Nation and faith – the two coordinates of “Nea Petrache”

There are others who are more suitable, more competent, who have great potential to evoke this exceptional personality of our nation.

But I accepted. And why?

God wanted me to stay with him in prison and then to confess and share with him several times, the last time, I think, on the eve of his departure. That doesn’t mean that I was his confessor. A confessor is a spiritual director. Nea Petrache was a spiritual director himself. […]

After the Red Plague, he was investigated several times, finally arrested in 1956 and put in prison at Malmaison, Ocnele Mari, Jilava and Aiud. He was released in 1964.

I knew him personally in prison and had the opportunity to stay with him several times in the same room or cell.

Jilava in 1959, in the Reduit, in one of the large rooms. Harsh conditions: lack of air, suffocating heat, hunger, potato peel soup with sand, beans with pebbles. Raw potatoes, hot meals in the evening, total lack of hygiene, water troughs, the barrel where we used as a toilet, searches outside, in the cold, naked, ventilation made by mining engineers. Punishments: “Neagra”. And yet the men resisted. Spiritual concerns: learning prayers, psalms, Scripture. Intellectual pursuits: lectures and discussions on various subjects: philosophy, theology, economics, history.

Nea Petrache excelled.

I can still see him: tall, bony, weak, with big eyes like a child’s, moving as much as he could in the space between the pews, or perched pompously on a pew, in a circle of listeners who asked questions and whom Nea Petrache answered with real lectures. Conferences were also organised, especially after curfew, when the guard’s vigilance was lower. University from prison!

You weren’t allowed to talk loudly, sit in a crowd or give a lecture. You were forced to sit or stand by your bed. If you were caught doing anything else, you paid with days in solitary confinement, never to get out again. Nea Petrache spent many days in solitary confinement.[1] […].

Jilava was a transit prison, a warehouse for the Securitate before trial and a sorting centre for the other prisons.

One day, around February 1960, I went to Aiud with a larger group.

Aiud. I stayed with Nea Petrache in a large room, about 50 people, in the “section”, waiting to be assigned. We continued with the same programme as in Jilava.

We were all very weak, but somehow satisfied that the investigation period was over and that from now on we would sit quietly in prison. […]

We didn’t stay together for long. We were sent to different places and chased from place to place – with the aim of being introduced among us as informers.

Probably towards the end of 1960 I met Nea Petrache again, in the “cell”, on the second floor, at the end of the T, south wing. Radu Trifan, a law student and my comrade, and Moș Iștoc, a very clever peasant from Ardeal, were also in the cell with us. We were also brought here with adjoining cells as chronically ill people, most of them former TB patients. Apart from the fact that we were allowed to lie in bed for long periods, we were subject to the same harsh regime as the other prisoners. It still meant a lot to us.

We also made a schedule for ourselves: in the morning, after opening and reporting, after cleaning, showering, etc., there was a period of silence – prayer, meditation, repeating what we had learned orally, in writing on soap or on walls. Before lunch – a round of lectures, after lunch another round. Each of us had to speak from our area. Of course, the one who was exploited to the hilt was Nea Petrache. We even tricked him to get through. One question – and Nea Petrache would start… Philosophy, history of philosophy, history of culture, history and so on.

He had an extraordinary memory. He would quote names and texts from various works, in translation or in the original language (mostly German and French).

Don’t think that Nea Petrache was a reader of encyclopaedias and dictionaries. All that he had accumulated in all fields of culture melted in his brilliant crucibles, from which truths and sentences of astonishing clarity burst forth like lightning.

The two coordinates of his thought were nation and faith. This “son of a pope”, whose spiritual foundation was that of a peasant from Muscel, said of our imprisonment: “We had the honour to suffer and die for the Romanian people”. It was impossible for someone who considered himself “a Romanian by profession” not to say so. He also said that he was “completely confiscated by the Christian religion” and that “one cannot be a man of culture in Europe without being a Christian”.

The stories, memories and portraits of the various people Nea Petrache had met, politicians, writers, singers (Maria Tănase – “do Mario”) were also exciting and much appreciated by us.

Not to mention the way he spoke, that mixture of verve and humour, the play of his big, bright child’s eyes, the gestures and facial expressions with which he emphasised the truths he expressed in a plastic way – and which were therefore easy to understand. With him the word was more than coloured, it was sculpted. It was as if you felt it.

He favoured certain expressions and words which he pronounced in an unmistakable way. For example, the word absolute: hermits are absolute personalities, the Aromanian is not Romanian, he is the absolute Romanian, and so on.

In any case, Petre Țuțea’s words are captivating.

This made Moș Iștoc, who didn’t really understand what Nea Petrache was talking about, but who was all eyes and ears, tell him that when we got out of prison he would talk to the mayor of the village so that he could give lectures to the villagers. Don’t think that Nea Petrache didn’t take the offer seriously.

Nea Petrache participated in all aspects of cell life. We used Morse code to communicate not only with neighbouring cells, but with the whole prison, using the radiator pipes as a communication channel. This was how we received news and information from home and abroad, how political and scientific information, lessons and religious texts were transmitted. […]

We, the young people of that time, who lived in prison within the same walls as Petre Țuțea, were able to get to know him better and to enjoy the gifts with which the Lord had blessed him. But he also got to know us, the generation that was developing along the same lines, inherited, filially, from his generation.

He took a great interest in our lives, especially our spiritual and religious experiences.

In order to be of use to him and to ourselves, we decided to enrich our knowledge of the French language by doing retroversions that Nea Petrache could correct for us. We chose the Gospel texts that we knew by heart. […]

It was an opportunity to get to know and deepen our knowledge of Sacred Scripture, from which we, and especially Petre Țuțea, benefited. An opportunity for meditation, exegesis, correlation and comparison with the values of culture and philosophy in particular. There were many moments when Petre Țuțea expressed his deep amazement at the truths revealed by these sacred texts. I consider this period to be of great importance for Petre Țuțea’s Christian thought. It is far from being a conversion to Christianity of Petre Țuțea in prison[2]. It was a development and deepening of certain truths related to the concept of life of the generation that gathered around Nae Ionescu.

In 1962 we were scattered again in other parts of Aiud. In 1964 we were released.

I saw Nea Petrache again after the revolution, in 1990, when Father Anania sent me to hear his confession and give him communion. Radu Preda was with him day and night. His book “Diary with Petre Țuțea” is, in my opinion, very useful for those who want to know the great Christian and Romanian thinker Petre Țuțea.

In 1991 he was admitted to the Geriatric Hospital, where he did not stay long, and then to the “Christiana” Hospital, twice. He was the focus of attention of the hospital staff, starting with Dr. Pavel Chirilă, and of the priests and nuns there. They all had something to learn from Petre Țuțea. He was besieged by friends, journalists, photographers, etc., to the extent that he had to be protected for his rest.

He suffered a lot. But the pain left him when he was engaged in a discussion with someone, when in fact he was carrying a monologue. The last time I was with him was on the eve of his death, 3 December 1991. He was buried in the chapel of “Christiana” and we celebrated his funeral with Fr. Constantin Mihoc.

He was buried in Boteni, carried to his last earthly journey by a cart pulled by oxen. A simple, dignified burial.

As a message from Nea Petrache to the young people of today, to this generation which he considered “the most suitable for a fundamental transformation and a breakthrough towards universality”, here are some of his exhortations: “Go to church, search the libraries, squeeze one like me if you are lucky enough to meet him…”

Here’s what you could learn from me, as if he were telling us, sharing his last thoughts: “Only the Church gives you the freedom to consider yourself a child of God. Without immortality and salvation, freedom is inconceivable”.

“The most consoling sentence in the history of the world is this: God created man in his own image and likeness”.

“I can only lean on God, Who has never been more present. I see myself living in a space made holy by the all-pervading Christian Church. I am not ashamed to consider all the disciplines of the human mind as handmaidens of theology, because the Absolute does not appear in them”. […]

These are statements that show us that we are dealing with a great Christian thinker.

(Fr. Constantin Voicescu – A Confessor of the City. Byzantine Publishing House, Bucharest, 2002, pp. 94-100)

[1] Petre Țuțea remembered one such episode as follows: “I stayed in the fort of Jilava and gave lectures. They isolated me in a room, in winter, with the windows open. I was taken to the cell only when I was bleeding from the cold. The boys would rub me down and I would warm up. Once, in that cold, I wanted so much to die…” (Radu Preda – Diary with Petre Țuțea, Humanitas Publishing House, Bucharest, 1992, p. 13)

[2] This statement is partly incorrect. It is true that Petre Țuțea was already a profound Christian, at least as far as his imprisonment in Jilava and Aiud is concerned, but his conversion to the faith took place precisely against the background of his imprisonment. In the last year of his life, the great philosopher confessed at the last moment that “his true conversion was the result of his torture in prison”. Radu Preda, the disciple who took care of him until the last moment, noted in his diary of 19 February 1991: “I asked him again how he had come closer to God. He said that before prison, and especially then, he felt acutely, organically, even biologically, the futility of human constructions. Hence his anger at communists and atheists in general? – Atheists were born, but they were born in vain”

(Radu Preda – Diary with Petre Țuțea, Humanitas Publishing House, Bucharest, 1992, pp. 24, 99).