A man of the Holy Liturgy and a great householder
I met Fr. Gavriil in the struggle. It’s not just about knowing about a disability, about the diagnosis, but about the struggle to heal the disability.
I observed him when he was young, in the monastery of Căldărușani, I even mediated his priesthood, because he was a deacon. He had a lot of zeal and often managed to go beyond himself to help, to save things. He was very conscientious, very energetic. We had a spiritual bond and we counselled each other. I was his spiritual father and he was mine. He was objective and generous.
Apart from all that, as a man of the Church, a man of the Liturgy, with an incredible zeal and a strength in doing his duty that you would not expect from any man, apart from everything, I say, he was also a great housekeeper, an incomparable housekeeper.
When he entered the Zamfira monastery, the first thing he did there was to build a large stable, but he had no money of his own or reliable sources to complete it.
The monastery took on this modernised form under Patriarch Justinian. But with all the reforms that the Patriarch made, in the constant movement of a monastery, of a household, there is always a need for additions or completions. As far as he was able, he continued to do so without funds or other income.
He made two gates, so that the monastery, with its tradition, with Grigorescu’s painting, would not be deprived of a whole series of things to adapt, to modernise, to harmonise. He made two well-thought-out gates, studied them with questions and answers and appreciated, here is his great merit, the architectural aspect of the work. He built an iron gate in front of the monastery, where the young people who were not judged used to hide at night in their cars and desecrate the place and the monastery cemetery. In this way, he prevented the nightly entry of the unadorned and mischievous. He made the wooden gate to the monastery with carvings framed in pretentious eyes.
He installed central heating in the church.
One of the great deficiencies of many places, including Zamfira Monastery, was water. There was a well that had dried up, which had its own tradition. He would fetch water from 100 metres away, bring all sorts of equipment, insist and bring water to the monastery. The water in the monastery was brought by Father Gavriil, and from then on I said to myself: ‘everyday water’.
All these are details that add up to a harmonious and even pretentious touch in everything he left behind.
He didn’t understand everything about unity, but he didn’t give up. He served on time, he maintained the monastery with what was collected, with fees from weddings or from other hierurgies.
He was a good confessor and very understanding of the downfall of some. But he fought hard to maintain it, because it was not a matter of diagnosing a fact, but of healing it.
We had each other’s hearts at heart. I cannot believe that he is no longer with us, but we must also pay attention to this event, this event that has caused so much pain to so many.
Personally, I am quite reassured that if the good Lord wants, he will be waiting for me. I am 20 years older than him.
I have not been wrong in challenging many priests, but with none have I been as precise, as sure and as hopeful as with the great Archimandrite Gavriil Stoica. In this way, without challenging him, I established a close relationship with the family; it is a pity that we saw each other every year, but we lived together, we felt together.
I very much regretted his loss, but I want to keep a vertical position in the matter of this act by which God decided to take him.
Many thoughts I had at his death made me realise that he is still present on earth.
It is not easy to talk about a father so dignified, so present, so conscientious, so certain in all the details, except to live it and, without discussion, the human relationship of mourning continues.
I have provoked his memory in many places where I live and where I have lived, with all kinds of funerals, but it was not necessary for me to complain to anyone, because they also came from the good Lord for our dear brother, the great householder, the great confessor: Gavriil Stoica, Archimandrite.
He died “passing from death to life”, surrounded by the tricolour of flowers, which he placed petal by petal in all the alleys of the monastery. This is the hand and heart of Archimandrite Gavriil.
(Archim. Arsenie Papacioc, “A man of the Liturgy and a great householder” in Archimandrite Gavriil Stoica. A Missionary Monk, Lover of Virtues and Flowers, edited by Arch. Timotei Aioanei, Basilica Publishing House, Bucharest, 2009, pp. 114-117).