“Carry your cross” – Ioan Ianolide’s greatest speech

In Aiud, in 1945, when Ioan Ianolide came to the cell where I was with Marin Naidim and told us, almost in tears, that he felt the need to be close to us, to share the same silent joys of the Saviour Christ – even though he had up to then been somewhat brave in the face of the challenges of the administration and had suffered the consequences – because we did not know how to proceed, I asked him to go to Valeriu and share with him the state and the desire of his soul.

John thought we were trying to get rid of him by not trusting him. But he opened up all his feelings, with all the fears of his conscience. Valeriu did not let him speak. He embraced him like a brother he had been waiting for at the door of his soul. With his love he lifted him up to the step of overcoming the excessive scrupulosity of his conscience, on which he was on the razor’s edge, undecided whether to break with a casual and imaginary form and style of life, to opt for a life lived in Christ, in obedience to His Word and His Church.

Ioan Ianolide clung on like a crusader climbing the hill of Calvary, sprinkled with his own blood. […]

After his liberation, Ioan Ianolide, seriously ill and cared for by his parents and his wife, worked constantly, carving medallions and small crosses in bone, which he shared with those around him. Elder Doncea, one of the legionaries from Bucharest who had been arrested and released several times over the years, attended his funeral. He told us that Ioan had left a bag of medallions and small crosses, carved until his eyesight failed him, with the wish that they should be given to those who would receive them. It was his greatest speech to our nation: “Carry your cross!”

(Virgil Maxim, Hymn for the Cross Carried. Abecedar duhovnicesc pentru un frate de croce, 2nd edition, Antim Publishing House, Bucharest, 2002, pp. 185, 375)