“I have never met such a man!”

I first “met” Father Crăciun in the monastery of Cioara. We were looking for a confessor, not really knowing what that meant or where to go. A priest there, after talking to us for a few hours, directed us to the house and told us:

“What are you doing here? You need someone closer to you, someone you can talk to often. And you have a wonderful priest in Cinciș – Father Crăciun Opre. If you choose him as your confessor, you won’t regret it and you’ll benefit a lot”.

So God directed our steps to Father Crăciun, who was to be a part of our lives for the next nine years, until he went to be with the Lord. Father Crăciun was the confessor par excellence. All those who confessed to him can testify to Father’s unconditional love, gentleness and humility. No confession lasted less than thirty minutes; most of the time it lasted more than two hours, and after it you left as light as a feather.

Father lived in God’s time. The other day an acquaintance, a spiritual son of Father Crăciun, asked us where we still go to confession – and remembering his confessions to Father Crăciun, he confessed that since Father Crăciun had gone to the Lord, he had never felt the same good feeling in any other confession that he felt when he confessed to Father Crăciun. This was because Father lived in a different time, God’s time, and he was patient until you had emptied your sack of sins before him; and if you happened to forget something, Father would begin to tell a parable from which it was impossible not to recognise what you had to confess. Slowly, slowly, grace worked, the tears of repentance began to flow, sometimes gently, sometimes in cascades, but always with a quiet peace. To the prayer of absolution in the Molitfelnic, Father would add personal and specific petitions, from which one could understand what one should pray to God for in the future and what was the root of the sins one had just confessed. Father treated everyone with great gentleness, never forcing things, but waiting for them to unfold naturally, all in their own time. For example, to teach us to ask for forgiveness, in the first years after we met him, at the end of each of our frequent meetings, when we said goodbye, Father would say: “Forgive me if I have wronged you”. These words provoked our immediate response: “Forgive us, Father!”. And he would say: “At night, when you go to bed, always ask for forgiveness from each other, even if you have not quarrelled during the day”. And so, little by little, we learned to ask for forgiveness from each other more easily when it was really necessary, which was very difficult for us before. We often thought that Father Crăciun would depart to the Lord from the confession chair, because he spent a lot of time in confession. Sometimes he would even joke and say: “I tell everyone that ‘exploitation of man by man’ is only allowed in one case: with the priest. So, people, exploit me, it’s allowed!

“Do you know that pigeons never step in the mud?”

During Passion Week 2011, Father caught a very bad case of pneumonia. But he didn’t want to be hospitalised until the third day after the Resurrection, after he had fulfilled all his priestly duties. He confessed almost non-stop throughout Holy Week, he celebrated the Liturgy of the Resurrection on all three days of Easter, without people realising how ill he was – but when he was admitted to hospital he had to be put on the oxygen tube as that was the only way he could breathe! Since then, Father has never fully recovered. While he was in hospital, he put crumbs on the windowsill every day for the pigeons, who loved to peck at them. One day, when we visited him, he told us these words:

“Do you know that pigeons never step on mud? That’s why the Holy Spirit was symbolised by a dove. So be careful what you do with your souls, because he can’t get in there just like that”.

To show the importance of sincere and pure confession of all sins, Father told this story to many of the faithful:

“A woman went to confess to a priest in a monastery. This woman also had a very serious sin which she could not confess. She said something, tried to say something about the big sin, but stopped; she said something again, tried again to say something about the sin and failed – and finally left the confessional with the big sin still unconfessed. One day a monk, who had spiritual vision and had a certain ministry in the church, asked the spiritual father what was the matter with this woman, because he had seen her leave confession in a very black state. When asked what he had seen, the monk gave a detailed account of how, at each confession, he saw many small snakes coming out of the woman’s mouth; and a very large one kept getting ready to come out, sticking its head out, and then pulling itself back in, and so on and so forth, and in the end all the small snakes came back in with the large one”.

“What a wonderful man!”

In the summer of 2009, a family of friends living in Italy came to the country for a holiday. The wife was six months pregnant. During our conversation, I urged her to go to confession, as she hadn’t done so since her wedding, which was years ago. She was more receptive to the advice, but her husband was not at all willing, finding all sorts of excuses and reasons. We called Father Crăciun, who told us to go to Cinciș that very evening. When we arrived at the church, the gentleman told us clearly once again that he would not go to confession – because he had nothing to confess. Then we all went into the church. Father had another group of young people from Timișoara to confess. It was a warm, quiet and relaxed atmosphere, maintained by Father with a joke. When we entered, Father Crăciun came towards us, bright and cheerful as always, and said a few words of the Spirit, which had the gift of relaxing the faces of our friends, the future parents. Father read the prayer for everyone. The future father also took part – he was probably ashamed to come out to pray. Then Father took us one by one to confession. After a few hours, when it was past midnight, Father finished confessing our friend, who was the last to go. As we were leaving the church and getting ready to go home, we saw our friend rushing into the church where he stayed with Father for more than an hour. It’s hard to describe the light and happiness on the boy’s face when he came out of confession! He kept saying: “What a wonderful man! I have never met such a man! What a wonderful man! In addition to the canon of prayer, Father told them to fast on Wednesdays and Fridays and to receive Holy Communion only one week before the woman gave birth. We thought that our friends, who had returned to Italy without any spiritual support, would not be able to carry out what they had been told. But Father Christmas had taken them into his prayer! How much Father’s word penetrated their souls and how much he helped them with his prayers can be seen from the following story: on a day of fasting, our friend went with his colleagues from the company where he worked to a café where they were served some non-fasting appetizers. Without realising it, he tasted them and when he realised that they were not fast food, he, who had never fasted before, was so upset because he had only eaten one cheese biscuit! Exactly one week before the woman gave birth, the two young people went to communion. She gave birth to a healthy and beautiful baby girl with whom they had come to the country last year to worship at the tomb of Father Christmas – the one whose love had changed their lives.

Finding her lost son

Father Crăciun had a special gift of prayer. All those who asked him to pray for them felt much benefit. But Father, like all of God’s chosen people, knew how to hide his work in humility, attributing all his success to God alone. A family of the faithful from Orăștie, who had Father Ioan Săbău as their confessor, were going through a difficult time: one of the children, a student, had disappeared two months ago. All the parents’ searches had been in vain. One day, Father Săbău told them: “Go to Father Crăciun, he will surely find a solution”. So the two fathers humbled themselves before each other, each considering the other more worthy and honourable. Father Christmas taught them to make a sărindar (i.e. to take the prosphora to forty Liturgies). On the day of the fortieth Liturgy, the boy sent a letter to his parents telling them that he was in a monastery.

The dilemma of the surgery

A devout woman from Hunedoara had a seriously ill father-in-law. The doctors said he needed an emergency operation, but gave him little chance of success. In her hour of need, someone urged the woman to ask Father Crăciun for advice. With his natural simplicity and characteristic charm, Father Christmas told her these words:

“Tonight, pray for him as best you can. And tomorrow morning, when you wake up, wash your face, say your morning prayers, and then call me again.”

The woman did just that, and when she called him in the morning, Father said these words:

“Don’t let your father-in-law have an operation, may he enjoy his grandchildren and all the days God gives him!”

This lady’s father-in-law is still alive today…

Mr. M’s inquiries

God, who ordains everything in a wonderful way, as only He knows how, ordained that Mr. M. from Deva, who suffered from a disease that made him unable to leave the house, should meet Father Crăciun and fall in love with him. Father often said, “I love this man so much. How he knows how to bear his suffering and how he has come to know God through his illness…”. On the occasion of a Holy Liturgy celebrated in his house, Father Crăciun brought him the “Treatise on Mysticism” by M. Nichifor Crainic, and another priest brought him the “Dogmatics” by Father Dumitru Stăniloae. After Mass, Fr. Crăciun said to Mr. M.: “We brought you these. Read them and tell us which is better. And what you don’t understand, write it down on a piece of paper and ask me when we will meet again”. Mr M. did just that, writing down everything he didn’t understand in the two books. At the first meeting with Father Crăciun, before he showed him the paper with the notes, Father Crăciun started talking to him, telling him a story that did not seem to make sense at first. Then he told him another, then another… It wasn’t until the third story that Mr. M. realised that what Father was telling him was actually an answer to all the inquiries written on the paper. On another occasion, the same gentleman told a friend who had come to visit him one evening that he missed Father Crăciun very much, as it had been three months since he had seen him. The next day, someone knocked on his door and, opening it slightly, said: “I have come to satisfy your longing”. It was Father Christmas.

The dismissal of a dying man

A 60-year-old spiritual son of Father Crăciun in Deva, who was dying of illness, was desperate to see Father Crăciun one last time. His daughter called Father urgently, and although it was the middle of the night, he did not hesitate to go. When he arrived, he found the sick man in convulsions. He placed the epitrachelion  on his head and read the prayers for the soul’s departure, after which he calmed down. The priest left the room, said a few words of encouragement to the family and then addressed these words to those who had agreed to drive him to the bedside in the middle of the night:

“Now we must go, because I know from experience that many people cannot cross over when the priest is there”.

Then Father went back to the dying man to say goodbye. Quietly, but with a very weak voice, the sick man managed to say: “Thank you”. About three or four minutes after they left the house, as they drove through an intersection, Father Christmas took off his prayer shawl, folded his hands and began to pray in silence. After a few moments, the sick man’s daughter called the driver of the car to tell him that her father had gone to be with the Lord…

The attempts of the father’s wife

The priestess Anișoara also had to suffer with Father Crăciun. Father said that the enemy also takes revenge for good advice given to help someone. That’s why Father felt he owed it to his family to remember them in every prayer he said, because if the enemy couldn’t beat him because of his priestly garb, he would beat his family. One summer, Father had to confess a special case, a very difficult situation. On the same day, the priest’s wife had a car accident and injured her hand and leg. The hand was so swollen and black that the doctors didn’t know what to do. The priestess stayed like that, with her hand bandaged, for two weeks, until the 14th of August, when the priest confessed her and gave her Holy Communion the next day, on St Mary’s Day. The priestess remained in the hospital in prayer, and after a few hours she felt something warm running down her hand. It was a sticky black liquid with a strong odour. This prompted the doctors to operate urgently. After the operation, the doctors told her that if she delayed the operation any longer, the consequences would be tragic. A few days after the operation, the priestess had another problem: her big toe was swollen, red and very painful. She was diagnosed with gout. That same day, Father Crăciun was due to celebrate Liturgy in Hunedoara. On the way, he stopped at the hospital to see the priestess. He left for Liturgy, leaving her very upset and in pain. On his return, the Father went to see the priestess again and found her happy: there was no more pain, swelling or redness. She asked the Father what time the Holy Liturgy had ended and she confided that at that moment she was freed from her suffering and from this difficult diagnosis, which to this day has never been confirmed again.

(E.D. – Orthodox Family Magazine No. 4, April 2013, pp. 6-10)