“I was not tormented by the blows I received. Frankly, I was tormented by the human decay.”

Father Professor Galeriu, many people will know and respect you, but few know that in 1952 the Communists deported you to the Canal for forced labour. What guilt could they find in a man like you?

At that time I was working in the church of St. Vasile in Ploiești, preaching and above all doing what we call catechesis, that is, sharing with the people the doctrine of Christ the Saviour, the doctrine of the Church. I would like to point out that at that time the Church was very humiliated and we, its Orthodox ministers, did not have the freedom to do religious catechesis. All the other sects had this privilege, provided for in their own statutes, according to their own beliefs, while we had to concentrate them all only during the morning service of Holy Mass. And there was no time. After Holy Mass it was either a parish, a baptism or a wedding, so we were practically deprived of the possibility of giving this religious instruction.

But I, in defiance of the authorities, gave this catechesis on Sunday afternoons when many people came. And then, in 1952, on the 15th of August, I was arrested and, after two months in prison, I was taken to the Canal, to the Black Valley.

Father Professor, why this fear of the communist authorities? Why were words desecrated in the first place?

You mentioned two aspects: first the mystery and then the power of the Word. Moreover, we know that, both religiously and scientifically, man is distinguished from other creatures by his thoughts and words. This is the specificity, this is the human condition, and for us Christians the Word is God Himself. And man, even in the image of God, is a speaking being. The Logos is called in the Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word (the Logos)”. The Word came from God and God was the Word. In Greek, Logos means both reason and word. We have translated the word as an expression of reason, and the word is this divine and human way of communicating, of sharing our inner mystery… And so, in this spirit, we shared the Word, the Word-Maker. The Fathers used to say: “Tell me the Word! But what word? “The word that benefits me”. The Word of God is the creative Word: all things were created by His Word.

Father Professor, what role has the Church played in our public morality?

I am convinced that the Romanian people is a deeply Christian people. So the basis of our morality is the Christian basis. My dear, if I may say so, the Romanian people is a Christian people from its cradle. Our ethnogenesis also includes the Christian baptism, because we were born Romanians and Christians at the same time, in this Daco-Roman fusion. The Gospel, the Christian love, served as a bond between the Romanians who came here and the Daco-Greeks… And we have an apostolic faith, since the apostle Andrew preached here… So our morality is basically a Christian morality. European morality itself is a Christian morality, because Europe is Christian, and all the currents that have emerged since the Renaissance, for example, have been influenced by this: even though Renaissance humanism addressed the world before Christ the Saviour, it could not escape this Christian humanist vision. It was a pairing. In antiquity they had in mind the principle called Kalokagathia, the unity of inner goodness and physical beauty. But after Christ, Kalokaghatia became Philokalia, the love of spiritual beauty, and this remained in history…

In the new democracy that has hopefully begun in Romania, what role will the Church play? I am thinking first of all of education.

Yes, moral education is a fundamental factor. I would like to clarify: public morality, you said, but what is morality in the first place? It is human behaviour, and at the social level, it is the social commandments. In other words, the content [of morality] is human actions and deeds. But human actions and deeds, morality, must have a theological or philosophical foundation… We Christians can base a true morality only on the divine absolute. In other words, we cannot speak of love, goodness, justice, tolerance, unless we anchor and ground them in the divine. For example, it is simple that I believe in you and you believe in me. But neither of us can be the absolute, we cannot be of absolute credit. I believe in you and you believe in me, i.e. I believe in you and you believe in me, if we both believe in the same truth and refer to the same commandment, the same divine order or harmony, which is above you and me. Public morality, if it does not refer to a stable, absolute foundation, is somewhat suspended, fragile…

I would like to invite you to look for a moment at the immediate reality in which we live. It seems to me that, in addition to economic chaos, we have inherited moral and social chaos. What must be done to bring order to this world, to find a way out?

You’re right, absolutely right… We have gained freedom, but what do we do with it? Do we strengthen sin, evil, do we show at the same time the affirmation of freedom and its loss? In other words, we have freedom, but if we use it badly, evil will reign. Freedom to do evil is not freedom but slavery. We enslave ourselves to evil. And then, think, as far as we are concerned, we have to restore man, as Revelation testifies, in the image of God. We all carry the image of God deep within us. And we are called to a continuous likeness to Him, to God, and this likeness has been fully revealed to us by the Saviour Christ. I would like to say here: we all speak of humanism today, but when you speak of humanism, you have to give a model of humanity. In the whole history of humanity, can we find an absolute model among human beings that we can point to and say: “Here is a man without blemish and without weakness”? No. And then, specifically, the human model for us is not a mere man, but God the Man, it is Christ, that is, the Son of God made man; and then it is to Him that we refer for our edification, He is the supreme model… All my life I have been searching for a fundamental criterion that defines the good and distinguishes good from evil. I remember that about 30 years ago, in the 1960s, there was a film about Zorba the Greek, based on the novel by Kazantzakis, in which Zorba, on the one hand, boasted that at 60 he was able to do I don’t know what on a biological level, but not on a spiritual level, and he said eagerly: “Well, what is good, what is evil? I was so tormented and I was looking for a fundamental criterion, I was on the road, in my services, and I was constantly tormented by this thought. Until, in my inner trembling, I discovered this criterion, namely the creative meaning of my thought, my word, my action, that is, of everything in this world of creation, to be guided by a creative meaning. And I realised what man eats. Food, drink, everything is, if you like, building material with which I build my human being, with which I maintain it. What is marriage? The cradle of generations. But debauchery is the ruin of me and of generations. A loaf of bread builds me up, greed ruins me. A glass of wine builds me up, drunkenness destroys me… Good is all that builds, that gives life, that saves; evil is all that is devoid of creative meaning, such as passions, appetites, pleasures, that is, those things in which the senses no longer rule, but the senses rule? That is why good creates and evil destroys… How can we restore order to our nation? Let us do it so that our nation remains Christian, so that it remains in that word of our humanity that was violated [by communism]. Desecrated words. We dream that love, goodness between people, peace, social justice… will remain fundamental. I have to believe in the power of the victory of good. I was attacked by robbers on the night of 7-8 July 1989. I was not tormented by the blows I received. To be honest, I was tormented by human decay. How can you beat someone who has done you no harm and who says: “Take what you want! That’s all the tragedy I felt in my being. How can we heal when there have been, forgive me if you are listening, monsters in our midst? How can we heal our nation? Let it not happen again. Our nation is so good in history that, as you know, we did not have executioners, executioners were imported, that is, those who had to carry out the death penalty, so good were we! Once the executioners were foreigners, and now we, brothers, rob and kill each other, or want each other dead! May God make every word of our humility a word of balm and healing, so that we may all feel our unity in faith, truth and love, so that we may return to our former goodness and build a Romania free in good and not in evil. Indeed, somewhere in Revelation it says that the Gentiles will bring their honour and glory [before God]. May our Romanian nation truly bring its glory, not chaos, may it discover to the world unity and spiritual, moral and physical health, according to the uncorrupted nature, and may this state always lead us to great consciousness and creative worthiness! So help us God. Amen.

(Interview by Vartan Aracheliat – The Word that builds, Roza Vânturilor Publishing House, Bucharest, 1993, pp. 5-12)