Father Stăniloae – a man familiar with God

His cell

Father lives in a double studio apartment, or what is known in the West as a small studio. He was given one of the rooms, which measured no more than ten square metres. Beyond it is the bedroom with windows, where, at the foot of the double bed, is the table at which Father Dumitru Stăniloae worked on much of his writing.

Beyond that, there is a bookcase on two walls, a coffee table behind which the priest usually sits, a sofa and two or three chairs. The books, too many for the library’s capacity, are packed as tightly as possible, without any particular logic, and end up in piles in all corners of the room, their balance always precarious.

On the walls are several glass icons, some very beautiful, probably brought by the priest from his home in Vlădeni. Through the sliding glass windows of the library, all sorts of reproductions of famous icons, photographs, etc. Behind them, you can barely make out the covers of books with titles in Romanian, German, Greek, Latin, English, French, Italian, Russian, etc.

It is incredibly easy to get in. Father welcomes anyone and everyone, and probably thousands of people have passed through. A list of them would be particularly revealing. It would include an extremely diverse world from here and elsewhere: prelates and country priests, monks and students, famous theologians and doctoral students, modest intellectuals of various professions, personalities of cultural life, etc.

Some have passed through only once. Others have become housewives and go several times a week. Quite a few go because they know it’s “good for them” or to get writings to support their publications. Some I have met, others I have only heard of.

There are a few days in the year when the Father’s “cell” is enormously enlarged. On St. Dumitru’s Day and on his birthday. Sometimes on St. Mary’s Day, for the Mother Priestess. The telephone rings constantly, from Bucharest, from the country, from abroad. With unflagging patience, the old priest picks up the receiver dozens of times to answer greetings and wishes. The cellar also fills up at Christmas, when the priest’s friends or groups of students come to carol on Christmas Eve.

The repertoire is not very large, but the joy of greeting the Nativity together is great. At the end, the priest distributes apples, nuts, pretzels and, above all, talks…

About Christmas, about the Nativity, about the wonder of carols, about childhood in Vlădeni and about other such things. During these celebrations, I saw thirty people enter this small room without anyone feeling embarrassed. On the contrary…

Better to work for nothing than to sit in vain

This counsel of Father Arsenie Boca guided Father Stăniloae at a time when he was forbidden to publish books. And he went on to translate the Philokalia…

Father is always working on something. Something important, either original writings or translations of the Holy Fathers. Now you hear him say he’s sorry he doesn’t have time to do this or that, and now you see he’s finished it.

The last book is always the best. Always the last Holy Father translated is the most important, the most profound. The Father’s love is present or localised in the present, his contact with God and His Saints is always alive, it leads to friendship. I believe that the Holy Fathers, where they are, are very happy to see themselves translated and commented on by Fr Stăniloae. Whatever book he writes or translates, Father Stăniloae summarises it for them in a few words. Everything seems clear and complete. You wonder what else needs to be added. But what you find afterwards is an endless unravelling of nuances, of details, all of which have their importance in the economy of the work (the text). Father Stăniloae discovers unsuspected depths where others see obscure or unimportant places.

The philosopher and theologian

A friend told me how he once took a well-known philosopher to see Father Dumitru Stăniloae and how he was somewhat disappointed by the simplicity of the discourse he encountered.

Father’s language in oral conversation is always simple, clear, accessible. But his words have power, they have depth of understanding and experience, they have an aura. They are given to everyone, in form, but in them are really the deepest thoughts. Without resorting to obsessive historicism or spectacular and gratuitous speculation, Father Stăniloae always has something new to say, and his words are seamlessly constructed.

The story of the philosopher brings me back to Nicu Steinhardt’s reflections on the deaths of Socrates and Christ. It is certain that our philosopher was looking for a certain kind of (purely speculative) discourse which was not to be found in the Father, and for the Father’s discourse he was not prepared. For it is one thing to theologise and another to philosophise about faith.

A light from Tabor

Someone once said that man knows himself by the way he laughs. You have to see Father Stăniloae when he laughs. There is always a light on his face, but when he laughs, it seems that this light is magnified. His eyes become tiny, like two little lamps, and the joy he radiates is contagious.

An angel always watched over Father

Sorin Dumitrescu’s recent book of conversations with Father Stăniloae begins abruptly with a question about the angel. I would say that I have always seen an angel around Father Dumitru.

You can’t talk about Father Stăniloae and his cell in the middle of Bucharest without immediately thinking of Mother Mary. Anyone who knew Father knew also Mother Maria. Discreetly present in a corner, she warms the place. In her eyes you can see the sparkle of enthusiasm, a soul that gives of herself sincerely and incessantly. You will always find her ready to ask you questions, not in a formal way, but full of interest in what you and your children are doing. Throughout her life, she has been an extraordinary and tireless support to Father Stăniloaie. By her presence, by her warmth, by her self-giving, in a word, by her boundless, serene and devoted love. Father Stăniloae can be sure that he had an angel at his side all his life.

In the presence of this holy couple, one is surrounded by the peace of a strong and serene love, a love that really was true. A full life together in body and soul, according to the exhortation of the Church of Christ. It is absolutely impressive to see them today, after almost 70 years of living together, weighed down by the years and by old age, with such infinite tenderness and gentleness surrounding each other.

Father Stăniloae is a man like all of us. He has fears and joys, he has perplexities and unanswered questions, he has unfulfilled desires, he fears that some of his books will never be printed again, he is happy when he hears a good word about himself, he likes to joke, he suffers with his friends, his eyes and his hips tease him, he embraces you wholeheartedly when he does, and he really kisses you…

Our Father

The years will pass, the ages will pass (there will be one more, there will be ten more, God knows!) and the next generations of lovers of theology will labour and try to penetrate the beauty of the texts of Father Stăniloae, as we are now trying to do with the writings of the Fathers of past ages.

Looking at his icon, some will wonder about the Father’s earthly journey. We had the immense mercy of God to be contemporaries of Father Dumitru and to be close to him from time to time. We can bear witness to him and we have a duty before God to do so. We are called to build his synaxarium in detail. Father’s life was open, nothing was hidden.

His theological work is and will be available to all, but those moments of tender communication that each of us spent in Father’s cell are a personal treasure to be shared with others now and in the future. When I read his article “Holiness and meekness”, I realised how poor our words are compared to Father’s. The portrait of the saint he painted there is in fact (we can say it today!) a self-portrait. Nothing could paint Father Dumitru better than his own words. Because these two things belonged to him: holiness and gentleness.

To succeed in being, as Father was, the same for all and for each in a particular, personal way, is only possible for the great spiritual fathers who have become like God. For the Father, as for Christ, each person was important and he gave them all his attention and a loving openness. Hence the fact that his door was always open to everyone and the tenderness with which he treated you. For those who came to him more often, he was not only the great theologian, the priest who took his grace seriously, but also the father, the man who embraced you, who listened to your questions or your worries, who advised you and encouraged you, at whose bosom you could find refuge.

Of course, family had an important place in his heart. A friend told me how she once saw him in Piazza Rosetti at dawn carrying a bouquet of flowers; then he realised that it was the Mother Priestess’s birthday. On the basis of his daughter’s poem, which he commented on, he built a whole theology that only a father’s love could develop with such insight. His grandson, Dumitraș, owes his entire start in life to him. How lovingly he received his relatives in his native village! But those of us who were close to him also felt the same immense tenderness in our contact with him. Not a birthday or a feast day of someone close to him passed without a phone call to bless him and wish him well. What a joy these gestures, made with a disarming naturalness, brought.

I remember the last meeting in the hospital. Anyone who has passed through there must have a treasured memory of a final encounter. Father was already on the threshold of another world. (We can learn much about man by watching him on the threshold…) It was as if he were standing in front of a brighter room, through the ajar door of which a ray of light fell on his face, thinned by the asceticism of suffering. Father was radiant, reflecting that unnaproachable Tabor light. Ah, he smelled of holiness in this last of his chapels in Fundeni. The vigilant flame of the candelabra, reproductions of icons pasted on the faience: the Mother of God with the Holy Child, Gregory Palamas… “I can’t talk anymore,” he said. “You don’t have to. You’ve been talking and writing all your life,” I tried to console him. At times like this, everything is a great economy. In exceptional cases you can communicate intensely with few means. I kissed his hand. He lifted it to bless me. I would not have dared to ask him to make such an effort. The gesture he made was clear, complete and powerful. He had done it so many times over the years, but it seems that never before had I had such an extraordinary, concrete, obvious feeling of power being transferred to me, like a terrible discharge of grace.

Where from so much power in this body weakened by illness? Holding his hand, I felt it squeeze me gently but clearly. It was all a kind of talking, of confessing to each other. I felt like embracing him, kissing him, not with pity, but with a kind of childish urge. “God help us!” he said. “God help us,” I replied. That’s how peasants say goodbye in the street, in our part of Transylvania. Those were the last words that passed between us. No big words. Everything is so simple when it’s all right. For Christians there is no parting. But there are three ways of being together: when we are together here, in this world, in the flesh; when we are one here, one there, in the Spirit; when we are together in the next world and our bodies are also transfigured. We have taught ourselves with this communication and with the body, with the embraces, with the blessings, with the sight of the faces, and in this sense we miss the Father very much. Of course, we still have him with us in a mystical way, like a saint, protecting us with his prayers. And how comforting and soothing this thought is. But what more could we want than to end up together in eternity, with our spiritual bodies. Let us meet and pick up where we left off: – “God help us!” – “God help us!”

Let us not be grumblers! Let us thank God for giving us Fr. Dumitru until he was almost 90 years old, and not just any years, because he worked in every way until his last year. And to think that the Dogmatics appeared at the age of 75 (!) and that other important works were the fruit of his old age! Father Dumitru is no longer just ours. Who will be the fool to say that St. Isaac Sir belongs to the Syrians or St. Gregory Palamas to the Greeks? The Father belongs to the whole Church, now including the victorious Church.

In November and December 1978 I attended the last three of Fr. Stăniloae’s dogmatics courses for doctoral students. It was already night when the lectures began, with about ten people attending. I remember that one evening I walked from the tram station to the university behind Father Stăniloaie. I looked at his rather tall figure in awe. He was dressed in a rather old black coat, wore his familiar wide-brimmed hat and carried a small old-fashioned briefcase. His walk was old-fashioned, but purposeful and brisk. Only the whiteness of his beard shone in the night. He entered the classroom with the same sure step. It was striking how you could feel both his humility and his greatness. The students were gathered around a long rectangular table. He sat at the far end. He took off his hat and placed it beside him, but he did not undress because it was cold and damp. A prayer was said and then they sat down. He took a few pages out of his old-fashioned little briefcase and put them in front of him. He held them there like a conductor who knows the score by heart and holds it in front of him without looking at it. In the first lesson he spoke on the Holy Trinity, and in the second on the forms of perpetual prayer. He spoke with his eyes almost closed, softly and calmly, without getting excited. And yet, what a word of great power! He sounded like a man going about his work, carefully laying brick by brick, building a solid edifice. The dim light, the cold atmosphere of the college gave an eerie, spacey feeling. There was complete silence, only the soft, hurried rustle of pencils on paper. In the end, he got up and left as he had come: as lightly as an angel who had made his announcement. We were left with the duty of constructing with the given bricks.

The fourth hour was no longer allowed. While we were waiting for it, Father Professor Ilie Moldoveanu, then “spiritual” at the Faculty of Theology in Bucharest, now Professor of Morals at the Faculty of Theology in Sibiu, came in. He asked each of us who we were and what we did. He was a little surprised that an engineer had come to the course. And then he said this wonderful thing about Fr. Stăniloae: “The Greeks say that there are only three ‘theologians’: St. John the Evangelist, St. Gregory of Nazianz and St. Simeon the New Theologian. We Romanians say that there are four, because we add “Father Dumitru”.

To call him Saint Dumitru “Theologian” is neither a spontaneous and unfounded statement, nor a canonisation. We don’t make saints, only their service in companionship with God. To call him a Theologian Saint is to continue a very strict and careful tradition that from time to time (in the first, fourth, tenth and twentieth centuries) has crossed the path of our faith through “Theologians”.

We find in Father Dumitru at least three of the conditions required by the Church for canonisation:

– His end, which, according to eyewitnesses, consisted of an hour of conversation with God and the Mother of God;

– the miracles he performed: what else are his writings? (but not only these);

– the devotion of the faithful to him.

To these were added many smaller signs, which we do not show now, but which are proven. From these correct and true premises, the Church can only draw one conclusion. The Church waits for time to prove itself, but no canon fixes that time. Time is us with our testimony. Immediately after the Lord gave his Spirit, the first to testify about Him – “Truly, this is the Son of God” – was not an apostle or another disciple, but an anonymous and humble centurion. We are not allowed to waste anything. Finally, Father Dumitru is a membrane thinned by the Spirit, through which Christ is seen in a close way.

(Costion Nicolescu – Salt of the Earth – Crossings, Encounters, Accompaniments, Doxologia Publishing House, Iași, 2011, pp. 106-108, 111-114 apud Alfa and Omega, Supplement of Christian Spirituality of the magazine Cotidianul, Bucharest, Year I, no. 1, 13 November 1992; Alfa and Omega, Supplement of Christian Spirituality of the magazine Cotidianul, Bucharest, Year II, no. 10 (12), 15 October 1993)