Memories of Father Benedict Ghiuș, from prisons and the Burning Bush

I met Fr. Benedict Ghiuș in the autumn of 1936, when he was a hieromonk and, on his way from Chișinău to Strasbourg-France, stopped at the monastery of Cernica to visit the monastic seminary, where I was then in the fourth grade.

He joined our class with the Father Superior of the Seminary, Archimandrite Chesarie Păunescu. Father Benedict was young, civilly dressed, with the beginnings of a beard, a gentle face, blue eyes and a pleasant, clear voice.

He told us something about the spiritual life of Benedictine monastic students at the Maria-Laah Monastery in Germany, where he had been preparing for his doctorate the year before. He spoke specifically about the orderly and sober faith of the Benedictine students and urged us to be diligent in our teaching and attentive to our spiritual life because, he said, our Holy Church needs pious and well-prepared people. Father Benedict’s warm and persuasive words made a lasting impression on the whole class.

In November 1943 I met Father Benedict again at Antim Monastery.

Metropolitan Gurie Grosu of Bessarabia, who had ordained Father Benedict priest and confessor, was now in exile at Antim Monastery. He fell ill and was taken to the Brâncovenean Hospital in the capital. He died in the hospital and was taken to Antim Monastery, where a national funeral was held for him, presided over by the Minister of Religious Affairs, Ioan Petrovici.

Father Benedict took part in the funeral of the Metropolitan in the great church of the Antim Monastery, together with the monks of the monastery at that time, in the choir of priests and monks from Bessarabia and the mountains.

Then, in January 1944, I witnessed his election as Bishop of Hotin in the Parliament Hall. The meeting was presided over by Metropolitan Tit Simedrea of Bukovina.

Although he had not put himself forward as a candidate and had not made any election propaganda, nor was he present in the hall, but was in his cell in the Antim Monastery, the members of the Eparchial Assembly of the Diocese of Hotin and the members of the then Holy Synod put his name on the ballot paper together with the name of the official candidate.

Fr. Benedict received an absolute majority of votes and was elected Bishop of Hotin.

Summoned from his cell in Antim Monastery and asked if he welcomed the election, Fr. Benedict humbly replied that he did. Then, in a short and moving speech, he thanked the electors for this special honour.

This election, however, was arbitrarily annulled by the then Vice-President of the Council of Ministers, Mihai Antonescu, under the malicious influence of the enemies of the elected.

Father Benedict resigned and returned to Antim Monastery, where a few days later he was asked to leave the monastery and move elsewhere.

Although he knew the source of this bitterness and was convinced that God allowed such trials, he moved into the house of General Traian Tetrat, near the monastery.

In August of the same year he was called to teach at the Arad Theological Seminary.

In 1945, on the basis of a very demanding competition, Father Benedict accepted the post of University Assistant at the Faculty of Theology in Bucharest, for the Department of Asceticism and Mysticism, with Nichifor Crainic as titular professor and, after his arrest, Father Dumitru Stăniloae, who came from Sibiu, who applied for the post only in the autumn of 1946. At that time I was in the fourth year of theology.

In the absence of the professor, during the academic year 1945-1946, Fr. Benedict, in addition to the seminary classes, also taught the course in Ascetic and Mystical Theology, which he gave as an assistant.

With his profound theological formation, his clear thinking and logic, the precision and clarity of his expressions, and his personal experience of these hermit realities, Father Benedict was a true fountain of theology, so much so that in his classes there was silence in the lecture hall and the students, including myself, listened with joy to the graceful words of the speaker. Benedict’s classes were also attended by students from other faculties, so that the large hall of the Faculty of Theology was often full.

Between 1945 and 1946 the Christian movement “Burning Bush” was born in Antim Monastery, inspired by the Bible (Exodus III, 2-5). According to the interpretation of Father Hieroschemamonk Daniil Teodorescu, the initiator of this movement, the “Burning Bush”, which burned and did not move, was the symbol of unceasing prayer, the prayer of Jesus.

The essence of the Burning Bush was unceasing prayer.

Father Benedict, then assistant professor of asceticism and mysticism at the Faculty of Theology in Bucharest, was at the centre of these concerns of the “Burning Bush”. The conferences held at that time in the library of the Antim Monastery were generally devoted to the theme of prayer.

These meetings were usually held on Sunday afternoons. On weekday evenings, only we, some of the monastery staff, would gather in the library room with Fr. Benedict and Fr. Daniil, and we would read and comment on the Philocalic texts on the Prayer of Jesus. I should mention that at that time, from 1940, during the war and after it, until 1948-1950, there were more than 40 people in Antim Monastery, some of them monastic students, graduates of the monastic seminary of Cernica Monastery, who became students of the Faculty of Theology and other faculties (medicine, literature, fine arts), and some of them monks and brothers who worked in the silver workshop of the Biblical Institute, which had its seat in this monastery.

Father Benedict also lived in Antim at that time. […]

In the autumn of 1945, Father John Culighin arrived from Russia with Metropolitan Nicholas of Rostov, whose confessor he was. With the consent of Patriarch Nicodemus, they were received in the monastery of Cernica. Every Saturday Fr. John would come from Cernica to Antim Monastery and take part in the Sunday afternoon “Burning Bush” meetings in the library hall.

John had lived in Optina Monastery in northern Russia since childhood and had mastered the Jesus Prayer. Now in his 60s, Fr John was very familiar with the writings of the Philokalic Fathers and had a wealth of experience of living this prayer in the harsh conditions of life in Communist Russia. He was a witness to the Jesus Prayer and his presence was of great practical benefit to the Burning Bush between 1945 and 1947, until he was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment in Odessa prison.

Father Benedict received a special blessing from Father John, tantamount to an initiation into the prayer of Jesus.

But the Burning Bush, which led its members to practice the Jesus Prayer, which brought much peace to souls, was considered by the atheist political authorities of the time to be a conspiratorial organisation, hostile to the state order, although in reality they were not enemies of the state.

As a result, they were arrested. The most guilty among them, according to the Security Service, were 16 laymen and monks accused of conspiring against the social order.

Father Daniil Teodorescu and Father Benedict Ghiuș, the initiator of this Christian movement, who kept the flame of the “Burning Fire” burning and not moving, were among the 16 arrested and sentenced to hard years of imprisonment.

Among the 16 arrested and imprisoned was myself, who is writing these lines.

We were all arrested on the same night of 13-14 June 1958.

We all saw each other for the first time since our arrest at the trial, in the courtroom of the military court in Bucharest, then in Jilava. In Aiud we saw each other only partially. We also saw each other partially 4 years later, in the Salcia forced labour colony near Brăila.

While we were in Jilava, crammed into a large cell with walls blackened by fuel oil, where there were many other orphans besides us, Father Benedict, his face radiant, imposed himself from the beginning with his gentle, convincing and wise words as a great comfort to all those present – civilians, officers, priests, doctors, monks, young and old – so that we completely forgot the misery in which we were.

After 4 years of hard, hard life in Aiud, static, cellular life, in conditions of misery and extermination, we were taken out to do hard labour.

Under the Aiud regime any activity, no matter how small, was forbidden. You had to sit around and do nothing. And it was very hard not to be allowed to work. Under the forced labour regime, on the other hand, you had to work without a break.

In the Salcia forced labour colony, we saw Father Benedict and other colleagues from the “Burning Bush” for more than two years: in the barracks, with bunk beds; in the prison yard, carefully guarded and surrounded by barbed wire, either doing farm work or digging the earth and carrying the wheelbarrow on the embankment, day after day, from morning to night, except Sundays, in all seasons.

In the first days after his release from Aiud, Father Benedict, weak, with a wizened face, weakened by rheumatism, could hardly go out to work. Every morning I saw him shaven and clean-shaven, wearing the same striped clothes, with a wheelbarrow in his hands or a hoe on his shoulder. After a few weeks, the daily work in the open air, the slightly more substantial food than in the cell, the daily trips to and from work and back to the barracks, and above all the uninterrupted prayer in silence, strengthened him both physically and spiritually.

Especially on Sundays, groups were formed in the prison yard, and in each group there was at least one priest, because there were about a thousand prisoners in Salcia, of whom a hundred were priests. The largest group of all was that around Father Benedict.

He prayed for us all and then spoke to us from the Scriptures, from the Holy Fathers, from history and from his own life. He spoke to us from the inexhaustible richness of his knowledge and from the fullness of his grace-filled heart.

His words, full of light and encouragement, went straight to the heart like true spiritual food, rejoicing and strengthening us so that we could bear the sufferings of imprisonment more easily, while increasing our trust in the God of our fathers.

On 25 June 1964, after 6 years of communist imprisonment, he was released. 

On the 1st of September of the same year, he was reinstated as a priest of the Patriarchal Cathedral where he had been arrested. After 6 years of service at the Patriarchal Cathedral as priest and high confessor, in 1974, at the age of 70, Father Benedict retired to the monastery of Cernica, near the relics of St. Hierarch Calinic, to whom he had a special devotion.

The time he spent in Cernica was divided between prayer at home and in the church and his monastic and scholarly activities.

I, who was then in the monastery of Antim, visited him often. These visits were great celebrations for me.

I often found him diorthotising the Prologues from Cyrillic into Latin.

These Prologues, diorthotised and much improved by Fr. Benedict, with the lives of the Saints throughout the year and with many useful teachings of the soul, have become rich spiritual food for many faithful Christians after their printing in 1991 and their distribution in our country.

At other times I would find him reading from a newly published book or talking to or confessing to a spiritual son who had come from the capital, for he had many spiritual sons who often visited him in the tranquillity of Cernica.

Sometimes we would find him in the church, praying in silence or helping the monastery fathers to pray the prayer rope.

Wherever he was, there was always a smile on his lips and peace in his heart, the blessed fruit of the ceaseless prayer he truly practised.

When I returned to Antim Monastery, I carried in my memory his bright and gentle face, and in my heart the freshness of his words, which were of great spiritual benefit.

Although he suffered from an old rheumatism that had accompanied him in prison, and in the last part of his life he also had a serious wound on one leg, I never heard him complain about these shortcomings or blame any of his former enemies. God had given him the strength to forgive from the bottom of his heart.

When his suffering worsened and became unbearable, he was taken to a hospital in the capital by one of his many friends and spiritual sons.

Father Benedict died in his cell in the monastery of Cernica on 12 June 1990. He died like a candle of pure wax, burning himself, enlightening and benefiting many with his knowledge and above all with the example of his life of dedication.

(Pr. Sofian Boghiu – Benedict Ghiuș, the confessor of the heart, edited by Gheorghe Vasilescu, România Creștină Publishing House, Bucharest, 1998, pp. 3-11)