that runs from Jerusalem down toward Jericho — traditionally identified with the “valley of the shadow of death” and with the brook Cherith where the prophet Elijah was fed by the ravens (1 Kings 17:3–6). It is one of the most ancient monastic sites of the Judean desert, its origins traced to the fifth century and its great flourishing associated with St. George of Choziba (Gheorghe Hozevitul, c. 7th century), whose name it bears; like Mar Saba it belongs to the classic landscape of Palestinian desert monasticism (synodal Life; general history of the Choziba monastery). To pass from St. Sabbas by way of the Jordan hermitage to St. George of Choziba was to move among the greatest of the Judean desert houses, and John Jacob’s whole Palestinian life is framed by these two ancient lavras of the Fathers.

At Choziba he was received into the small community, but his purpose was not to remain in the coenobium. The monastery possessed, in the surrounding cliffs, a number of the ancient hermits’ caves that had been used since antiquity by those seeking the greater solitude, and it was to one of these — the cave-cell called of St. Anne — that John Jacob soon withdrew, to spend the final and most hidden years of his life. That withdrawal, and the extreme eremitic life he lived in the cave with his disciple, are the subject of the next file.

The Care of the Pilgrims

Even after his withdrawal, John Jacob did not cease altogether to be a father to the Romanians of the Holy Land. His cave lay within the property of St. George of Choziba, and pilgrims — Romanian and other — found their way to him for a word, a blessing, or confession, so that the hermit remained, at a distance, a spiritual resource for the Romanian community he had formally served as superior (synodal Life; Bălan, The Romanian Patericon). The continuity matters for his later cult: it is precisely because he had been the pastor of the Romanian pilgrims — known, sought out, and loved by them — that his memory was so vividly preserved among Romanians in the Holy Land and in Romania, and that the finding of his relics twenty years after his death met so ready a veneration (see veneration-in-romania-and-the-holy-land.md). The pastor and the hermit are, in him, a single figure: a man who served his people precisely by becoming, for their sake and his own, a stranger hidden in the desert.

See Also

• The Cave of St. Anne — the final hermitage to which he withdrew from the monastery
• The Monastery of St. Sabbas — the Lavra of his central desert years
• The Spiritual Writings — the letters and counsels of his pastoral years
• The Romanian Presence in the Holy Land — the community he served
• The Incorrupt Relics — the relics now enshrined at St. George of Choziba

References

• Viața Sfântului Cuvios Ioan Iacob de la Neamț (Hozevitul) — the Romanian synodal Life, in Viețile Sfinților for August. (Superior of the Romanian hermitage by the Jordan 1947–1952; entry to St. George of Choziba in November 1952 with the disciple Ioanichie Pârâială.)
• “Viața Sfântului Ioan Iacob Hozevitul.” parohia-sf-ioan-iacob-hozevitul.ro. (The Jordan hermitage; the 1952 move to Hozeva.)
• Bălan, Archimandrite Ioanichie. The Romanian Patericon. Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood. (His pastoral care and character.)
• Ioan Iacob de la Neamț, Romanian Wikipedia — used as a locator (the November 1952 entry to Choziba with Ioanichie Pârâială).
• Scripture: 1 Kings 17:3–6 (the brook Cherith, traditionally associated with the Wadi Qelt).