“A wonderful apparition of Father Sofian”

… A story from our Church, related to Father Sofian Boghiu. A year after the departure of Fr. Sofian Boghiu, because of my great devotion to him – and because I know that he was one of our Saints, as many of our hierarchs and lay people who knew him openly acknowledged – I made his icon.

I didn’t paint it myself, I’m not an icon painter, I talked to someone and I made the icon and even a year ago, on the Ascension of the Holy Cross, in the morning, before we started the service, very early in the morning, around six o’clock, I consecrated the icon and I left it there, next to me, in the Holy Altar, to keep it close to my heart. It is very difficult to serve alone in a very small church. On the one hand you have to receive the lists with names, on the other hand there is the thread of the Holy Mass that has to be held and there are all the prayers that have to be said, and whenever you serve alone it is very difficult. But on this occasion it was very easy. It was as if Father was with me, that’s what I felt: that Father was with me and was helping me, because I was able to receive all the list of names to be commemorated quietly, to recite them all – and the permanent ones, we have a whole pile of them there; I read the prayers quietly and peacefully and everything went amazingly good, it was as if time flowed differently. It was extraordinary! At the end, when I went out for the anointing, I was full of happiness, so full of the miracle of this Holy Liturgy that had gone like no other, without the slightest shadow, perfect. Except that during the anointing I saw a faithful woman crying with sadness, not because she was immersed in the Holy Liturgy, but because she was sad. And I was a little disturbed and I asked her, “But what happened?” Knowing her well, knowing her to be a very faithful woman, I was saddened, “What is it?” And she said, “Father, I’ve gone mad!” Of course it was a shock to me and I didn’t understand. I took her aside: “But how did it happen? What is it? Why do you think that?” And he said to me: “Father, I was at the funeral of Father Sofian, I know very well that he died, but today I saw him serving at the holy altar:” For a moment I froze. Then I told her what had happened.

I took the icon from the altar, no one could see it, I had put it there for my soul. I took the icon out and showed it to her. She didn’t calm down, she started to cry even worse, she still wasn’t convinced if it was a spell or if she had gone mad or if the Saint had appeared and I continued to anoint. And at one point another lady came, also a believer, but she usually goes to a church in town where she has her confessor, she rarely comes to us, and she was very happy. She said: “Father, I’m so happy! Someone told me that Father Sofian had died, and when I saw him serving in our church today, I was so happy! Now I was in a very difficult moment, because when I tried to explain to her that Father Sofian had died, she looked at me strangely, she thought I was crazy. And I had to take her to the other lady, to put them face to face, so that they could calm each other down.

I wanted to say this because of the story “The Wonderful Apparition” (from the book “The Mystery of Love. Stories for children big and small” by Danion Vasile – n.n.) is really something that happens. And because Saints are actually at work today. Because we too have Saints who work and perform miracles, even among those we may have known and seen, and perhaps for this reason we do not know how to appreciate their true spiritual value. For example, Father Sofian and other Saints who have lived with us or who are still with us, and whom we would do well to learn to respect, perhaps by taking an example from other peoples: from the Greeks, the Serbs, the Russians, from the way they know how to respect their Saints, whether they are alive or have passed on to eternal life, i.e. to know how to value our spiritualists, our teachers, those who put their souls at risk for our salvation. And let us have the courage to do this quietly and openly, together with others. People are often ashamed to confess their faith in the truth, for various reasons. And it is good to learn to confess our faith, not formally, not in a reserved way, but openly and from the heart. (from the conference “You and Christ”, Bucharest, 26 November 2007)

(Pr. Mihai Andrei Aldea – Source: Danion Vasile’s blog)