Father Constantin Galeriu, The Preacher of fire

When he preached, he often opened his hands. He would open them wide, as if he wanted to embrace the whole sky with them, and with him, the people in the church. In his golden robe, he looked like an eagle ready to soar. That’s how he was remembered. As a great preacher. So great that he seemed to be the only one in the grey atmosphere of Bucharest at the end of the century and the millennium.

When you went to church to listen to him, his voice held you in place. It was deep, wide, sweeping, with depths beyond belief. You could take refuge in its sounds. You could make it your prayer. It had the openness of organ notes and the power of thunder before a storm. During the sermons, this voice, majestic and heavy, would rise from the altar, hover above everyone’s heads, and then come storming out the church doors, straight into the alley, disappearing among the old houses of St Sylvester’s Street. Here it soothed the old people who paused to listen to it, it kept the grumbling preachers on their way to the market, it intoxicated the students who came to drink it like an elixir of eternal youth, and it even delighted the gipsies of the Bucharest slums, happy that the priest’s sermons could protect them from curses. Everyone knew something about it.

Father Galeriu was sometimes the erudite university professor, sometimes the holy priest full of grace, sometimes just the good old man who took off his shoes and went home barefoot to help some poor person. And there was something else. Father Galeriu was never alone. He was always accompanied. I’m not talking about people, but about a silent, enveloping and warm radiance that emanated from his black, plain forehead, from his deep-set eyes darkened by bushy eyebrows, from his short, gnarled Moldavian peasant’s body, from his patriarchal beard, from his broad gestures, from everything and nothing. This discreet presence, more than his astonishing theological knowledge, more than his sharp mind, which was able to answer on the spot the most tortuous problem of life, this presence was the secret of his life. It was what the millions of people who collapsed tiredly under his epitaph were looking for, only to be resurrected in a few moments, to rediscover themselves more different, more different. For the Father had a great, immeasurable gift. That of finding in every one of our concerns, however small, a goal, in every icon a prayer, and in every person a child of God. Once you were in his presence, you were saved, you were finally won for God.

Childhood in the tent of heaven

It’s a winter’s evening, as it still is in our villages. With sleepy footsteps, with sleet up to your shoulders, with the night fast approaching and not letting go, with a fire in the stove and stories. Especially stories. At first the mother tells the children what she has read in Ion Creangă, and at the end, when the eyelids are heavier than the snow outside, she tries to decipher the stories and the fairy tales: fairies and villains, fairy tales and halos pass before the wide-open eyes of the children. From time to time a dwarf, or perhaps a fairy, ventures into the bedroom through the small window and tells the children about the land beyond. They listen in awe until their eyelids drop over their beautiful eyes and they are lost in a dream.

That’s how Father Galeriu grew up. Years later, in his old age, he would tell them how his mother used to sleep with them on winter nights and lead them into the world of stories, and how sometimes pilgrim monks from the monasteries of the Nethers would come to the house and tell them of the wonderful, miraculous exploits of the old monks. It must have been that these two worlds, the fantastic and the sacred, were ingrained in his childhood mind. The ability to reveal deep and mysterious truths was baked softly in the fires of winter nights and under the magical shadow of the pilgrim monks, and later bore fruit in sermons that astonished both simple folk and scholars alike. Father himself said, “I have also inherited some skill and wit from my mother”. Steeped in the faith and tradition of his people, his soul was made of the same stuff as that of his ancestors – simple and unpretentious, firm and humble, endowed with deep wisdom, able to explain the great things of the world.

It was during these years that little Constantine came to know God. The Lord of the “dear and good”, who comes to the Moldavian villages to sing carols with Santa Claus, to laugh at children’s mischief, to pity the poor and to throw punishments against unmerciful landlords. This icon of divinity will have filled his soul and guided his first prayers. When the time came for him to go to secondary school, little Constantine wanted to go to the seminary. He wanted to become a priest. It’s hard now to fathom the subtlety of the thought that led him, as a small child, along this difficult path. But we do know that a fire was burning in his heart. Father Galerius said that God had been warming his “gracious offspring” since those years. Time will prove that the flame kindled in childhood became a bonfire in adulthood.

The School

Father was always concerned with every aspect of human knowledge. His keen mind searched far beyond the boundaries of theology, seeking answers and finding questions. For him, the sciences, especially the exact sciences, were windows on creation, open to the infinite mysteries of God. This unique openness, so rare among priests today, was built up during his years in the seminary. Endowed with a special intelligence (he was always a scholar), young Constantine immersed himself in his studies. He remembers that in those days, theological subjects weren’t the only ones taught. “It was an old tradition in the village that the priest should know everything, measure the earth and talk to the man about the cycle of the heavens. So the young seminarians learned not only the New and Old Testaments, the customs and music necessary for future priests, but also astronomy, agronomy, logic and psychology. Beyond these concerns, Constantine’s search for God was fundamental. The spiritual giant of his adult years came to life during his seminary years. For him, knowledge was not confined to thought, not frozen in a series of cold reasoning. Rather, it was an inner vision, the sharing of grace. “The gifts of God,” he said, quoting St. Gregory Palamas, “are spiritual eyes through which one can see the whole universe”. And these eyes were opened to him at an early age.

In college, he had some providential encounters that crystallised his seminary experience. He studied with the martyred Metropolitan Irineu Mihălcescu (removed from his seat and then killed by the Communists), with Theodor M. Popescu (imprisoned and then killed by the same regime) or with Nichifor Crainic (also a political prisoner, with whom he would write his thesis). A theologian and poet, a member of the Romanian Academy, Crainic was to be Constantine’s teacher par excellence. The young man was contaminated by his mentor’s verve and oratorical talent, by his concern for asceticism and mysticism, by the poetic way in which he poured out his theological concepts.

Last but not least, Crainic was a confessor who did not fear the communist regime. He loved the young Galeriu and even offered him a scholarship to Germany when he finished his studies. Unfortunately, he was unable to take advantage of it because Romania was in the middle of a war and he had to join the army. He was a “răzeș” (a Romanian by birth) and he understood that he had to serve his country as his ancestors had done. He did his military service and when he finished his studies, he thought of leaving the life of a bridegroom and entering a monastery. His love for the Holy Fathers and the luminous image of the German monks that had marked his childhood must have contributed to this choice. But the Providence had led him in another direction. His father, a very pious man who had taken it upon himself to give charity to the poor of the village, did not agree. He told him briefly and harshly: “No, boy! You will not enter the monastery! You will marry and have children to carry on the name of Galeriu”. Constantine loved his father dearly, so he obeyed.

During his studies, he used to preach in the church of Zlătari, where Father Toma Chiricuță served. Through him, he met a shy girl who had been orphaned at the age of nine. “At our first meeting,” the priest’s wife later recalled, “he asked me three questions: if I liked life in the country, which I answered in the affirmative; if I wanted to be a priestess, which I said I thought was hard but beautiful; and only at the end did he ask me if I liked him. I was ashamed and didn’t say anything, but I liked him from the first moment. He was a beautiful man. He had bright, sparkling eyes and a voice that drew you in. You wanted to sit next to him and listen to him. And you felt that he had love in him, a love that he worked and that then attracted thousands of people”. Within a week of that meeting, the two were married.

His service and persecution

The village of Podul Văleni was a small hamlet in the 1940s, scraped into the hills of Prato. At its foot, the Ialomița flowed lazily, then widened out in the plain. From time to time, these waters, usually marshy and quiet, would be driven by the sudden mountain rains and swallow up everything. To escape its ravages, the villagers had built their houses on the hillsides. The new father moved into one of them, a modest little house with earth on the floor. He had come from Bucharest with his young wife to do missionary work. Driven by an inner fire, he hoped to bring people to Christ. “For him, the Church always came before the family. He stayed too little at home, too little with me and the children. He was totally absorbed in his ministry.”

The sanctuary he was entrusted with was old and dilapidated: the Ialomița had fallen on it several times, and the walls were cracked by the water. Father Galeriu repaired it and began to minister. His sermons attracted not only the inhabitants of Podul Văleni, but also those of the surrounding villages. One particular incident had spread his fame as a powerful prayer leader. One night, a farmer had his horses stolen. This was a tragedy for the people of that time. Without horses, you couldn’t work the fields or feed your family. In desperation, the man ran to the young priest. Father Galeriu listened to him, then said quietly, “Go home, pray and be at peace, for the horses will come home”. And so it did. The next day the horses were quiet in the pasture. The deed did not go unnoticed, and soon more and more people began to come to the little church in Podul Văleni. The love of service that had animated the priest began to bear fruit. The hierarchs saw the zeal with which he worked and thought of taking him to Ploiești, to a larger parish. Father entered the big city as the Romanian Orthodox Church entered a new era. The icy blast of communism was reaching the altars. By order of the authorities, the faithful were no longer allowed to remain in churches after two in the afternoon. But Father Galeriu was a free man, dedicated only to the love of Christ. Undoubtedly he had in mind the figures of his college teachers, many of whom were imprisoned, but who were undaunted by the hammer and sickle. So he ignored the ban.

In St. Basil’s Church, where he was pastor, Sunday afternoons were meetings of the Lord’s host. Father was their soul. He preached, he confessed, he ministered. He was a spiritual bulb that the authorities tried to suppress. They were frightened by the vigour of the new priest and above all by the love with which he was surrounded by the crowds of faithful who flocked to St Basil’s from all over the city. “The Church was very humiliated at that time and we, its Orthodox clergy, were not given the freedom to give religious catechesis. All the other sects had this privilege, laid down in their own statutes, according to their individual beliefs, while we had to concentrate them all only in the morning service of Holy Liturgy. And you had no time… After Holy Liturgy it was either a service for the dead, a baptism or a wedding, so we were practically deprived of the possibility of giving this religious education. But I, in defiance of the authorities, gave this catechesis on Sunday afternoons, when many people came. And then, in 1952, on the 15th of August, I was picked up and, after two months in prison, I was taken to the Canal, to the Black Valley”.

A parcel of food

It’s early in the morning. The Argentinean priestess wakes up to look after her four children. Father Galeriu was arrested a few days ago. She is frightened and sad because she has no source of income. She would get a job, but it’s hard to believe that she will find work with her husband in prison for political reasons. She opens the door to the rented house and is surprised to see a parcel in front of her. It’s just the right size, tied up with string and sitting neatly on the doorstep. The priestess takes it inside and opens it carefully. Could this be another security trick? No. Inside is a loaf of bread and some food. From that day until the priest’s return from prison, this parcel was left outside the door every morning. Undaunted, through rain and frost, someone would pass by and help the family in need.

“For more than a year I didn’t know who it was. I tried to catch the anonymous person who sacrificed himself for us, but I couldn’t. He would bring the package and then hide. Until one morning when I saw a bicycle leaning against the fence. I assumed it was his and waited for him to come and get it. Then I asked him why he was doing this. He tearfully told me that since Father’s arrest he had made a promise to God to bring us a loaf of bread and something to eat every morning. And he kept his word. Every day”.

When the faithful heard that Father was in prison, they sprang into action. Baskets of eggs, sacks of wheat and corn, carts of potatoes and tubs of cheese poured into the orphaned family. What an outpouring of kindness! The love that Father had given so generously was now returned in full. “Not only did I lack nothing, but I received so much that I ended up giving alms myself to other families whose men were in prison”.

Far from all this, Father was working in the Black Valley camp, a forced labour colony whose sole purpose was to crush the bodies and souls of those who did not consent to the march towards Communism’s “golden” future. He was not the only priest imprisoned.

For all those who questioned it, the multilaterally developed society had prepared an anonymous grave. The labour standard for a prisoner was enormous. He had to dig as long as two strong men in a day. And that with boiled water called soup and a corner of bread. If you didn’t do your time, you didn’t get any food. Death is certain!

Father Galeriu wasn’t discouraged. He was in God’s hands. He celebrated the Holy Liturgy in his mind. With every blow of the hoe he also said: “God have mercy”. And the grace worked. He was able to dig his daily quota in half a day, and in the remaining time he helped others. He loved the other prisoners like his own children. He never thought he would end up among people of such deep faith. In a way, the labour camp was the monastery he had dreamed of since childhood. Those who knew him say that he kept nothing to himself. If a prisoner was barefoot, he gave him his shoes; if he was shivering with cold, he offered him his own coat. But out of love for others, Father did not remain barefoot or naked for long. His love circulated like a fluid, moving hearts, raising hopes, giving joy. It left his heart, went around the camp and returned to him in a state of repentance, full of the sweat and sorrow he had sublimated into light. When the authorities locked him up, they didn’t realise that Father was much more dangerous in the camp than in freedom.

When love builds a house

“It was the feast of Saint Dumitru. We had gone to a small church, leaving the children at home. When I came back, they were in the kitchen, looking at a stranger in shabby clothes. He was skinny as a rake and had a big, scraggly beard. I thought he was a beggar. It was only when he turned to me that I saw his burning eyes. His eyes hadn’t changed at all, but the children didn’t recognise him… He was all skin and bones, dressed worse than a beggar. And he was sick too, he had hepatitis”.

The priestess stifled a sigh. Her eyes filled with tears and a silence fell between us. There must have been thousands of tragedies like Father’s in those years, but in his family the suffering was sweetened by the love of Christ. When the faithful heard that Father had been released, they poured into the church. They were so happy that he had escaped with his life that they decided to build him a house. They put their shoulders to the wheel and built it in a few months. They built it right in the cemetery, so that he would be protected by the cross and the altar. Father continued his ministry as if nothing had happened. He wasn’t afraid. He was inwardly moving towards one goal – to preach the Gospel to the people. “The word is this divine and human way of communicating, of sharing our inner mystery. It is in this spirit that I too have shared the Word, the Creator of the Word”.

The years passed in the church of St. Basil in Ploiești, and Father’s sermons found their way through the grey fog that Communism had cast over the country. In a world enslaved and humiliated, he was free and undaunted. Year after year, Father GAleriu gave grace and love to his creation. He was always moved by concern for the needy. “One day a beggar came to our door. He wanted a loaf of bread and we only had a corner left, so we refused him. After a few days my father found out and was very upset. He collected all the food in the house and gave it away, telling us: “Now you’ll see what it’s like to be suffering and have nothing to eat”.

Gradually his voice spread from the Prahovian town to the capital. He became a doctor of theology, then a spiritual director of future priests, and finally a university professor. In 1975, he moved from his parish in Ploiești to the one in St. Sylvester Street, the church with which his name would be permanently associated. It was here that some of the encounters took place that would bring some of the great personalities of Romanian culture of the 20th century to the church, or root them there. For them, in those years, Father Galeriu was a breath of fresh air in the landscape of a Church that seemed to be on its knees. He was the theologian who was in touch with contemporary theology and science as well as with the teaching of the Holy Fathers. His figure, as a confessor with a monastic aura and as a learned scholar, was to win to Christ souls who could not have been captured by any other “net” of the Spirit.

“We will die and be free!”

We often heard him speak of this cry of a bloody December. He was fascinated by this spontaneous and hot outburst of faith, which showed the fire that burned in a people oppressed by the atheism of politicians. He saw the young people who died in December 1989 as martyrs. Their death, the death they had chosen to be free, was like that of the Saviour, without stain, bearing in its womb a resurrection. At dawn on 22 December, the father set off for the University square. His grandson Cristian accompanied him. He didn’t want to protest, he hadn’t done that in his whole life. It was his love of prayer for the souls of those killed that drove him there. Bloodstains glowed on the black asphalt, evidence of a night that had ended in sacrifice. “Grandfather was distraught. He knelt down and prayed at each place where revolutionaries had been killed. He prayed with tears. Each time he cried for their souls. When he returned home, he told his grandfather, “We owe it to these people. We owe it to them to sacrifice ourselves more.”

Father had expected this change. The years in which he preached under the threat of the Securitate, the years in which he gave catechesis in Ploiești or Bucharest, were a form of peaceful rebellion, the only kind of rebellion that a servant of the Crucified could agree to. And the bloodless revolt bore fruit. That voice, majestic and gentle, which both thrilled and comforted you, which had resounded in the church and on the canal, could now pour out freely.

Father Galeriu became omnipresent. He lectured in theology at three faculties, was invited to symposiums of scholars and researchers in various fields, gave interviews on radio, television and in newspapers, and, at the same time, conscientiously attended to his ministry in the parish of Saint Sylvester. A close disciple who helped him at the altar every Sunday told me that one day he proposed a little experiment. He thought he’d only sit down only when Fr. Galeriu would. He was no longer young, he had turned 71 in November 1989, and the disciple was not yet 40. Liturgy began at 8 o’clock, and the hours passed slowly. The Liturgy ended and the priest preached. A long one. A wedding followed, then a baptism. It had been more than 6 hours since Father Galeriu had prayed standing up. He was tireless. Then the disciple sat down, broken, but Avva continued. Another baptism, then a few more weddings, and as the sun set, after nine hours of crushing the body and burning the spirit, he sat down.

So he lived to the end, for more than a decade. He spared nothing, allowed himself no rest. “When I went to bed, I could see the light on in his room. I’d go in and tell him to rest. He’d tell me that he couldn’t, that he had to read, because people were expecting a word from him, a word for today, and he always emphasised ‘today’. I would tell him that he was already an encyclopaedia and he would smile and reply that it wasn’t enough. I’d tell him that one day he’d give his soul away because of all the trouble, and people would just say “God rest his soul”! He would look at me and say, “If they say it from the heart, it will be enough for me,” his wife said.

The only moments of respite for Father Galeriu were between conferences or Services. Then, in the car or on the train, he could have paused from his daily routine, but even there he would take with him a young man seeking the Lord or an intellectual troubled by a fundamental question. He dispersed fearlessly and without mercy. Cristian Galeriu remembers that he was often “completely exhausted before entering a conference. He was so exhausted that I could see him looking at us with great difficulty when we spoke to him. But when he began to speak, something almost miraculous would happen to him. Suddenly he would perk up, often stand up and talk as if it was morning after a good night’s sleep. At the end, whether it was cold or hot in the hall, his shirt was always wet. Always. When I asked him how he felt, he would tell me that he only really rested when he was talking”. In the last years of his life, such incidents, which were a tremendous outpouring of grace and a sign of holiness, multiplied.

The roar of the Spirit

One day, on his way back from the city, he met a poor man. He blessed him with love and gave him a few pennies, as he did with every beggar. But our man was barefoot, and the money he received would not have been enough for a pair of shoes. So Father Galeriu took off his shoes in the street and put them on the beggar. Then he returned home in his socks, as happy as if he had walked all his life with nothing on his feet.

“He always did that. He was very merciful. In the last years of my life, I used to go to see the children. They lived in Ploiești and my visits would last a few days. Many times, when I came back, I couldn’t find the quilt or the blankets. I would ask my father what had happened and he would say that poor people had come to him and he thought we had everything we needed and they didn’t. So he gave them everything on the bed…”.

I also met him in his last years. He was already full of grace, with a power of prayer that is only found in the best trained monks. Many of the faithful testified that they felt his blessing on their heads for days. Something happened to the flesh that his gnarled fingers touched, the gnarled fingers of a hard-working, hardened roaster. I’ve been there myself. The night before we had had a heated argument about a theological issue. I was young and unruly. The next day, when the priest blessed everyone in the church from the altar door, I didn’t want to go to him. My heart felt trapped as if in a steel claw, trapped in anger and shame. At the urging of a friend, I went anyway. Hard and angry. As he blessed me, it happened. A hot nail was driven into a mind that would not forgive. Then a deep and good peace spread in my heart and overwhelmed my soul. I had received an undeserved forgiveness, I had washed myself of a malice that I did not want to cast off. I understood that the Father had done both repentance and forgiveness for me, as for the Lord, for all of us. He was truly His servant, a full priest, both offering and offerer.

His end was sudden and unexpected. We had all wrapped him up on the altar of St Sylvester’s Church. He was ours forever. I don’t think anyone imagined that he would ever die. What has death got to do with Father Galeriu? We’re all going to die, sinners, stinking of flesh-eating diseases, but him? He should stay there at the altar forever, serving and talking to us. Especially talking.

And yet, finally and completely unexpectedly, he died. A stroke brought him down. He recovered with difficulty. From the Shrine, his voice sounded like never before, soft, calm, as if from the other side of the world. He lived like this for almost a year. Then he fell ill again. It was in 2003, during the fast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, whom he loved so much. At that time he had a dream. He was in a beautiful garden and there he met the Blessed Virgin. She told him only this: “You are welcome! The news that he was expected in the kingdoms of light made him happy and strengthened him. One morning he awoke more alive than usual. He looked at his wife and said, “What a radiant face you have!” These were his last words to her. He then fell into a coma and died two days later, on 10 August. His funeral was attended by thousands of people, from presidents to humble gipsies who came to ask for his blessing. Before he was laid in his grave, although it was clear, the sun was surrounded by an eerie rainbow-like circle, heralding the departure from this world of a giant of the spirit. Since then, the disciples say, the flowers on his tomb have never withered, despite the drought.

“When Father Galerius speaks, he connects you with God. Compared to him, other priests don’t preach, they spell… I was once with some young people, I don’t know what I was talking about, and one of them jumped up and said to me admiringly: Mr. Țuțea, you speak as if you were Father Galeriu! I, who tend to think of myself as a genius, was ready to get angry… Then, on second thought, I felt honoured!” (Petre Țuțea)

“After listening to Father’s first sermon, I went to the other Sundays like the thirsty to the spring. There are chosen beings who leave their mark on those they meet. Father Galeriu left his mark on me. Forever”. (Mihai Șora)

“Besides being a priest and a teacher, Father Galeriu was a man of rare and chosen humanity. He was a man among men. Generous to the point of self-sacrifice, selfless to the point of forgiving and loving his enemies, patient to the point of forgetting himself, wise and balanced in everything, Father Galeriu was and remained a true “father” and “confessor”, carving in the souls of his students and parishioners true Christian characters… We do not know if such a man and priest as Father Galeriu will be born soon or if he will be repeated, because in his person God placed gifts and virtues that he cultivated with care and perseverance. He was a symbol of the Romanian Orthodox Church”. (Virgil Cândea)

(Cristian Curte – Formula AS Magazine, Year 2012, Number 1040)