Father of the poor

I came to Bucharest when I was 30. I was born in the countryside, in the village of Vâlcele, near Suceava, and I worked in the collective from the age of 16. A colleague told me:

– You can’t continue to work in the collective, you’re weak, sickly. Come with me to Bucharest, stay with me until you find a job!

My parents were also weak from work and suffering. So I came to Bucharest and joined Popa Gheorghe’s family, where I had to take care of two little girls, Carmen and Cristina, aged 7 months and 4 years.

But I couldn’t find peace in my new situation as a maid. My friend suggested that I go with her to the Church of Wisdom and warned me:

– There is no talking in this church!

I accepted. When I arrived, I was disappointed: a small, dilapidated, dark church; from the outside it looked more like a house than a church, with blackened walls, broken floors, a small priest. “What a church he has brought me to!?” I thought. But when the sermon began and I heard Father speak, I said to myself, “Here is the salvation of my soul!” The whole sermon was said as if it was said especially for me.

The first Friday that followed, I came to Mass in the evening and also gave an acatist, asking to receive a service. Someone else gave an acatist with a similar request. After Vespers, Father said that the two people who had asked for the Sacrament should stay. It was in April 1967, before Easter. He sat with the two of us in the porch and said:

– I need a woman to sell candles. What is your situation?

– I’m maid for a landlord.

– I have no work and my mother is ill.

– Which do you give up?

– I quit, I said. I’m younger and I still have something.

My father was pleased that I had given up. Since then, Cristina has stayed and sold candles and has been a great and faithful supporter of the Church until the end.

On Easter Saturday I had a talk with the mistress. In the evening, at the Resurrection, I went to the altar door crying:

– What has happened to you?

– My mistress has thrown me out of the house!

Father, who took all our suffering upon himself, had tears in his eyes. He stood for a moment and then said to me:

– You know there is only one Master in this world, the One in Heaven. We all serve Him. We are all equal before Him. All that remains is for us to pray.

How much his words reassured and strengthened me! And the situation in the family changed in such a way that my masters insisted that I should not go away and from then on treated me as one of their own.

I was allowed one day off a week. I chose Sunday mornings and Friday afternoons. Sometimes I took the girls to church with me. They were very fond of me, they loved me. They would sit quietly next to me during Liturgy. Father didn’t allow the children to run around the church. If you couldn’t control them, you had to stay with them in the vestibule, in silence, otherwise you had to leave with them, go out of the church, so that there was no disturbance, so that people could concentrate on the Holy Liturgy. Even in the courtyard, during Holy Liturgy, complete silence was required.

On Friday afternoons we would come and clean Father’s house, the parish house. When Cristina was two years old, Father asked me to put her to sleep in his bed while he went to work.

He would tell me bits and pieces of the hardships he faced in building the church (Vergului Church). As the walls went up, the Christian community grew stronger, but on the other hand the envy of some people and the alarm of the Securitate grew.

When the miracle of the icon of the Virgin Mary appeared in the window, the flood of believers could not be stopped. The communist regime did not like this, and so the first arrest was made. From then on they decided to suppress him.

After he had finished building the church in those difficult post-war years, he was arrested in 1954. He told me:

– They burned me with hot irons, they tore off my beard, they beat me, but I told them: “You can torture me as much as you want, but I will not renounce Christ!”

Those who wanted him dead did not succeed because God protected him.

After 8 years in prison and in the canal, and 2 years of forced residence in the Bărăgan, he returned and took over the poorest and most dilapidated church in Bucharest.

I asked Fr:

– Why didn’t you stay with your daughters?

– No, Ana, God didn’t leave me on earth to take my child to the park and buy her yoghurt and sweets. God left me on earth to serve Him and the people. Some people, even priests, used to tell me that I was exaggerating my faith, that I was “jumping over the fence”. But can one exaggerate in the service of God? What was I doing before if not fulfilling the law of His love?

Father’s prayers had great power. The second Master I joined – Barac Vasile – had a cousin who had thrown his mother out of the house. She wanted to sue the boy, but an acquaintance directed her… to a church where “miracles happen”. That’s how she found Father Sârbu, who told her:

– It’s not right to judge your son, whom you carried in your womb and nursed. Let’s pray for 40 days!

She didn’t take a penny from him, and before the 40 days were over, the boy came, asked for forgiveness, put her in a hostel and took care of her.

I even had another example with my landlady, to whom I moved after I managed to get a job at the Insulator Cork Factory.

The landlady was well off, but she had two daughters who couldn’t get married. At her request, the father decided on a sărindar (40-day prayer). Before the 40 days were over, the two girls got married. Father told her to take care of me, because I was very sad, poor and a stranger, and I had no one in Bucharest. Once, when he came to give me a candle, he told me:

– I feel very well in the poor man’s house!

He looked after all of us. I don’t know how he knew us; he saw each one of us at Liturgy, and if we missed it, he’d ask us the next Sunday where we’d been. If we missed more, he would send someone to check on us.

I often went to the old people’s homes with Doctor Tăslăuanu, Jeni, Tatiana, Cocuța and others.

In the church, Father Sârbu asked for great silence, not to stay dressed even with “scarves”, because they rustle and disturb the silence. Let us not be satisfied that we ourselves have found the way to God and salvation, but let us strive to bring other souls to the Church; let us strengthen ourselves in spirit, because hard times will come, Father said.

In the church I also met Mother Mitana, who sold candles in the Vergului church. She took Father’s girls to school after the death of his wife, and the girls stayed with her after Father’s arrest.

(Ana Cristea – A great Christian confessor. Priest Constantin Sârbu, work published by Diaconești Monastery, 3rd edition, Bonifaciu Publishing House, Bacău, pages 77-80)