Humility of Father Daniil – “Whatever you hear bad about me, believe, because I was a great sinner”
The most special man I met during my time at Reduit was Fr. Agaton Teodorescu, Daniil after the hermit name of Rarău, former magistrate and poet, with the pseudonym Sandu Tudor. After a life full of worldly experiences, like that of Saint Augustine, he saw the emptiness of his worldly grasp and became a monk.
He was arrested and convicted with the Burning Bush organisation. In Jilava we met by chance. And that chance was made possible by God’s providence.
In the spring, a training programme for prisoners had begun in Jilava, with the aim of enabling them to start work on the canal without any period of adaptation. Almost every day there was a two-hour walk around the Reduit. But what a walk! Three thousand people were chased away, beaten with clubs and pistols. Many fell without getting up, especially the elderly. The young men formed a defensive circle around them and we held them in our arms, protecting them from the blows. The militiamen, encouraged by this attitude, rushed at us and beat us indiscriminately.
On one of those days of terror, when the sun was burning brightly, I felt a deep breath come in next to me. I looked at the person and realised that he was about to fall. I grabbed his arm and, after he had squeezed in next to me, we both ran into the barbaric scream of the militiamen. From time to time I looked at the man’s face to see what his condition was. I noticed the rhythmic movement of his lips, his eyes almost closed, his head tilted to the left. This image, which was very familiar and dear to me, made me understand that I had a heavenly bridegroom beside me, with whom I was flying towards God on Calvary, not feeling the blows I was receiving. When some of them, tired from running, collapsed, the militiamen rushed towards them to trample and crush them with merciless blows, breaking their limbs, cracking their heads or bursting their spines with their boots, as their hearts would allow.
With Father Agathon, during these walks on Calvary, when he was feeling better, we would sit and talk, strengthening our hope in God’s care. On each occasion, His Holiness would tell me about the holy teachings of the Holy Fathers, the martyrs, and especially about the Hesychast prayer, which I was very eager to learn more about, as it was like honey to my soul. Sometimes he felt the need of humility and confessed to me that he had been neither a good young man nor an honest man, and that only God had saved him from the devil’s delusion.
– Whatever evil you may hear of me, believe that I have been a great sinner.
[…]
Father Agaton (Daniil) Teodorescu from Rarău, whom I had met before in Jilava, arrived after many adventures in Aiud (where he had composed an altarpiece of St. John the New from Suceava, which was known by many boys) and was isolated on one of the short sides of the T, towards the administration.
Statements were demanded that the Church and its hierarchs had been compromised. Father was given paper and ink, and instead of pleasing his adversary, he wrote a detailed indictment of materialistic thinking and the Communist government, exposing the satanic work by which Freemasonry and other atheistic forces were trying to attack Christ and His Church. For almost a month he continued to write, waiting from day to day to be called to confrontation. Then one morning the rumour spread through Aiud that he had been found dead in his cell. Will we ever know the truth?
“There is nothing hidden that will not be discovered. And he who made this statement will keep his testimony.”
(Virgil Maxim, Hymn for the Cross Carried. Abecedar duhovnicesc pour un frate de cross, 2nd edition, Antim Publishing House, Bucharest, 2002, pp. 257-258, 403)