“Forgive me, father”

What I can say is that Father had strength. When I first entered the church, I sat on the right and my wife on the left, some distance away. After the Holy Liturgy, he came over and pointed at me and then at my wife. He picked us out of the crowd, and I still wonder how he knew we were husband and wife. Then he took us aside and spoke to us.

He scolded me for not having much faith, and to my wife, who had problems with her finger and seen five doctors in vain, he said:

“Miss, you are sick, but you won’t get well with the help of doctors. If you want to get well, don’t do what you did and stop doing the rays”.

The priest was right. And now my wife can use her hand without any problems. That’s the way Father was – he spoke a little and to the point. But he preached divinely. You couldn’t get enough of him. Then he disappeared, was investigated in Brașov and spent two years in the Canal for confessing to six partisans in the mountains. My father never even mentioned it. Only my father, who was also a political prisoner, told me that he was in a cell with Father Arsenios and that a guard kept insulting him:

“Oy priest!

Then the priest turned around and looked at him and the guard began to struggle in pain, putting his hands on his stomach. Later, when he saw that the pain was not going away, he said:

“Forgive me, father”.

… “By God be forgiven,” the priest replied, and the man recovered immediately.

(Testimony of Telu Oancea from the village of Breaza – Făgăraș – Saint Father Arsenios Boca, p. 47)