Father Sofian, our own St. Seraphim of Sarov
To be left without your confessor is the same as the time stood still. For a long time you perceive almost no thought. Later, feelings and longings boil and seek and implore. You don’t know whether to let the emptiness hurt too much or to rejoice and hope.
To rejoice and hope, you must have the strength to slowly grasp the Anchor that is falling away but also pulling you up. Its fragrance embraces you and remains with you. It splits into thousands but remains whole. It remains whole and turns to each one the pale and gentle face of St. Seraphim of Sarov.
One of our own St. Seraphim of Sarov. I have always been fascinated by the resemblance between Father Sofian and St. Seraphim of Sarov. The same appropriate stature, the same gentle face, the same humility, the same discreet presence in every place, never inappropriate, or aggressive, but on the contrary, always welcoming, always benevolent and reassuring, even if you only saw him in passing, without saying a word.
The same love for Christ, the same boundless devotion and hope in the Mother of Christ. If you persistently followed the importance that Father gave to the presence and help of the Mother of God, you could not fail to notice the little or lack of devotion and hope in the Mother of God. Then you could not help but feel your own devotion and hope in Our Lady. You wondered how you lacked them!
When he walked, I had the impression that his body was weightless and that he only formally touched the ground. I saw in my confessor the presence of the Spirit who carried him and kept him untiringly, who strengthened him so that he could carry, care for, keep afloat or help each one of us, too many of us, on the ascent he was on and to which he also longed for us.
Who has not found comfort and consolation in the Father? How many times have we thought of telling him everything and then not found the strength to go on? Often it was only the presence of the Father that helped.
Who has not experienced one or more hours in the church of Antim Monastery while Father was confessing! You left as if you had confessed, as if he had blessed you, without having come to enjoy the warmth of his hands on your head, a gesture that seemed to bring you peace, reconciliation with yourself, the joy of rising again.
Who does not remember those moments under the epitrachelion of the Father, either during the molitva or during the anointing after confession, when you were convinced that Christ was present, that Christ himself had forgiven you and released you through the voice and the hand of the Father!
He respected the freedom of the other as the greatest gift God has left to man. Sometimes he almost insulted you by not giving you a canon. He almost, it seems, did not give much weight to your sins and repeated falls, of which you were so ashamed! You wished and felt that penance would have helped you. In return, you received absolution as a gift, but later you understood that your confessor’s tact and spiritual strength made it important for you to stand up, and only then to fall with all its gravity. And you came back strengthened ten fold!
He was gentle and soft-spoken, but also hard. Those who knew him in his younger years say he was tough and demanding of himself and others. It was all part of the sharpness that characterised him. He did everything properly and knew exactly how to do it.
Once, during confession, he told me to stop judging, because judging your neighbour is a small but very serious sin.
The second time he told me to stop judging because judging does not belong to men but to Christ.
The third time, when I dared to confess the same sin, he told me in a scolding and blunt tone, “Please stop judging, the judgement belongs to Christ. When we judge our neighbour, Christ leaves the judgement seat that He gives us, but at the same time He abandons us and leaves us to the mercy of Satan”. This has remained an imperative for me, and I constantly ask the Father’s help to carry it out.
I have had the great blessing of seeing him from time to time, not necessarily for confession. For this I thank him unceasingly. His presence used you, his little talk used you, Father’s silence used you as well.
His presence, in its entirety, was an expression of his interior life, of his spiritual state. It was easy to observe the purity of his heart, the great self-control, the fruit of the killing of passions and the acquisition of virtues, the abandonment of self and devotion to others, even to the point of self-sacrifice.
His words and sentences were always measured. The pause he allowed himself before each answer was often longer than the answer itself. He blocked and captivated you at the same time, you understood that everything was essence.
Every gesture, every word was essence. He didn’t waste words, he used them with a miserliness that benefited himself and others.
He sought and followed Christ and had the example of his Saints. Who can imagine Antim monastery without the poor who passed through the gates of the monastery to the door of the Father?
If St. Anthim the Iberian, whose foundation he guarded with sanctity and whom he took as a model, did everything for the care of the poor, I don’t believe someone saw Fr. Sofian chasing away even a single needy person. Rather, they saw him reaching into his pocket for alms. They saw his humility and generosity. I don’t think he ever refused anyone.
A keen eye, if it had been around Father, would have seen very clearly, would have learned everything without asking for help… It is a fascinating description that Father Stăniloae gives of the saint! As you read the description, you forget that it is a description of the saint in general, and it seems to you that every word embraces the face of Father Sofian. At the end you come to your senses and say to yourself, “Father Sofian was a saint!” […]
I never had the feeling around Father’s tomb that he was there. I hope and pray that after his departure he will help some of us, in a concrete way, after his departure, to intercede and to wait for us at Christ and at him.
(Garoafa Coman – Father Sofian, 2nd edition revised and completed by Constanța Costea and Ioana Iancovescu, Byzantine Publishing House, Bucharest, 2012, pp. 261-264)