He didn’t talk much, he lived

I lived in Antim monastery. Without a shadow of doubt, I knew these people, I lived with them.

I went to see Father Sandu Tudor, Father Daniel – I was in prison with Fr. Daniel, I went to his cell, which was in the bell tower. He was irresistible. Everyone admits that. You had to sound like him. I was impressed by his big room with books, all bound in thick leather.

He asked me one thing: “Brother Anghele, are you crying?” Then I asked him: “But, Your Holiness, are you crying?” “I am weeping,” he told me. I said to him, “You are not very Orthodox!” I told him that if I shed half a tear, it was a great gift from God. These more secret things, they are not things that you can broadcast, because you lose the gift of God.

All the admiration I had for that man [Father Sofian]. He didn’t talk much, he lived.

I had an encounter with Father Andrei Scrima. I had been his confessor for many years. We sought each other out and met at the Antim monastery, in Father Sofian’s room. That’s the first time I entered his room. There were books everywhere, I didn’t know which was the cupboard and which was the floor, there were only books everywhere. As a man who saw something in the book, I had a good opinion of him. I thought he was a very just man.

(…) He was indeed an enriched man. He was a man who was concerned about salvation. The problem of problems. His inner strength was recognised by all. He was a man with an inner life.

He went to the monastery of Sihăstria to make a plan for painting. They wanted to offer him money. But he didn’t want it. He asked them for a man because he needed help. And they gave him… He wasn’t interested in money. The Samaritan woman, he painted her. I could see the value of the painting. It was a painting that spoke to you.

(…) I put Father in the tradition of being present. He was present. You could see his asceticism, he was everywhere, poor thing, he was everywhere.

We never saw each other again…

I have a great devotion to him. In the wreath of the fathers of this age, I place him in heaven.

(Father Arsenie Papacioc – Father Sofian, 2nd edition revised and added by Constanța Costea and Ioana Iancovescu, Byzantine Publishing House, Bucharest, 2012, pp. 231-232)