An incandescent apologist
If you looked at Sandu Ștefănescu when he spoke, you’d say he was a flame. This combustion that fuelled his inexhaustible energy was not organic, genetic, I would say, perhaps genetic in the sense of Father Arsenie Boca, that is, of another substance, from other fields or realms, because he was not just any man, but an incandescent person, special, who lived and nourished himself differently from his peers.
I met Sandu Ștefănescu in 1945-1946 at the Vereș Mort (Unirea) labour colony near Mirăslău, where he was a sanitary worker. In fact, he had cured a blockage and excruciating pain in my right knee with foreign injections. He had learnt a certain
Dr. Uță, who had been imprisoned in Aiud since 1938, during the reign of Charles II, with whom Sandu had shared a cell for many years. But it was not only medicine that concerned Sandu Ștefănescu; together with Dr. Uță, Costică Dumitrescu, nicknamed The Fakir, and some other young men, he formed a group of “mystics” – Dr. Victor Biriș’s apostrophe for the two groups of Orthodox Christian legionaries, especially as there were also Catholic legionaries who had jumped over the horse with the formalism they had learned from Ignatius of Loyola.
But besides the group of Orthodox Christian legionaries (Dr. Uță – Constantin Dumitrescu), there was also the numerous group led by Dr. Traian Trifan, Traian Marian and Anghel Papacioc – the future monk Arsenie Papacioc – which included Valeriu Gafencu, Virgil Maxim, Vasile Jacotă, Marin Naidim, Nicu Mazăre, Iulică Bălan, Father Serghie, Ioan Ianolide and many others who had made progress in the spiritual life.
Through its structure, Sandu Ștefănescu combined the Christian life with the practical life. According to Emil Cioran, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu “was part of a movement in which the problems of salvation were wonderfully intertwined with the running of the country”, and Sandu Ștefănescu followed this line. He could not be anywhere else, only where he was. This was where he belonged. He understood his destiny and fitted in where he felt called. Anywhere else would not have felt right; it would not have been his place. He would not have answered the call; he would not have felt at home. He wouldn’t have been in keeping with the call he felt as a young man to be on the front line fighting for truth, justice and faith. He believed in goodness, freedom and great risks. It was the time of the great quests, 1945-1946, when the European world was divided in two: one with Christ, the other with Mammon.
One summer morning, in the work colony of Vereș Mort, we lived in the old mansion of Count Bethlen. In the courtyard there was a fountain with a chain and a tap. We gathered around it to wash ourselves, as there were no washing facilities. At one point one of the two militiamen guarding us came out of his bedroom. He took off his tunic and hung it on a tree near the well. He also went to the well to wash himself. Sandu Ștefănescu was already washing. It was full, full. The militiaman nudged Sandu with his elbow to make him feel better. The militiaman was drunk, he reeked of alcohol. Sandu fights back. The militiaman shouts an expletive at him. Sandu pretends not to know him. They both leave and, as they climb the stairs to enter the building, Sandu pushes him down the stairs. Noise, noise. The other militiaman (the boss) arrives. The investigation begins: “How do I know him and that he’s part of the security? He was wearing a shirt, no cap, no tunic. He was also drunk and cursing at me. He could have been a citizen of the commune who wasn’t even allowed to be among us. I only defended myself”.
So Sandu Ștefănescu reacted according to his structure. In the second part of his life, as a monk, Sandu would have responded with a spirit of forgiveness, leniency and tolerance. The second phase of his life began in 2001. After the death of his wife, Sandu moved briefly to Craiova, then to the Petru Vodă monastery, where he became a monk under the name of Monk Athanasius. Perhaps this was his destiny. He realised that even in the monastery he could be useful to people, to truth, to faith.
We note that the group of mystics to which Sandu Ștefănescu belonged had three exemplary destinies: Constantin Dumitrescu became the monk Marcu de la Sihăstria; Dr. Uță carried out an important medical work in the world of the concentration camps, saving the lives of the monks; he saved from death many souls, including that of the director of the factory in Aiud, Mareș; he was called to many births of the wives of the communists in Alba, who only wanted to be helped by Dr. Uță […]; and Sandu Ștefănescu became the monk Marcu de la Sihăstria. Uță […]; and Sandu Ștefănescu, their brother in suffering and fate, remains dedicated to monasticism in the Petru-Vodă Monastery, where, among other things, he had a laborious cultural activity, editing important works.
Sandu Ștefănescu fulfilled his destiny through his monastic vocation, thus continuing the good fight for the triumph of revealed truth. His spiritual programme, to which he had been committed since his youth, found its full expression in his role as a monk, a worker for the faith in Christ. Sandu Ștefănescu is reverently and eternally remembered by his comrades and friends in his native Oltenia.
(George Popescu Glogoveanu – Rost Magazine, Year VII, No. 79, 2009, pp. 25-26)