Father Sofian, the face of holiness
On the morning of the Feast of the Ascension of the Holy Cross, 14 September, as the Divine Liturgy was being celebrated, Father Sofian died in his cell at the Antim Monastery. In just three weeks, on 7 October, he would have been 90 years old.
Sofian’s life was closely linked to that of Antim Monastery, of which he was abbot for more than half a century. He was confessor, priest, preacher and abbot. The only thing that took him out of the monastery was his obedience as a church painter.
This did not happen very often in the last part of his life.
If we were to focus on the most important characteristic of Father Sofian’s personality, we would unreservedly mention the discretion and delicacy of his presence.
Although he had a very strong personality, Father Sofian always kept himself at a more distant level of public life, in a secluded position, like a true monk, despite the fact that he lived in a monastery in the heart of the capital. His Holiness managed to maintain this status even in the period after the changes of 1989, when the Church, and especially the famous confessors, were attacked by the world and the mass media. Father did not refuse anyone. He appeared on television, took part in radio programmes, gave lectures in public halls, was a member of the jury for various competitions and took part in various Church events.
None of this affected his image as a monk withdrawn from the world, a simple visitor to the events of the world. Mostly silent, his short speeches, his words measured with great precision, his extraordinarily gentle and inoffensive tone, made one believe that one was looking at a man who was rather turned towards the deep world of his being, whose door he opened silently to anyone who wished to enter it. He spoke very softly, with such delicacy, as if he were careful not to touch anyone physically with his words.
Father’s biography, although impressive, is rather unknown to many, even to those closest to him. This is also due to his true humility, which led him not to talk about himself, even about the most important events in his life. He belonged to the group of great cultural and spiritual personalities who, during the period when the atheistic communist regime was installed in Romania, organised the spiritual movement “The Burning Bush” around the Antim monastery, and was imprisoned for a long time in communist prisons, elements that alone would make the biography of anyone stand out. Both a theologian and a visual artist, he painted countless churches at home and abroad and was a member of the National Commission for [Church] Painting for decades.
Those who sat under the epitrachelion of His Holiness, in the hours that often lasted long after midnight in the church of the monastery of Antim, tasted to the full not only the conquering sweetness of his words, but also the boundless kindness and gentleness of the Father, which I personally have often experienced as an echo of God’s goodness. Nothing you confessed was too serious. Everything was met with understandment and forgiveness. It almost upset you that he didn’t scold you, that he didn’t give you a hard canon, that he always received you with a face radiating light and gentleness, as if you were an innocent child. There is no other explanation for this attitude than that Father Sofian, like the great Fathers of the Church, had come to value man so highly that no sin, no mistake on his part could bring him down in his eyes. I learned from Father Sofian that man’s sins are not too important, that we must not get bogged down in contemplating them, in analysing them, that no matter how sinful a person may be, he does not cease to be human, and therefore he does not cease to be more important than his sins.
Also as an actualisation of God’s goodness, I felt Father Sofan’s extraordinary power of understanding. Embodying the words in which the Saviour describes the all-embracing goodness of God the Father, “He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust (Matthew 5:45)”, Father Sofian welcomed all who came to him to the Chair of Confession without any discrimination or reservation. From high ecclesiastical figures, Church hierarchs, distinguished men of culture or prominent representatives of public life to the humblest man in the street, all were welcomed by Father Sofian: young and old, learned and ordinary, simple, rich or poor, men and women, monks and nuns, healthy people or those with certain health problems… Those who attended the vigil services or the funeral of His Holiness could see, among the thousands of faithful who came to kiss Father’s hand for the last time, people from all walks of life, of all ages.
I even wondered at times – not with malice – why the Father did not make a selection so that an advanced confessor like him would no longer have to deal with children whose souls had not yet been penetrated by evil, or with old maids who had long since emerged from the whirlpool of temptations and sins, but with those who really had spiritual problems that were difficult to solve, or with those who had high responsibilities in the Church and in society.
For me, it was like a famous surgeon who, in addition to the most complicated heart operations, kept operating on appendicitis! And yet, until his physical strength allowed it, he was the confessor of all! To hug and embrace so many people, especially so many different people, required, one imagines, a great deal of love and an infinite capacity for self-sacrifice. The Father was so accessible that it was up to you to be your confessor. Again, from a human point of view, I think sometimes this availability of his was being misused. […]
Do not cease to pray for us, Venerable Father Sofian!
(Fr. Constantin Coman – Father Sofian, 2nd edition revised and completed by Constanța Costea and Ioana Iancovescu, Byzantine Publishing House, Bucharest, 2012, pp. 220-225)