Father Dobre Rizea – fellow martyr

In the seminary “Chesarie the Bishop”, in Buzău, we prepared ourselves for a profession of great responsibility and we received a pure, chosen formation, with holy teachers, imbued with faith in God, who for us were icons to be placed in the frame of the soul.

We were young, in the most turbulent period of our lives, with thoughts, dreams and experiences of true imponderability, a state of perception of everything around us. We were in an existential and formative transition. It was the most fertile period of our lives, with important spiritual accumulations.

We were happy to submit to the rigours of school, although we still made some mistakes amongst ourselves, while respecting the matrix of common sense.

We made fun of each other for everything: a nickname, a joke, an observation about a behaviour or a weakness, etc., but we had a positive attitude towards each other, we admired and respected each other. All colleagues sanctified their mission, but here I would like to refer to a colleague who, in school days, was considered a member of the “gang”, who showed no signs of spiritual depth, and yet he can be considered the standard-bearer of our Christian Orthodox conscience. Like him, many of us sought ways to protest against a totalitarian atheist regime.

We have looked for ways to defend the faith in Christ, either from outside the despotic system, from the free world, or with a fearful voice, from within the system, malevolently controlled by the communist hand. I don’t think there was anyone in our class who betrayed their faith in Jesus by prostrating themselves before the Antichrist. I have only recently learned of the martyrdom of my former colleague, and in this section of my memoirs I shall describe all that I have been able to learn of his supreme sacrifice in defence of orthodox Christian principles.

It was a tradition in those years to exchange photos at graduation, we, fellow students, and also with younger colleagues for whom I was their tutor. Each of us had a pseudonym, a “stage name” of the present day. The photo on the left shows the then theologian (“the gypsy Rizea”, as his colleagues called him because of his tanned skin, before he graduated from the STBz seminary, class of 1971), offered by the author with dedication. The inscription on the back of the photo was written in his own hand, for me, with the conspiratorial name of “Joan Baptista” (because at that time I was the chaplain, a forerunner of the priest-teachers who had to be dressed before the liturgical services).

The original photo is kept in my personal album and will forever be a priceless value offered to me by this holy martyr and confessor of the just faith, martyred (murdered), on Passion Wednesday, 26 April, the year of God’s grace 1989, by the Jesuits (or perhaps even by the long arm of Securitate!!!), right in the Garden of Our Lady, Romania.

With deep bows, Mucenicule of Christ, your humble brother co-worker, (pr). Constantin Alecse, Los Angeles, California, USA (18 February 2014)