How I met Father Vasile Vasilache
We belatedly appreciate the value of a gift that God gives us even once in our lives, through the miracle that can be the closeness to a special person, a personality that we then remember fondly, that fills our soul with joy and often influences our thoughts for the better.
As a teenager, around 1958, during our summer walks in the mountains with two other school friends, we came unexpectedly to a place of rare beauty, the Pocrov hermitage. In front of us appeared a seemingly enchanted gorge, with a small church and some picturesque cottages in the middle.
We approached it cautiously and quietly, as if afraid of disturbing the miracle of the first impression.
We passed through a high gate and an inscription announced that we were welcome in the house of the Lord, and at the fountain another inscription: “Let the buckets of faith go down into the depths of your soul so that you too may drink the living water”. On the avenue of flowers, which smiled kindly at us, was written: “Do not tear us, let us adorn the garden of the Mother of God”.
All around us there was a magical aura and each one seemed to have a special message for us. We were no longer indifferent and talkative tourists, we became shy, careful where we stepped, as if we had entered an altar and many eyes were watching us.
We were sitting on the benches by the fountain, in this state of awe, when a tall young monk approached us and smiled gently: “Welcome to us! We stood up: “Father bless!”
Father treated us like little brothers he had known all his life, and the look in his eyes and the way he spoke to us warmed our hearts and impressed us.
We became important people because we felt that this monk, by what he told us, was above our teachers and at the same time he could be so close to us. He fed us and showed us the room where we would sleep. It was a clean room with a light smell of basil, with the inscription “May your angels be near”, and on the walls were icons, but also photographs in which we recognised Vlahuță, Topârceanu, Hoga and Sadoveanu. Father told us that Ionel Teodoreanu, the poet Mihail Codreanu, George Lesnea and many others had also slept in this room. He had something nice to say about each of them. After the evening service, which we also attended with devotion, Father came to our room and fascinated us not only with his knowledge of history and literature, but above all with his new Christian way of explaining the past and even the present of our country.
And the next day was another day of light with him.
When we left, he led us into the clearing and waved us through until we entered the forest. Although the parting made me feel uncomfortable, it never occurred to me that I would never see that monk again, whom I would later learn was the priest Dr. Vasile Vasilachi. The following summer I went to see him again. I felt I had a lot to tell him and he would surely have the clearest answers for me. I never found him again and no one would tell me where he was.
With difficulty, quietly and in a whisper, a monk told me that he had been arrested because he had written some anti-communist books in which he spoke out against the collectivisation of agriculture. I remembered his words from a year ago: ‘Without property, man becomes a creature without dignity’.
Many years have passed, too many, it seems.
Pocrov is now a great disappointment to me, and I have understood again that “man sanctifies the place”. The hut where I slept has burned down, everything is in disarray. But I was happy to find books written by him, including “From Antim to Pocrov” and the obituary of his death. I realised what a great man he was.
(Mihai Diaconu – Rost Magazine, Year VIII, No. 83-84, pp. 33-34)