Father Roman Braga – the man who stepped out of an icon
By my reckoning, more than thirty-five years have passed since we last saw each other; in fact, we are only two years apart, since His Holiness was born on 2 April 1922 and I on 12 July 1920.
And yet Father Roman was, is and will remain a living presence, calling me to a permanent dialogue. I saw him with that pale face, of medium height and frailty, before he received the holy habit of the angelic monk, and I saw him immediately transfigured, with that holy face of the hieromonk, truly living in the philocentric spirit of hesychasm, radiating the holy light within him, the light of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, our Lord and God, Jesus who changed his face into the light of God on Mount Tabor.
The gentle face of Father Roman that I know and remember, the face of a holy hieromonk, was framed by a true monk’s beard, and the hair was the colour of ripe chestnuts and somehow very close to the holy colour of the hair and beard of our Lord Christ… when I saw His Holiness, Father Roman seemed to me like he came out of an icon, as we see in our holy monasteries.
Father Roman, in his whole presence, in his whole person, from the way he is dressed, the look in his eyes, that smile of a holy and good man, abundantly illuminated by the grace of God, the movement of his hands, his step and that gait that, when you look at him closely, makes you wonder if His Holiness is walking on the ground or if he is floating above the ground… in the air.
All this, all this, makes up this whole, full of spiritual mystery, a holy life, a holy living, in the spirit of Christ, a working life, edifying himself and others.
Father Roman’s humility is undeniable, difficult to express in human words, as is his love, especially for children, the sick and the elderly.
This love, a great mystery, transmitted with an inexpressible power, penetrates, fills and transforms you, and no matter how dry and hardened I or anyone else may be, in the presence of Father Roman we all experience a holy transfiguration…
Father Roman sings beautifully, he sows in souls the depths of the sacred psalms. His Holiness is a profound connoisseur of music in its entirety, with a critical and highly selective eye; for Byzantine and Psalm music, for all its forms, His Holiness is a profound and competent connoisseur and a chosen interpreter. He has the power to transmit the grace of the sacred chants; he is a unique and great reference.
But, dear brother, make yourself a conversation partner, a conversation partner in aesthetics, in the arts, in all philosophical systems, as well as in the most diverse field of beliefs, from atheism to theism; you will tremble before the vastness and depth of his knowledge of things and of all the problems he masters.
His Holiness is not an encyclopaedist, a repository of data and knowledge, but a great ordainer and teacher of the things of culture, aesthetics and faith; he is a unique man who translates in an exemplary way the values of human thought, from antiquity to the present day; His Holiness Father Roman has the power to make you search and to show you how to find the holy revelation, the holy epiphany, that which is Christ the Lord: “The Way, the Truth and the Life!”
10 January 1994, Iași
(On the way of faith. Archimandrite Roman Braga, HDM Press Inc., Rives Junction, Michigan, USA, 1995, pp. 101-102)