Memories from the second row about Father Galeriu

I am not one of Father Galeriu’s close students. Although I was in St. Sylvester’s Church Sunday after Sunday during the last six years of his life, I was always a mere anonymous spectator, one of the masses that more often than not filled the church to capacity.

My memories and thoughts, therefore, are “from the second row”, from the distance at which I was mostly with His Holiness – perhaps relevant, however, precisely from this perspective, namely from the perspective of the many, the very many, on whom the Father’s charismatic influence was manifested from afar, from the distance of television broadcasts, public talks, audio and video recordings, or even the sermon or the priestly service in the Church.

I really got to know the Church relatively late, at the beginning of 1997, when I was in my fourth year at university and 22 years old, in a context where, in very difficult personal circumstances, I was running to God in a rather “utilitarian” way, as a last resort for salvation, knowing little about Him and almost nothing about ecclesial life. And the Church I found in “St. Sylvester”, where I arrived – I would have said by chance, but I no longer remember that the Father used to repeat that “nothing is by chance, but everything is by providence” – one January day, looking for Fr. Galeriu, I knew nothing about him at that time, but about his no less worthy co-servant, Fr. Nicholas, who would later become our spiritual father, godfather and godfather of the four children God gave us. But when we arrived in the Church, it happened to us, too, according to the words of the Psalmist, “Taste and see how good the Lord is” (Ps 33:8) – we tasted and stayed with Him, we tasted and stayed in St Sylvester’s Oblate. And the good taste of God and of His Church I felt to a great extent thanks to the impressive personalities of the three priest ministers of that time: Father Galeriu, Father Nicolae (Bordașiu) and Father Ștefan (Alexe).

Father “burned” when he spoke to his listeners

I met Father Galeriu at Sunday Mass. I had heard of him before, I had seen him passing by on television or on the balcony of University Square, but I was not “hooked” on his word and his presence until I saw him in ministry and, above all, until I heard him preach in church.

Much has been said and written about Father’s extraordinary words, even academic works in the field of practical theology – although, paradoxically, Father’s sermon broke all the canons of school homiletics (which I was to encounter many years later when I also studied theology), from the 10-minute rule to the typologies and homiletical structures in textbooks. I will therefore stop at just two personal impressions of His Holiness’ sermons. The first attribute that comes to mind is “incandescent”. Incandescent was indeed his word – Father “burned” when he spoke to his listeners, and in this burning he conveyed not so much an idea as a state, an experience of faith in the preached One of extraordinary strength and intensity. Listening to him, something stirred within me, an indefinable stirring of the deepest self, where the Father used to tell us that the image of Christ is “indestructible”, in the depths “in the treasuries” (Ps 32:7) of each one of us. I was later to realise that the fire that burned and that Father transmitted was not “of this world”, but was the power of the Spirit working with him – in fact illustrating “in life” the inspired verses of T.S. Eliot. Eliot – which it is no coincidence that Father quoted: “Until the eye catches fire, God cannot be seen; until the ear catches fire, God cannot be heard; until the tongue catches fire, God cannot be named; until the heart catches fire, God cannot be loved; until the mind catches fire, God cannot be known.”

My second thought about the qualities of his preaching is that he had the gift, and perhaps even the intention, of always taking you beyond yourself. It was not easy to listen to Father Galeriu’s sermon; it was hardly possible to follow it and understand it thoroughly. For one thing, it never lasted less than an hour, and not infrequently went well beyond that, not to mention the fact that it began at about the same time as the rest of the service. Secondly, the discourse was not linear, but full of volutes, excursions and references to all four corners of theology, literature, science and philosophy. Last but not least, the content was highly theological, seemingly without any concern to lower the level of common understanding in any way. All this made the Sunday sermon a challenge to be met, willingly or not – always with strained attention, sometimes with frustration at the lack of meaning. But paradoxically, despite the difficulty, the priest’s sermon attracted you like a magnet, constantly pulling you beyond your limits – and the enormous difference in theological level between the speaker and the listeners had the effect in this context of opening up a huge appetite for a better understanding of the divine. An appetite which, once whetted, sent many a Sylvester to theological college past his prime.

A warm presence in the church

Aside from the sermon, the other striking image that comes back to me with even more affection and longing is his presence in the church – warm, serene, smiling and peace-giving. In particular, the blessing with his hand on the forehead, always accompanied by a benevolent smile and a loving look, and not infrequently, unexpectedly, by a fatherly kiss – which Father Galeriu generously shared with all those who queued up to give him the altar servers or the anointing at the end of Mass. And no less wonderful was the blessing with which he always ended the final word after Mass – usually reserved for administrative and organisational matters, but with the priest it sometimes became a little homily after the homily: “Divine joy and a heart in serene light! Amen!”

I also have fond memories of Father celebrating the Sacrament of Matrimony – I can see him reciting the blessings in his inimitable way (“Bless them, O Lord our God, as you blessed Abraham and Sarah…”), or lovingly explaining to us the symbolism of the ring. Then came the shock of the stroke and the heavy suffering of the paresis that followed, despite which Father made a terrible effort to speak once more in church – with difficulty, very difficult, from his wheelchair, very weak, and barely managing to utter a last word to the crowd of his parish family – a dramatic reminder, in this context of intense emotion, of the theological synthesis of the Gospel of John (17:3): “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent”.

After that, Father stopped speaking to us in church, but in our longing for his words, many of us soon discovered the treasure trove of a large number of recordings, mostly audio – not just sermons, but absolutely extraordinary lectures – which, long before they became abundantly available on the Internet, were circulating on audio cassettes, copied from person to person. Since then, Father has been very often present in our car – especially on long journeys – and I must confess that I understood many of his teachings (for example, about the two deaths and two resurrections, or about the three lights) better in the car on the road to Suceava or Brașov than years ago live in the church.

 (Tudor Radu – Ziarul Lumina, electronic edition of 9 August 2013)