Delia: “My life has changed radically since the mysterious encounter, through the world of books, with the Saints of prisons”
When I read about the campaign “Confessors in Communist Prisons Bring People to Christ”, I was moved and I realised that I belong to a blessed group, namely the group of those who have been brought to Christ by prison martyrs. It is only now that I understand that there are many of us, that there is indeed a work in the spirit of those who have been sacrificed in prisons, that the witness they give to the world and to Christ touches souls in a special way.
Beyond the very strong emotional impact that reading testimonies of suffering during the communist persecution can have on anyone, I think there is something else: the silent work of the prison saints. Their prayers live in our souls.
My life is divided into two periods: before reading The Diary of Happiness by Nicolae Steinhardt and after reading this book. I can say with my hand on my heart that this book has changed my life. I started reading the book at a terrible time in my life. I was in deep despair. Feelings of powerlessness, meaninglessness and my own worthlessness were devastating my soul. I was 34 years old, I had a career, a house, no particular existential problems, and yet the despair gave me no peace. I later understood that all these terrible conditions were the consequences of living in sin, of fornication, of my estrangement from God. I remember reading The Diary of Happiness in despair, smoking cigarette after cigarette. With each page I read, I felt hope, optimism, confidence growing within me, I felt my thoughts being purified. Then I understood what suffering meant, what dignity meant, what friendship, honour, charity, sacrifice meant. I was ashamed of my so-called suffering, of my problems.
As I read, I felt closer and closer to God, I felt that I was His daughter and that He was waiting for me to come back, that my life was not lost, that I had so much to do, to give…
I live in Maramureș, not far from Rohia Monastery, where Nicolae Steinhardt became a monk. After reading the book, I immediately went to Rohia Monastery with the idea of getting to know the place where Father Nicolae spent the last years of his life and to make my confession, because it had been about 7-8 years since my last confession. I felt the need to talk to a priest, to confess the urgent things in my life, to put my life in order. In the church of Rohia Monastery, I told a monk that I wanted to go to confession. In a few minutes, none other than Father Serafim Man, the confessor of Father Nicolae Steinhardt, who at that time had secretly and at great risk been monk to the former political prisoner, approached me and led me to the confessional chair.
That confession changed my life forever. I was so moved by Father Seraphim’s gentle voice, his kindness, his forgiveness and the forgiveness he gave me that… I cannot put it into words. When I returned home, I remembered that I had not smoked during the days I had spent in the monastery. My first thought was to run down to the corner shop and buy some cigarettes. My second thought was that I would stain my days in Rohia if I smoked in the next few moments. I went to the shop anyway, but something stopped me, I felt that at that moment it was not good to do so, I turned back, stopped again in front of the block and thought again what to do, to take cigarettes or not. I fought a big battle, but the good thought won. I realised that if I smoked, I would be banishing the special state I had acquired in the monastery as a result of confession. I said to myself that today I would not smoke, tomorrow we will see[1]. Well, the next day I wanted to smoke even less, the third day it seemed as if I had never smoked, the gesture seemed so alien to me… I didn’t understand what was happening to me.
Smoking was the most obvious sign God gave me to understand the change in my life. Then I began to notice other changes in my attitude, in the way I reacted, in the way I said “no” to other temptations. Those who have never smoked will not understand why I have gone into this subject, only those who have been addicted to smoking know what a great struggle and what a great gift I received from God in those moments. In the monastery, a priest gave me the book Holy Prisoners. Shortly afterwards, a lady from Bucharest, whom I had met in Rohia Monastery, sent me the book Return to Christ by Ion Ianolide.
All this happened in 2008, when I think these two books were out of print. I also read them with great emotion and tears in my eyes. A series of other wonderful events followed. I met other Blessed Fathers, former political prisoners (Father Justin Pârvu and Monk Nifon) at the Petru Vodă Monastery, I read other memoirs and books with spiritual content that strengthened my soul. I travelled to faraway places I had never dared to dream of before, to Jerusalem, to Mount Sinai in 2008 and to Essex Monastery in England in 2010, especially as I have a modest income.
Many things have changed in my soul and life since then. I can’t list them all, especially as the most important changes are on the level of living, of understanding things, they concern my inner state. I can only say this: I was a man who tasted hell, first through sin and then through despair, and now I am a man at peace with myself and with God.
“You wouldn’t long for a corner of heaven if you didn’t carry a drop of hell in you,” said the martyred poet Radu Gyr. I confess that I was led to this state of mind by the spirit of Father Nicolae Steinhardt through his book The Diary of Happiness. This book sent me to Rohia, where I met the worthy Father Seraphim Man, who became my confessor and mentor for 5 years, until His Holiness’ departure into eternity. The state of well-being that developed in Rohia was sustained by the books of remembrance: The Saint of Prisons, The Life of Father Gheorghe Calciu, The Return to Christ and so on.
These books helped me to put my thoughts, my values, the priorities of my life in their natural order. My life has changed radically since my silent encounter, through the world of books, with the prison saints. I was never the same after these encounters…
(Delia Pop)
[1] In his Diary of Happiness, Fr. Nicolae Steinhardt summarises a teaching of Fr. Alexandru Rusu, a united bishop with whom he shared a cell in Gherla in 1962, a teaching that constitutes an excellent tactic of spiritual warfare for the faithful overcome by temptation: “His Eminence Alex. [R], United Bishop: One consequence of the invisible war we wage with demons is that the only person we can deceive is ourselves. In the war whose battleground is our inner self, any cunning is legitimate. Hence the notion of “fraus pia”, which has unjustly scandalised all Protestants. We can also deceive ourselves by promising the temptation that we will fulfil it next week, next month, by dragging it out with our feet, with our mouths, with our doormats (I’ll summarise, the high prelate didn’t use this word) from one day to the other, like the sick person who, in order to gain patience, sets himself deadlines until he can bear to stay in bed, or like the prisoner who, during the interrogation, also sets himself deadlines for resistance from one torture session to the next. Within ourselves, in the struggle against invisible evil spirits, we have the right to resort to what the French called “the cunning of the redskins”. […] The trickster’s tormentor, Aghiuță, Sarsailă, Belzebut, Michiduță, Scaraoțchi – the popular names of the demon prove it – we have the right to deceive him as it suits us best”. Fr. Nicolae Steinhardt, The Diary of Happiness, Polirom Publishing House, Iași, 2008, p. 556