Justin Pârvu – a priest-monk of high moral purity

I now have the opportunity to meet Father Justin Pârvu, a priest-monk who began his noviciate as a child in the Durău Hermitage. Tall and slender, serene and silent, with a soft and clear voice that is seldom heard at the age of 35-36, he seems to be taken from the ascetic iconography of Byzantine Orthodoxy, an image that compels me not only because of his appearance and behaviour, but also because of the thought that he has a long sentence.

Unlike the monks whose chosen path has made them hard and stiff in their dealings with others, seeming to blame them for the renunciations they have chosen to make, Father Justin has something indefinable, good and bright, conquering and discreet in his nature.

I met him after 23 years of searching for him, like many of the local faithful, in the monastery of Bistrița, the foundation of Alexander the Good, and as much as we were moved by the farewell, I was deeply moved by the answer to his request to pray for me: “And I ask you to pray for me, the sinner!”. When a priest-monk of such high moral purity asks you, a lay sinner, to pray for him, you must be too dark-minded and thick-skinned to remain indulgent with yourself and tolerant of your temptations after such an encounter.

After the revolution, I experienced two moments of joy: news and new opinions about Father Justin Pârvu.

First, in September 1990, another former political prisoner, Iacob Pintilie from Piatra-Neamț, told me that Father Justin had retired to the Secu monastery, which, thanks to his presence, had become a true place of pilgrimage for the Moldavian faithful. […]

The second moment: in the spring of 1991, two of the members of the reflection group for the renewal of the Romanian Orthodox Church: Archimandrite Bartolomeu Anania, in an interview given to the “Christian Page” of the newspaper România libera, and Father Iustin Marchiș, then abbot of the Cheia Monastery, in an interview with the radio station Europa libera, referred to Father Iustin Pârvu as one of the personalities of the spiritual elite of contemporary Romanian Orthodoxy.

Could I have stopped looking for Father Justin Pârvu?

On the road between Pipirig and Poiana Teiului, on the right side of the commune Petru Vodă, the road sign points to the Petru Vodă Hermitage.

I went and saw it: it is not a hermitage, but a monastery, built between 1991-1995 on the initiative and through the hard work of Father Iustin Pârvu, helped by the faithful. There are 30 souls under his obedience: six priest-monks, four of whom are between 30 and 35 years old, 12 monks, and the rest are aspirants and lay people. The new monastic settlement, which lives according to the rules of Mount Athos, has a large church with central heating, a separate bell tower and accommodation for children, all new and complete.

Protosyngellos Iustin Pârvu, between 1991 and 1995, i.e. 72-76 years of his life, fulfilled a dream from prison: a monastery in his native place, his part of the inheritance of his parents, after 16 years in Aiud, in the mines of Baia Sprie and Cavnic, in Gherla, Jilava and Periprava.

(Gheorghe Stănescu – Jurnal din prigoană, Venus Publishing House, Bucharest, 1996, pp. 172-173)