Father Dimitrie – a dragon with a heart of gold
I think the first time I saw Father Dimitrie Balaur was just a glimpse of him, on the occasion of a baptism to which I had been invited, in the church of St. Nicholas – Buzești. I don’t remember exactly what year it was, probably before ’89.
It was easy to notice. He emanated spirituality. The other priest at St Nicholas’s was barely accepting him rather than giving him at least an equal role in leading the service. I thought they were taking turns to serve, on a weekly basis, equally, as is done in many places, but I was to find out that this was always the case, that he was always given second place, with less intervention in the service. But in the end things changed, he was the one who was surrounded warmly and joyfully by crowds of faithful with all kinds of requests.
I met Father Dimitrie again towards the end of 1993, when he was 90 years old. I was looking for real confessors and spiritual conversations for [the magazine] Alpha and Omega (o, tempora!). Although I didn’t know him very well, it was clear that he was a worthy priest who was good to talk to. In the meantime, there had been a devastating fire in the church of St. Nicholas, the consequences and interpretations of which saddened him once again. So I was to find him in the Bulgarian church where he was now serving, enjoying the love and hospitality of the Bulgarian priest, an open and sensitive young man who gave him the honour he deserved.
I don’t remember exactly how our connection came about. I explained what it was all about, got his phone number and asked for a meeting to talk. He agreed and I arranged to meet him at his home in the parish house of the “Cașin Monastery” church, where he had lived for over 45 years. Father Dimitrie had served in this church for a number of years before his arrest. (Like many others, I thought for a long time that there had once been a monastery there called Cașin, which had given its name to the present church. Later I learned that in Moldavia, in the county of Bacău, there is a place called Cașin Monastery. It had given its name to the street where the church stood, which in turn was named after the street where it stood. When I was a child, I had once heard, as if in a dream, of “the weapons found in Cașin Monastery”. Now I was going to hear the true story from the source). I had agreed with Father that I would phone him to let him know the approximate time of my arrival, as the doorbell didn’t work and he couldn’t hear very well. In addition, the people downstairs left a huge dog outside the door (or so it seemed to me), which took up the whole corridor and whose intentions you never knew. Another dog, quite aggressive, could sometimes be found running loose in the yard. The whole thing seemed like a series of attempts to discourage you from wanting to go to my father’s cell. To receive anyone was a serious effort. He lived in the attic, which was roughly equivalent to the third floor of an ordinary house. He had to go downstairs to open and close the front door, both when he received guests and when he entertained them. I would later learn that he had also provided a system for transmitting the key to those close to him by means of a small basket tied to a string, a system that I would later see widely used in the old quarters of many Italian towns. The staircase was narrow and difficult to climb even for a young man, let alone an old man of over 90 years old. Now it sometimes happens that Father does this several times a day.
The first time I went there, he came down to wait for me just before I arrived. When you enter a man’s house, the layout of the rooms is the first thing you learn about him. Father lived about half his life in the two small rooms he had been given in the attic. There were bookshelves everywhere, crammed with the books and magazines he had collected throughout his life. They were also piled up on the stairs, and most of them had found shelter in the attic, which was an extension of the house. Many of these publications were in Russian. The furniture was simple and old-fashioned, like that found in many materially modest priests’ houses in the interwar period. Because of the smallness of the room, everything seemed to overflow. The table, guarded by a cross, showed that Father still had a lot of work to do. On the table were piles of Holy Mass books, missionary works, prayer cards, letters…
Somewhere, neatly folded, was the epitrachelion, ready to respond to any request. He often wore a large cross around his neck, like those worn by priests in Slavic churches. In various places, several large bottles of holy water, some very old, well sealed, with labels indicating the year of origin. Icons on the walls, burning candles, old family photographs. It was easy to detect a certain self-imposed austerity in the conditions of daily life.
Father welcomed me with incredible warmth for the first meeting.
He was very excited. Excited out of love. When I read his daughter’s memoirs, I found it strange that he was described as a tall man. On the contrary, when I met him, I found him to be rather small in stature, with a stocky build and wispy hair. He was very animated in his gestures and looks. This made contact and communication easier. He seemed to have stepped out of a story. He enjoyed himself like a child. His joy and happiness were contagious. For the first time he treated me as if he had known me for years.
The Mother Priestess, as if she were one with the Father, was a discreet presence but felt in my midst. I think she brought me a cake and a glass of wine. Father Dimitrie was obviously very proud of his priestess, and it was clear that he loved her very much. She was an extension of him, supporting him in everything, though often worried about the efforts he was so willing to make, fearing they would break him.
Then we went to work. I asked Father to begin by telling the story of his childhood. He turned out to be a natural storyteller, although he paused now and then to apologise for not doing it as well as he should. The story flowed so quickly, so compellingly, that when I published it I felt the need to drop the few questions I had asked and leave the text as it was.
Everything seemed miraculous in that old world of the Bessarabian village where Father came from. His Bessarabia was truly fabulous, the land of a world and an ancient and beautiful faith embodied in everyday life. (What could be the connection between the unionist-patriotic attitude of the Basarabians in the first half of the last century and that of many people today? How guilty are we in the motherland of bringing about a serious change both in this attitude and in the relations between us?)
He showed me, with obvious emotion and a little pride, the handkerchiefs on which a fellow prisoner in the Periprava colony had painted an epitaph used as an antimension, and two icons, objects with which he had celebrated the Eucharist in prison and which had aroused the admiration of other priests of the same spiritual calibre. He also showed me a kind of box with two small vessels and a spoon, which he used to bring Holy Communion to the sick and dying. We couldn’t finish in one sitting, so I had to come back, much to my delight.
After these meetings I decided to try to be with His Holiness at Holy Mass more often. I was particularly able to do so in the Bulgarian Church, where he was invited and duly received by the priest, and even allowed to stand in for him when he was away on one business or another in his native Bulgaria.
I stayed there, for example, on a Sunday of Thomas, which for them coincided with Bulgarian Easter, one of the most touching and moving celebrations in the church. Unforgettable. As a unique priest, Father blossomed even more. The service was mixed: part Slavic, part Romanian. This seemed to add to the mystery. But he only preached in Romanian. He served with that seriousness and concentration that one always finds in priests of gift and grace, who make one feel that God is present in the liturgical prayer. In spite of his physical weakness, in those moments he acquired a strength and a vitality that clearly came from the power of prayer. His love, confessed without question each time, was a source of great comfort to me. But it was also very good for me. I would have benefited a great deal if I had known about it and cultivated it earlier. I am convinced that this love was shown in the same way to all the spiritual sons, but what was really touching was that each one felt that it was specifically for him. The great priests attain this power to resemble God in their way of loving. They are able to love many people with the same intensity, to set them on fire with this love and at the same time never arouse jealousy in their spiritual sons.
When one reads the memoirs of Father Balaur, written with such devotion by his daughter, either her own or by others who knew him, it is disturbing to see how similar the lives of the great Fathers are, how the same kind of self-sacrificing love unites them, how a common way of behaving and of relating to the world leads to similar life experiences, how they are subjected to the same sufferings. This sometimes goes as far as similarities in small but significant details. For example, it is touching to see how, for both Father Dimitrie and Father Iulian Stoicescu, the tram would stop in the neighbourhood to pick them up between stops, at a time when it was not very good to show respect for altar servers. Or the striking resemblance in the way they both treated family celebrations with good will, with a slight condescension and detachment, observing them with indulgence without managing to get really involved in their preparation and conduct. Or how, after their release from prison, neither of them received a pardon from the Church in which they had served with such dedication, not because of the state or ecclesiastical authorities, but because of jealous “colleagues”, and so on.
I have heard some say: what name is that, Balaur? Especially for a priest. Of course, it never bothered me. With Father, the original semantic connotation of the word (of “unknown etymology” according to the DLR) was lost, transformed. In Christianity, things take on unexpected nuances, creating a balance. It may be the serpent that tempted the ancestors in Eden, but it is also the redeeming symbol of the Saviour hanging on the cross.
Or: it may be a Judas who betrayed Jesus, but it is also another Judas, also an apostle, whose letter is an integral part of the books of the New Testament.
I looked at Father with unbridled wonder, as if he were a man from another world. Another world both historically and geographically. He had come here, driven by the vicissitudes of time, from Bessarabia, for which he had a kind of mystical love and which remained for him a mythical land. But it was also a land desecrated by the Bolshevik hordes, a fairytale land whose humiliations and tragedies, devastations and amputations Father Dimitrie felt with all his being. As gentle and kind as Father Dimitrie was, he was also courageous and determined for just causes. He was a man capable of confessing his faith and defending it until his last breath. He always responded with dignity to all the trials and unfounded accusations that were made against him. He suffered enormously during most of his life: at the hands of the invaders of his country; at the hands of the communist regime, which imprisoned him, like so many others, on the basis of a fraudulent trial, but in reality only because he was a good priest, always a missionary; and, even more sadly, at the hands of some “colleagues” who never once made his life bitter. On the contrary, the faithful, who thirst for good and faithful pastors and who know how to appreciate them when they have the good fortune to meet them, loved him unconditionally. They accompanied him with their love and their petitions until the end of his life, even when he was retired. They came for a candle or a memorial, for advice or spiritual unbiding, for prayer or consolation. Of course, he felt that a priest could not retire, that he was obliged to serve “in season and out of season” (2 Timothy 4:2) until his strength held him. Very often, when I called him on the phone, I would find the priestess telling me that she was not at home, that she had gone somewhere for who knows what needs of some spiritual sons (Holy Masses, memorials, etc.). She did not hesitate to run all day and all year for the service. That was his life, that gave him strength of body and youth of soul.
I reproached myself for not having known Fr. Dimitrie before, for not having taken advantage of being around him more. From the testimony of Mrs. Elena Teodoreanu, it seems that those who were close to him, even those in the family, did not know him very well, that the mystery of the Father did not allow them to understand him. She even thinks that of the many possible names that could characterise him, the most appropriate for her father seems to her to be “the unknown”. (The truth is that our society still does not pay attention to people who are really important on a spiritual level, but instead promotes and publicises dubious or precarious characters – sometimes even in school textbooks, which can only be harmful, as we can see).
The lesson to be drawn from this, in an inductive mathematical line, would be an extremely encouraging one: as there was for me and for many others a Father of the spiritual stature of Father Dimitrie, there probably have been and will continue to be others.
Father Dimitrie patiently and perseveringly worked on the image of God in him, trying to bring him as close as possible to the likeness of his ontological prototype.
He was full of wisdom and self-giving, he is one of those who, though less known, by their prayers and their pure life, make it impossible for the wrath of God to fall easily on a city, on a country, for the sins of the many. We should learn to see these people correctly, with great credibility before God, and make the most of them for our spiritual growth.
Father Dimitrie Balaur was a beautiful man, always serious, but also spiritually willing in his dealings with his sons and daughters. A man with whom you did not feel intimidated, with whom you immediately felt a total connection. A man who, when I met him, looked like a grandfather from the stories of old times. A man who welcomed you with total selflessness. A man who made you feel cared for. With Father Dimitrie, Christianity became a natural way of living and living together.
(Costion Nicolescu – Salt of the Earth, Doxologia Publishing House, Iași, 2011, pp. 145-149).