Father Sofian the God bearer
I met Emilian late one evening in the paradise of the convent, the place of our meetings. For a year and more, Avva came down every night at nine o’clock. He would leave the door ajar, just long enough to let out an eyelash so that I would know he was there. I was always late, and he waited with infinite patience. Sometimes I’d stop and look at him through the crack in the door. Father was waiting for me, praying.
His eyes were closed, his right hand on his left breast, his head slightly bowed towards his shoulder, like a living icon of the Saint Seraphim of Sarov. There was so much light on his face that often I could not make out any features. I could not see the colour of his eyes because of the light that surrounded his gentle face. One evening Emilian came. He made a long confession. “This young man was a Satanist,” my father told me. “And now he turns to Christ with all his heart. After confessing, he said to me: ‘Father, I want to be a really good person’ When he said this to me, I felt a strong current running down my neck. He is sincere and determined to return to Christ. Father raised his right hand and showed me his forehead, the top of his head and the back of his neck, that’s where the “current” had hit him. I didn’t quite understand what this “current” was. But I looked at him closely. And I understood that no evil man, no matter how evil he may be in this world, can resist the testimony that Father Sofian gives about God. His whole being was bathed in light. It’s as if he were wrapped in the sun.
Mahmud Ahmed, consul in Chișinău, professor of international law in Berlin, well known in the Arab world: now “Brother Michael”. I found the baptismal certificate in the book on my father’s desk. Father Nectarie told me: I asked Mahmud-Mihai: “Why were you baptised? And he replied: ‘Because I was very impressed by Father. I was convinced by his face and his whole being, almost without saying a word. I have never met anyone like him in my religion. That’s what Mahmud told me. I asked my father: “Have you met Mahmud? How did you baptise him?” “No!” my father replied. He came to me one day and asked me to baptise him. All I knew was that he was Arab, Lebanese. I felt I could trust him… and I baptised him”.
Years ago I met a Japanese man; he had come with a group of tourists and they were sitting at the vigil. He said, “It tugs at my heart to come here… I’ve never seen anyone in my religion as bright as this old man…. I want to know this religion better. He asked for a photo of Fr. Sofian and promised to come back to look for him. I don’t know if he ever did. Father fell ill and it became impossible to reach him. But I have not forgotten the words of that young Japanese man. “I’ve never seen anyone in my religion as bright as him”.
When I came to Bucharest, God’s grace brought me under the wing of his prayers. He met me in the middle of a foreign country. And since then, for 20 years, the bell of the Antim Monastery has dispelled in my soul the gloomy roar of the cold and hostile city. Friend and father, I have always felt him close to me. And now? They came from all over to see him: Some just wanted to speak to him, to ask for his blessing. That’s all. In his presence, all the reality that had been so harsh became a thing of the past. The gentleness and light in his face melted everything away. Every problem seemed to resolve itself: simply and well. One could go home in peace. There was no more cause for irritation. Each of us was convinced of this truth: God listens to Father and refuses him nothing. “Everything Father needs to know…” He knew how to defend each soul fiercely. I would leave him and all the way home I could feel how he was accompanying me with his heart!
Perhaps in the last days of his life, what for us was a state of deep coma, was for Father nothing but sweet rest. Who knows? One evening, after this state of deep coma, Father said to me: “There is a big difference between heaven and earth. A great difference seen spiritually. On earth there is this opaque matter. In the spiritual sky there are spiritual beings. The visible ones are made up of this material universe, this inert, heavy matter, made up of atomic elements. But in the Creed we confess God as the “Creator of the seen and the unseen” – the unseen being the heavenly powers, the holy angels and all those spiritual energies that are everywhere but can only be seen with spiritual eyes. So there is a huge difference between this earthly world and the spiritual world, a difference of essence. For example, if you fly in an aeroplane on a foggy day, you cannot see anything below. When he goes up in the plane, at a certain point the sky opens up and the plane glides like a silver sea, very bright. Up there is the sun, there is a very bright light, and down there is nothing to see… everything is blackness, the mist he came out of. So it is with this spiritual world. When you pray, something breaks through this veil of blackness and doubt and a kind of connection is made between us and the world beyond, the world of light and divine grace. And we reach the ‘God’s zone’. The two worlds, the material and the spiritual, are intertwined. Man has a soul, it is this divine energy within us that can reach the seat of God. But God Himself has also descended to us and all matter is permeated by this spiritual world. This osmosis is the mystery of God, the art of God in this double universe, material and spiritual… “.
(Emilie, Spiritual Daughter – Father Sofian, 2nd edition revised and completed by Constanța Costea and Ioana Iancovescu, Byzantine Publishing House, Bucharest, 2012, pp. 264-267)