Father Constantin Sârbu – serving at Viișoara “like a Holy Father of the patristic century”

In May 1963, after 15 years of imprisonment, I was released from Aiud prison and taken directly to Viișoara, near the commune of Mărculești – Slobozia, a village of Banat exiles, with houses made of clay, with beautiful courtyards, fruitful trees and wide, well-maintained streets, although when it rained, the ground became soggy and the mud came up to my knees. There had been a pea field there, a huge field of Bărăgan.

The Banat people who had been arrested and abandoned in that field found themselves in the open air, without any shelter, with children, old people, sick people and without any chance of survival. They were guarded by soldiers to prevent them from disappearing into the nearby forest. It was an unimaginable situation, with no roof, no toilets, nothing but what they could take from their homes when the Securitate vehicles picked them up and took them to the Bărăgan.

They dug huts in the ground, with nothing to cover them. They covered them with sacks, sheets, whatever they had, and secured the corners with stones. It rained heavily, the pits filled with water and some old people and even children drowned. Then they were allowed to go into the woods, gather branches for the fire and even cut wood to cover their borders. They were forced to go to a state farm to work on irrigation canals, vineyards, building stables, etc., which was a great blessing because the chief engineer gave them a cartload of rice straw in exchange for their work to better cover their borders.

The following year, they began to build their houses out of earth, covering them with rice straw, which glistened in the sunlight, and so a village of exiles was born, with a rustic and traditional air, reminiscent of the Romanian villages around the barbarian invasions. When I was released from prison in 1963, some of the people from Banat had already been allowed to return to their villages, and their houses in Viișoara were deserted.

I arrived there late at night. The gendarme asked me if I knew anyone, a friend, with whom I could sleep for a few nights until I had cleaned the house he was giving me. I didn’t know anyone.  The militia man took me to the village priest, Constantin Sârbu. Not because he knew me or because I knew him, but because, as I understood at the time, he welcomed everyone.

He had a small mud house with a tent and a room. The walls were covered with icons, and when he opened the door to receive me, the air smelled of incense. I understood that he had prayed that this house was inhabited by angels. He gave me something to eat and after a short prayer I went to bed. I stayed with Father for a few days until I was assigned a house.

Many had been abandoned after the exiles left. As if by a sadness of nature, soon after the occupant of the house left, the walls would peel back, grass would grow on the path leading from the street to the door of the house, and the whole dwelling would breathe an overwhelming loneliness. Even if you didn’t know anything, you could tell it was an abandoned house.

This is what my house looked like when, after a few days of living with Father, my wounds began to heal. Strangely, he did not preach to me, did not urge me to pray, did not show himself to be a bigot in any way, but my heart was in celebration with him. Father went with me to see the house and noticed the sadness that came over me when I saw the sadness of the house. He put his hand on my shoulder and suddenly I felt stronger.

– Don’t worry, he said, the house will brighten up as soon as you move in!

It seemed to me that he had used a figure of speech, a personification or a metaphor, and I looked at him with a smile, as if to show him that I appreciated his poetic observation. But Father didn’t smile. He had a bright face, he was looking right through me, and this feeling made me feel neither lonely nor sad.

Father Sârbu said a prayer of blessing, told me what I needed, where to find a broom and things to wrap myself in, because I had absolutely nothing but what I was wearing and a torn blanket. The people in the village helped me. I think they would have helped me even without Father’s presence, but then I felt that his protection earned me more sympathy from them.

Some worked with me to knead the clay that would be used to rebuild the house where the clay and lime had fallen. Others brought me a bed from someone who had recently left. A neighbour gave me straw, over which I put a donated bedpost so I wouldn’t have to sleep on the floor.

One day I had everything I needed in the house: a bed, a bucket of water, a mug, a plate, a spoon, a fork, a gas lamp and an icon from Father Constantine. I hadn’t been this rich and free for 15 years!

Food came to me from houses where there were families. The next day they took me to the state farm to work, to get the straw with which I would repair my roof. I felt like the master of the house, of myself, of everything in my house. And everything was blessed by Father Constantin: nothing was cursed like in prison, not the bed, not the spoon, not the bucket of water.

God’s blessing was on everything, coming down through the sign of the cross made by Father Sârbu’s hand.

– “Come to church on Sunday,” Father said to me as he said goodbye. There was no need to invite me. A real church, with icons, with the smell of incense, with a priest in vestments who served freely and not in silence and fear, like the services in prison, was all my soul wanted!

I had seen the church. It was a mud building, like any other house in the village, but with a small tower and a bell. On Sunday mornings the thin voice of the bell rang out over the village. It was May, the trees were in blossom, the air was crisp and clean, and the bell rang cheerfully, reaching the ears freely, without mastery, through the latticework of the cell and the wooden shutters. Now it was a free bell, a free sound and a free ear to receive it.

The interior of the church was poor and very austere, almost a catacomb church. A golden light streamed in through the window from the south, and Father served illuminated by this aura. He moved slowly, hieratically (solemnly), his voice small and commanding, like a holy father of the patristic century. I sat in the pew next to the reader and the other faithful who were singing. I had sung in the village church choir when I was a schoolboy.

At the end Father spoke. There was a certain caution in what he said, we knew that our every move was being recorded by the local police, that we were being watched every step of the way, but his warm voice penetrated the hearts. He spoke with such an inner love and conviction that, without meaning to, you felt caught up in a kind of spiritual flight and love for everything.

Every time you left the church, you left with a greater love for your fellow man, with a feeling of solidarity with your neighbour, and with a blessing that accompanied you throughout the week, even if you didn’t have time to meet Father Constantin because of the hard work on the farm, or he didn’t come to meet you during the week because of his care for everyone. In this way, our days of exile in the village of Viișoara took on a purifying meaning, a justification against the absurdity in which we had lived for almost 20 years.

Shortly after my arrival, the deportations from the village began. First the people from Banat, who had been taken there for no other reason than the fact that they were close to the border with Yugoslavia and could be suspected of having links with the Serbian Titoists, then the people released from prison started to leave, without any criteria; not according to the time of their release, not according to their supposed importance, as if Securitate was working chaotically.

Soon Father Sârbu left too. Then, after the general amnesty decree, they left en masse. I left with the last group in August. I went to Dobrogea, to my village. There was no way to live there. Dobrogea was completely collectivised and there was no place for me anywhere. I went to Bucharest to try to return to medicine. It was not possible. I kept asking about Father Sârbu, but nobody knew anything. I went back to the church in Popa Tatu, the church I went to during my first years of study.

It must have been a few years after the liberation when, on Schitul Măgureanu Boulevard, I saw Father Sârbu walking slowly up the street. I was coming up behind him and I recognised him by his gentle gait, by certain unforgettable movements. I caught up with him and kissed his hand with joy. In a way, he was the one who had brought me back to my feet spiritually after my release from prison, when I was thrown disoriented into a world I had longed for, but which now seemed strange and grim.

With his comforting bonhomie (gentleness and simplicity) he spoke to me as if we had parted yesterday, and everything I told him about myself he received as if he knew it or it was in the normal order of things. I understood that he had almost completely detached himself from the worries of the world, that he was devoted only to his priestly mission and that everything in this world was in the order of the banal. He called me to the Church of Sapiența.

– You will meet there many of those with whom you have suffered, he told me. I promised him, but to my shame it was several months before I was able to visit him. It must have been exam time, I don’t remember. Anyway, I ended up at the Church of SApienția, which I had only heard about. I found a full church, mostly old people, ex-prisoners, people I didn’t know, but also quite a lot of young people. It was not a formal atmosphere like other churches, but there was a peace and a prayerful concern in the air that was less common than elsewhere.

I understood that this was Father Sârbu’s spiritual action, which he imposed, not by imperious words, nor by frequent reprimands, but by his gentle and warm way of being, by the breath of faith and love that radiated from his whole being. The faithful received me without ostentation, without suspicion, without knowing who I was. Father’s spiritual hospitality was transmitted to everyone. There was a kind of unheard spiritual buzz, a fervour that only the soul could catch, a concern for salvation and for the administration of the place, in each and every one of the faithful.

At the anointing, Father spoke to me with warmth, without surprise or reproach, as if he had told me to come to church on Saturday and I came on Sunday. He had the gift of breaking up time and removing the embarrassment of the person he was talking to, placing everything on the level of real communication and an understanding that only needed to be explained. We went to Sapienței from time to time, every few months, in total silence. The church looked more and more beautiful, the courtyard and the surrounding buildings looked as if a hand and a housekeeper were taking care of them. Then we stopped.

I had graduated from college, was a teacher in a remote area, and had almost stopped coming to the Church of Sapiența. I had heard that Father was going to be furry, but I didn’t pay any attention, as if nothing could happen to him. Then I heard that Father had died. I think Father Voicescu told me. I just went to the vigil. I saw the faithful praying, many crying as if for a family member, their faces pale and worried, like orphaned children who don’t know what will happen to them. For me, a spiritual father was dying, a priest who, with his gentleness and love, had marked the beginning of my life as a free man, a kind of angel who, with patience and perseverance, had always been close to my heart, unknown to me, and of whom I had just learned when he was no longer with us.

I couldn’t go to my father’s funeral; I had a lesson at school. From then until now, I have sometimes thought of Father, especially after I went to prison for the second time and needed the help of those whom I had loved, who had helped me, and whom I could now call on for help. Many times, when I saw in my mind all those people who could strengthen me in my suffering, I would meet Father Constantin Sârbu, with his constant smile, with a certain shyness, I would see the light that shone in his face, sometimes I would talk to him, as I used to talk to my mother and father who had died long ago – and I felt strengthened.

Then events overtook me, my distance from the country reversed the course of my life, but I still had a few moral pillars and points of reference, and among them Father Sârbu was not lacking.

I write these lines with compassion, love and peace. I am of an age where the way to the other side is always open and the years, the experience, the familiarity with the death of so many around me make me look at the world of Father Constantin Sârbu with a fearless eye and a natural faith. There we will meet and, freed from human conditions, we will be able to be together without restraint. And I know that his kindness, his warm heart will be a welcome to me, as it was then in Viișoara.

(Pr. Gheorghe Calciu Dumitreasa – Tears and Grace. The Martyred Priest Constantin Sârbu, Bonifaciu Publishing House, Bacău, 2010, pp. 145-151; The same account of Father Calciu about Father Constantin Sârbu, but this time in the form of a dialogue, was also published in “The Life of Father Gheorghe Calciu according to his own and others’ testimonies”, Christiana Publishing House, Bucharest, 2007, pp. 74-76).