Mother Olga, a cultured woman, very merciful and kind

The first memory of my life is hazy, not very clear, I seem to have been dreaming, but I think it happened.

It was at night, I had arrived in a cart from the convent of Bistrița in Vâlcea to the orphanage of the Protection of the Mother of God. There were about ten children in the cart, aged between one and five. I was three years old. Around the cart there were shadows that pulled us down, either by an arm or a leg. They were nuns from Bistrița, the convent that housed and ran the orphanage. You couldn’t see very well, they had lanterns and candles, there was no electricity in the convent. The nuns had the obedience that when the children arrived, they would take them in and choose one or two to look after. The director of the orphanage was Mother Olga Gologan, who was constantly assisted by her sister, Theodosia Gologan.

We went to the dormitory. There were large dormitories for 40-50 people, double beds with hay and mats. We slept for a while with the nuns and sisters who looked after us. I don’t remember any other details until I went to kindergarten and then primary school. I was particularly impressed when, in the fourth class of primary school, the nuns began to teach us hymns, at first easier ones, such as the Resurrection Blessing and the Nativity Carol. We were very happy when it was our turn to sing in the middle of the church. Since kindergarten, the nuns had been telling us about the life of Jesus, starting with his birth. On all the feast days, they told us about the different moments in the Saviour’s life: teachings, miracles, etc. The children sat on a large bed around a nun who told us the story almost in a whisper, with love and conviction. And this fact impressed me.

In the convent of Bistrița there were schools, kindergartens, primary and secondary schools, in the first years it was a seminary, then it became a high school at the request of the leaders of the surrounding villages who wanted to send their children to the convent school. The director of the schools and the orphanage was the abbess of the convent, Mother Olga Gologan, an educated, cultured and very kind woman. Because she had brought us all up, we called her Mother Olga. She had beautiful initiatives, she had presence and authority, but this did not detract from her gentleness. We didn’t attend all the services, but the nuns taught us certain prayers which we sang in the evening and in the morning outside the church. They were the troparia and the concelebrations of the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of St. Gregory the Decapolite, whose holy relics are there. Mother Olga used to tell us that our mother was the Mother of God and the Father, St. Gregory. She urged us to pray to them for all our needs. On big days, like Christmas and the Resurrection, she made us new clothes, dresses, aprons or shoes, dressed us for church and told us that we were going to Jerusalem to be very good. Mother Olga also told us that the abbess of the convent was the Mother of God and that her holiness replaced her, but the Mother of God told her everything she had to do. That’s why she never stayed in the convent. She put an icon of the Mother of God in the pew and taught us that we had to take all the blessings from there for the offerings in the convent. We also had a very large icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in which the painted scenes and people were almost life-size, placed in a large room, which we called the meditation room, because that’s where we prepared our lessons. The icon had a special beauty, the people seemed to come to us, the children who often prayed in front of it.

Mother Olaga had a special devotion to the Mother of God and it never happened that when she pronounced her name she didn’t cry, she transmitted this feeling to us, we were moved and we cried too. Miracles happened to this icon. Whenever the nuns were in trouble or in need, we prayed to the Mother of God, the whole congregation and us children. I remember that once we ran out of food and there was no money to buy it… Mother Olga came crying to the workshop where we were working and told us to go to the church and pray with tears for Our Lady to help us, which we did. After praying, some nuns noticed some carts at the convent gate. They went to see what it was. Some villagers from a more distant parish had lost their way on the road to the market. When they found out that there was a monastery there and that orphaned children were being looked after, they told them to unload the wagons. There were potatoes, flour, oil, sugar… All the convent cried of joy. Another time there was a shortage of money. The monastery had three or four salaries, and the orphanage was run by the monastery. Prayers were said. The next day a car with some rich ladies from Bucharest arrived at the convent. They visited our exhibition of art objects and then bought everything in the workshops: carpets, national embroidery, blouses, children’s dresses sewn with field flowers, ceramics, all made by the nuns. It was a very large amount and we were very happy.

As we grew older, we began to quarrel among ourselves, even among friends. Mother Olga would call us to the priory, ask us why we had quarrelled, make us all responsible, teach us that it was not nice to quarrel, hug and kiss us, then ask us to apologise, hug and kiss each other.

The Gologan nuns did not accept people over the age of 15 into the convent. Nor did they encourage us to make friends with people outside the convent. Later, about after the Second World War, they began to accept different and older people, many with physical defects, many who were ill. We sort of rebelled and said, why should they take in people who can’t work? Mother Olga scolded us, but gently: “Dear daughters, these people are very sorry for their physical handicaps! Why not help them? Isn’t it the role of the convent to comfort the suffering? What if there is a saint or even Christ among them? Should we expel Christ who needs our help? This is how Mother Olga touched us and taught us charity. Often poor people would come to church and sit with their hands outstretched. We would pass them by without making a gesture. Mother Olga used to tell us this: Dear daughters, when you see people with their hands outstretched, don’t pass them by without making a gesture. It is a great shame for them to stand with their hands outstretched, they are ashamed of it, but they have to do it. Give them something, a piece of bread, a sweet, a penny, or take them to the kitchen to eat. Do you think they are not tormented by this humiliation? God himself is among them, do you think he will not call us to account in His just judgement? Even if you have nothing, at least say a kind word to them.

Mother Olga was very merciful! When she encountered suffering, I could see her discreetly wiping her eyes.

She also had a great artistic talent, she loved everything beautiful, especially church services. On the eve of all the feasts, she would order all the good singers to refrain from any further obeisance and to prepare for the vigils by repeating the songs. In the church we had an Idiomelar on psalm notes, by Dumitru Suceveanu, with all the songs of the feast and of the great saints, they were of rare beauty and sweetness. Mother Olga was very anxious that all the songs should be known from the notes. Her Holiness also attended the rehearsals and emphasised the signs, called flowers, to be reproduced beautifully and correctly. She asked us to understand with our minds and feel with our hearts so that the singing would be as impressive as possible. At feast day Liturgies we sang the whole Liturgy in the choir, in three parts. It was so beautiful that even we who sang were moved! Metropolitan Firmilian of Craiova had heard of this choir and on many Sundays he would say I will listen to the violins of Bistrița. Mother Olga met a country priest who had musical talent and asked him to come to Bistrita twice a week to teach us religious songs for three voices. Mother Olga sat in on the rehearsals and often corrected the priest on the pronunciation of certain words. We learnt many religious songs from the Psalms: Go, O Lord, with thine ear; Until, O Lord, thou wilt forget me; Come, let us rejoice in the Lord; Who shall ascend the mountain of the Lord, etc. Mother Olga liked beauty and order. The sisters would obediently read from the Psalter and the Horologion, and when it was their turn to read in church, they would practise in the monastery courtyard with a loud voice. This was also because most of the ritual books were written in Cyrillic letters.

Mother Olga humbly observed the vow of voluntary poverty. Although she had material means through her work, she never personally benefited from money. When we were children, we made artistic programmes: choirs, recitations, religious plays, even theatre, mostly historical and religious, and most of them were composed by Mother Olga. During the summer, we used to perform these programmes in the seaside resorts of Vâlcea, in order to earn the money needed to support the orphans. All the work belonged to Mother Olga and the profits belonged to us. There was no electricity in the convent and Mother Olga decided to build her own power station using water from the Bistrița River. For this purpose she translated a book from French, Mama, very sweet, and a smaller one with moral and religious advice. Come to think of it, dear reader, he managed to bring electric light to the monastery with the money he earned from its sale. He did not care for material things; whenever he saw a nun in shabby clothes or without shoes, he would take off his holy anterior or take off his shoes and give them to the nun who had none. This was because clothes were made for the whole congregation once every year or two, but some clothes wore out more quickly. He didn’t like to see us dishevelled or with torn clothes. He never had more than two sets of clothes, so at his funeral there was only a shirt and a handkerchief in her wardrobe. He also took great care of our spiritual formation. Whenever he heard of a good confessor, he would invite him to Bistrita. Thus, many of the spiritual elite of the time passed through Bistrița. Fr. Arsenie Boca came around 1942. He stayed for a while, confessed us, spoke to us and explained many of the teachings of the Holy Fathers. He sent us a hundred girls from Ardeal, aged between 15 and 25, and so the convent’s oblast reached more than 300 inhabitants. They were very good girls, hardworking, pious, respectful and talented. They attended high school here. More than half of them became nuns. Arsenie Papacioc and Constantin Galeriu also visited us and we made much use of them, and in 19641 there was a “team” from Bucharest who practised the prayer of the heart: Sandu Tudor, Father Ghiuș, Father Sofian, Father Felix. They stayed for almost two months during the summer and were responsible for teaching a group of ten nuns to practise the Prayer of Jesus. They took a smaller group of nuns with them to work more intensively on the practice of prayer, believing that they in turn would train others. These nuns did not practice asceticism, but remained with the group of priests who were in charge of spiritual formation. At the end of the period they went to confession and received Holy Communion after a hard fast of ten days. Mother Olga was also in the group. Among the guests was Metropolitan Bartholomew Ananias, then a student in his final year at the seminary in Bucharest. […]

Mother Olga was an active person, she loved her homeland and the Romanian people very much, she had patriotic feelings of the highest level, which were also transmitted to the Congregation. She belonged to the generation that experienced all the great moments of 1918 under the leadership of King Ferdinand. He expressed these feelings. In 1940, when Germany was fighting against Bolshevik Russia, a famous writer, a cultural personality with a deep religious feeling, Alexandru Lascarov Moldoveanu, came very often to Bistrita and talked a lot with Mother Olga about the uncertain future that awaited us. She gave him permission to speak in church, to the faithful and the nuns, about the Bolshevik danger. She spoke of the 1917 revolution, of the new Communist leaders, of the closing of churches, of the torment of priests, of shootings, tortures, deportations to Siberia, of the poverty and atheism of the Soviet people. He appealed to the nuns to pray unceasingly for the defence of the country and the people against the communist danger. She repeated again and again: to burn in prayer for the people and the country. God had another plan for us and Mother Olga resigned herself.

In the autumn of 1948, a group of young students from Moldavia came to hide in the Arnotei Mountains and fight as partisans against the Communists. In fact, the country was full of such partisans, hiding all over the mountains. The leader of the Arnota group came to Mother Olga Gologan and told her what they were doing and asked her to help them with food, as they had nowhere to get it. Mother Olga didn’t hesitate, she acted quickly, chose four nuns whom she empowered and blessed to take turns feeding the partisans, two at a time. The nuns were at their best; they supplied the partisans by filling sacks, which were filled every week by two young partisans. This went on for an autumn and a winter, and in the spring of 1949 the young men stopped coming for food, they had been caught in their hiding place, shot, taken to the convent gate and thrown into a lime pit. What had happened?!…. A guard from Vâlcea infiltrated the young men from Moldavia who were hiding in the Arnotei Mountains, saying he was also a partisan, stayed with them for a while, learned a lot, and in the spring, on Easter Sunday, he and other guards went straight to where the partisans were hiding and shot them. When Mother Olga heard about this, she went out crying and recommended that no nun should leave the convent, but should go to the church to pray for the heroes who had been shot. As a result, Mother Olga and the other nuns who had helped supply the partisans were arrested. They were held in Craiova prison for four months. When they were released and afterwards, they never said anything, only that they were not allowed to speak.

I said at the beginning of my memories that one night a group of ten children arrived at the Bistrița monastery. These children came from an orphanage in Arad. The nuns of Bistrița later sent addresses to several orphanages in the country to take the children from here. After 5-6 years, the orphanage in Arad sent for the 10 children. I hid with a little girl. They couldn’t find us easily because there were many corners in the convent. They waited for us for 3-4 hours and then left. We also came out of hiding. Mother Olga asked us where we were and why we hadn’t come in time. We replied that we didn’t want to leave the nuns who had brought us up. Mother cried, embraced us and told us that only the Virgin Mary kept us close to her to be good.

We finished college and returned to the monastery as teachers. There were 20 teachers and five doctors. The schools grew, more and more students came, about 600 had gathered, and together with the Oblate of the monastery we were over 1000 people. When we reached our peak, communism came to power. Schools were abolished after the 1948 education reform, and we reorganised ourselves into a craft cooperative. We all knew how to make anything, but especially art objects, which were in great demand, especially by foreigners. The communist leaders did not like this. In 1958 they dissolved our cooperative and in 1959, by presidential decree, they forced us to take over the monastery. The Bistrita Orphanage and Monastery existed from 1912 to 1960. The initiator of the orphanage and the whole activity was Schimonahia Epiharia Moisescu from Țigănești Monastery. She was a strong personality with great authority, initiative, good organisation, native intelligence and wisdom. She had a great, pleasant physical presence that attracted and commanded respect. She had entered Țigănești Monastery at the age of six, where she learnt to read and write according to the church books, and being enlightened in mind and heart, she grew rapidly in spirit. She read widely and assimilated, becoming self-taught. She had a special voice, which even impressed the teacher and composer Ștefanache Popescu. She ended up studying psalmody as a colleague of the famous professor Popescu Pasărea. When she made a decision and someone disagreed with her, she would bang her crutch on the floor and say: “So I have decided, so it shall be done! And no one had the courage to oppose her. It was known in the convent that she was a member of Vlad the Impaler’s family. There is a special story about the life of Epiharia Moisescu, a story that circulated for a long time in the high circles of Romanian society, told by some with admiration and by others with malice. Once, Queen Mary announced that she wanted to visit the orphanage of the Bistrita convent, run by Mother Epiharia. Many officials came to welcome the Queen, and she arrived at the appointed time, accompanied by her ladies-in-waiting. All the officials rushed to kiss the Queen’s hand, but Mother Epiharia simply held out her right hand and bowed her head slightly. The ladies were scandalised that she did not kiss the Queen’s hand and confronted her in front of the Queen. The Mother Superior replied calmly, “Well, I wear the angelic habit and I cannot bow to earthly people! A lady from the retinue said to her: “That is true, but nuns must have humility. Mother Epiharia replied: “The humility of nuns must not honour lay people more than clergy. The Queen smiled at her, embraced her, kissed her hand and asked her to put her on the list of donors to the orphanage. This visit marked the beginning of a close friendship between Mother Epiharia and Queen Mary that lasted until Mother’s death. The Queen had also become friends with Mother Olga Gologan, who bore a striking resemblance to her aunt. The Queen often visited Bistrita Convent, looking after the orphans, making donations and having long conversations with Mother Olga. The Queen particularly liked what the orphans made in the convent: carpets, fabrics, folk costumes. She was attracted to full folk costumes and wanted to have one. The nuns made her a complete costume: i.e. skirt, foul, ilic on melted borangic silk cloth. The pattern had Oltene motifs from the villages of Valencia, the work was made of dots and crosses in red, black and gold. The queen was very pleased with the costume and wore it to various ceremonies. For the convent, these friendships were an honour and a blessing..

Mother Epiharia, being too old, was assisted by her two nieces, Sisters Olga and Teodosia Gologan, with a special intellectual training, being graduates of the Superior School of Teachers in Bucharest, a high school founded by the writer Ioan Slavici. Mother Olga Gologan wanted to extend the ideal achieved by Mother Epiharia Moisescu. She decided to found religious educational institutions of higher culture in several important cities of the country. To this end, he contacted various personalities and several noble families donated to the convent three large houses, suitable for such institutions, in the cities of Bucharest, Craiova and Sibiu. They were to be run by nuns, and everything was ready, but… as the chronicler Miron Costin said: ‘It is not the people above the times, but the poor man under the times’.

After the decree for the expulsion of the monks from the monastery, the Gologan nuns, who were over 60 years old, were added to the list. It was feared that the elderly would resist and influence the others. They ended up in the convent of Viforâta, in poverty and solitude, dying as they had lived, with dignity, without complaining about anything.

I miss the horns and the maples
And the old chestnuts,
And the branches of the trees on the coast
That shaded our cottage,
I miss it, I miss it!

I miss the flowers, a rock rose,
For the dear little beetle
The lilies, the poppies by the river,
The climbing rose
The nalba by the veranda
I miss, I miss!

I miss a stove with amber,
Its dwindle flickering,
To tell it stories and it’ll tell me stories,
To caress my soul
I miss it, I miss it!
And many a heart has been squeezed
And over the years I’ve learned them,
Now… I live them in my dreams,
I live in their nostalgia,
I miss them, I miss them!

I look up at heaven and earth
And feel how alien I am
And my heart breaks in my chest
And I cry… and cry… and cry!

(Olga Gologan, January 1967) 

(Monahia Florentina Bârdan – Mother Olga, Doxologia Publishing House, Iași, 2013, pp. 5-26)

1. The action is wrongly placed in time. The visit of the Fathers of the Burning Bush did not take place in 1964 because Father Daniil had passed away in November 1962. On the other hand, given that Mother Floretina states that Metropolitan Bartholomew Ananias, who was “still a student in his last year of seminary in Bucharest at the time”, took part in this event, it follows that the action would have taken place in 1941, the year in which the Venerable Bartholomew finished his seminary. Only at that time Father Daniil was not a monk but a teacher at a technical school for motor mechanics! That is why it is difficult to establish a precise date of the visit.