Today, 19 October, the Church honours St John of Rila the Wonderworker, the heavenly patron of the Bulgarian people. According to his life story, the date marks the moving of his relics to Sredets, today's Sofia. It is also Bulgarian Doctors' Day.
Bulgarians honour him as their greatest saint and protector of the whole nation. He founded the Rila Monastery, the best-known monastery in Bulgaria, and became its first abbot.
The saint was born around 876 in Skrino, a village in the Osogovo Mountains near the Struma river. This year marks 1,150 years since his birth and 1,080 since his death.
According to his life story, his parents were devout people and raised him in the faith from childhood. After they died, the young man gave his property to the poor and the sick, joined a nearby monastery as a novice, and later became a monk.
Later he left the monastery to live as a hermit. He built a hut on a bare mountain, fasted, prayed and ate wild plants. One night robbers attacked him, beat him and drove him away. John settled in a deep cave and spent 12 years there.
His nephew Luke set out to find him, without telling his father, found him and stayed with him. The father, John's brother, grew angry and took his son away by force, while the hermit prayed on his knees for the boy's salvation. On the way to his home village Luke was bitten by a snake and died. The father felt guilty and brought the body back to the cave. At John's request, the boy was buried close by, and John often visited the grave.
The saint then withdrew to the Rila wilderness. He lived in the hollow of a huge oak, ate grass and lived among wild beasts, seeing no people. Shepherds found him, and people began to come to him with their sick. According to his life story, many of them were healed by his prayers.
To be alone, John climbed higher into the mountain, to a roomy cave beside a huge rock. There he struggled with temptations and the forces of nature, dressed in an old leather garment.
Tsar Peter heard of him, asked to meet him and sent him gold and fruit. John took the fruit and sent back the gold. He refused the meeting, but sent the tsar a letter about what he and the state needed.
Followers gathered around the hermit and built a monastery. At first its church was in the cave where the saint had lived. Before his death John left his pupils a written testament: "Strengthen the newly baptised people of your own blood in the faith, and teach them to give up unseemly pagan customs and evil ways."
He died on 18 August 946, aged 70. The monks buried him in the cave.
According to tradition, decades later the saint appeared to his pupils and asked for his relics to be moved to Sredets. When the grave was opened, the body was said to be incorrupt and fragrant, and the relics were carried into the city with honours on 19 October. His memory has been marked on this date ever since.
In Sofia the relics lay first in the church of St George the Victorious, then in the church of St Luke the Apostle and Evangelist. In the 12th century a devout and wealthy Bulgarian built a stone church in the saint's honour, and the relics were moved there. A monastery grew up around it, where people found healing, comfort and support.
In 1183 Sofia fell to King Béla III, whose Hungarians took the relics to their capital, Gran, today's Esztergom. Because of the miracles said to have happened in Hungary, the Hungarians decided the relics should go back to the saint's homeland. After 3 years they returned them to Sofia with many gifts, and the king decorated the coffin with gold.
In 1195 Tsar Asen I solemnly moved the relics to Veliko Tarnovo, then the capital. Today they are back in the Rila Monastery.