After getting released – Monk at the Sihăstria Monastery
At the end of July 1964, Brother Constantin Dumitru was among the last to leave Aiud. Those who, in one way or another, had received Colonel Crăciun’s re-education left early. And those who did not accept in any way to renounce Christ, family, nation, movement, were kept until the political prisons had to be closed down.
From here, Brother Constantine went to Sihăstria. “When I came to Sihăstria, I felt some special spiritual states. I went to Father Ambrozie Dogaru and then to Father Paisie Olaru for a blessing. At Father Paisie I found a note on the door: I’m sick, I’m not receiving anyone”. I went back to Father Ambrose and he spoke to Father Paisie and I left with his blessing. I felt that this blessing was with me for at least a month and a half”.
It is not without fear that I write that all that he had acquired in prison was now given new strength. The monastery, as he told me, and as I felt from the first day I crossed the threshold of this monastery, was a very special place. It was given to him to understand that if there are places on earth that are closer to heaven than other places, then Sihăstria is certainly one of them. And if the Romanian people are still Orthodox Christians, it is surely because of the prayers of the monks in places like Sihăstria. And this can be felt by anyone with a pure heart, including Brother Constantine. He even told me that one day he asked Father Cleopa why he felt so wonderful after crossing the White Stream, and the Elder replied: Because these places are sanctified by the hermits who lived here, and the pure-hearted cannot but receive from the spirit of the place.
But with all the gifts he had received in prison, life in the monastery was not without its temptations. One day, speaking of the gift of courage, of fearlessness, he said to me:
“And when I came to Sihăstria, this fearlessness always accompanied me, even when I met the head of the Neamț Securitate. I knew very well when he came to the monastery, and when I went to the administration’s office, I found him there, in the administration’s office”.
Returning to the monastery was the beginning of a life full of hardships and needs, unknown to others, of the one who had won Christ through hard trials in the depths of the anti-christian dungeons. The joy of meeting again most of those who had been with him in the monastery of Slatina was great, because at that time the monastery of Fr. Cleopa was like a wonderful frame of the icon of the Saviour Christ: full of precious stones, that is to say, of experienced monks, bound in gold and silver, that is to say, bound together by good deeds. But just as we know that no good deed is possible without temptation, so the trials that Brother Constantine underwent were very great, because the enemy devil could not bear the servant of God. But he did not fear the annoyances of some of the brothers, nor the temptations of the guards who came to him, nor the struggles he had in the silence of the cell, but he remained in the work of good works.
(Confession of a Christian. Father Mark of Sihăstria, edited by monk Filoteu Bălan, Petru Vodă Publishing House, 2007, pp. 68-70)