Alexandru Ștefănescu, a model of Christian virtue
Alexandru Ștefănescu, nephew Sandu – for the younger ones – or monk Atanasie, in the last years of his life, was a model of faith, behaviour, uprightness and constant devotion. An Oltean from the Corabiei region, he had been a member of the Brotherhood of the Cross since his youth, following with the impetus of youth the principles of moral and Christian education of the Legionary school of unceasing sacrifice for the spiritual progress of the Romanian nation.
A turbulent life of arrests, dungeons and camps followed. When you have given all the energy of your life, all the strength of your work and sacrifice for the ideal you have chosen, nothing seems difficult to achieve. With great activity, modesty and enthusiasm, he tried to make himself useful in all the circumstances that life offered him. He spared no effort when he could do good. In the harsh conditions of investigation and imprisonment, he was an example of hard work, impeccable behaviour and sacrifice. He never compromised; he never abandoned the ideal of his youth, which he cherished throughout his life.
After his release from prison, he married and settled in Corabia. After 1989, when his pension was increased by the addition of compensation for the 12 years of recognised imprisonment, Alexandru Ștefănescu discreetly helped his neighbours, like many other people in need. He always had one or two students from modest families whom he supported financially – without his substantial help they would not have been able to attend university.
In Corabia he had good advice and a special remedy for various ailments, so that everyone he knew greeted him with great respect and sought his help, more like a doctor. Although he had no specialist training, in prison he had the opportunity to learn the secrets of the profession from the doctors with whom he worked, and later successfully applied simple and effective treatments to those for whom the specialists had found no cure.
I met Alexandru Ștefănescu in the autumn of 1992 at the funeral of my husband, Nicolae Călinescu, with whom he had spent time in communist prisons. We shared the same legionary ideal (Christian and national), contested by many who did not even know what it represented; they had not made the effort to explore its essence. The Communists had succeeded in loading the name of Legionnaire with the most terrible epithets, creating in the human subconscious a dark image that everyone should beware of. After my husband’s death, our son Dinu, a medical student, came to the conclusion that if nothing was done, the anti-communist resistance would gradually disappear and that history would remain a false one written by the communists. So, with the help of former political prisoners, he organised a series of events (round tables, conferences, book launches, commemorations) to shed light on the falsehoods that the communists had created over the years.
It has involved people of good faith and serious knowledge of the periods in question and their true values. Perhaps our desire and efforts to enlighten the general public through these events brought us very close to Alexandru Ștefănescu. He always had good advice for our family. In Craiova, he was always present at almost all these events. When I left Craiova, I kept in touch with him by correspondence.
Among my acquaintances among former political prisoners, I have never met anyone with such a gift for reaching out to young people. Nea Sandu was self-taught, but it was not so much the quantity and quality of the knowledge he used, but the love that warmed his soul that gave him the strength in his desire to connect with young people and to transmit to them the fundamental values that lead to the essence of the Christian faith and love of nation.
Nowhere else in the country has someone managed to involve teachers and students in a performance of Radu Gyr’s and Nichifor Crain’s poetry as he did in Corabia. The performance was so well received that he was even offered a tour, which unfortunately could not be realised for financial reasons.
An iron will and great perseverance, but above all faith in God, helped him to overcome the shortcomings of old age, as well as all the hardships acquired during his periods of imprisonment, which he defined metaphorically as a prison. After years of happy cohabitation, his wife falls ill and he devotes himself to her. Soon the inevitable happens. He bears the loss of his wife with great difficulty. He thought of retiring to a monastery.
He arrives at Petru-Vodă, where he meets Abbot Justin Pârvu, who shows him great understanding. The period of adaptation was difficult at an advanced age. Alexandru Ștefănescu was not a superficial man who made hasty decisions; such a step implied an enormous responsibility. After wavering about the fact that he might not meet certain requirements of monastic life, and after a deep spiritual analysis, Alexandru Ștefănescu decided to join the army of Christ and become the monk Athanasius.
With great courage, he put all the energy he had left into the service of Christ, of Romanian Orthodoxy, in constant prayer for the salvation of this nation for whose moral and spiritual uplift he had worked all his life. He did not forget his old comrades in prison and his ideals.
Through his letters he shared with them the fundamental truths of the Christian faith, which he lived to the full. On the last day of February 2008, Monk Athanasius, a model of Christian virtue and a living example for future generations, fell asleep in the Lord in the Petru Vodă Monastery.
(Viorica Călinescu – Rost Magazine, Year VII, No. 79, 2009, pp. 23-24)