“Prayer saved my life”

Mrs. Aspazia Oțel-Petrescu is one of the many women who suffered for years in the communist prisons, but who had in their hearts an unfailing love for the country and the nation. During her 14 years of imprisonment, she passed through the prisons of Mislea, Dumbrăveni, Miercurea-Ciuc, Jilava, Botoșani and Arad. With courage and faith in God, she endured the tortures to which she was subjected, and the Almighty Lord cared for her, comforted her and brought her spiritual joy, helping her to overcome critical moments. May her sacrifice, as well as that of all those who are imprisoned for their faith, living or dead, give us courage in the struggle against our own sins, passions and temptations, encouraging us to fight the good fight and protecting us from the unbelief that seeks to dominate the world today. (R.T.)

– How do you see your time in prison now?

– I see it as an honour, like Petre Țuțea. I have a moment of emotion… (tears, editor’s note)…, we all have it, when we think what a great honour God has given us by placing us on a line that was opened so many years ago by Christ the Saviour Himself. We have answered a call, a call to a suffering that was to be redemptive, that was to absolve the sins of our nation and set it on an upward line to salvation. For the ultimate goal of a nation, as of an individual, is not pleasure, earthly happiness, power or all the glitter of this world, but the resurrection. God has called us to show that we are willing to sacrifice the best and cleanest years of our lives for the resurrection.

– St. Paul says that the first thing is love. How does love manifest itself in the cell?

– Love between us manifests itself in small gestures. A dandelion that you stole from the garden on a walk and took to someone who was celebrating his birthday meant a whole garden of flowers, especially because it was taken with great sacrifice. If you saw someone shivering in the cold, you went and hugged them and warmed them in your arms. It was a minimal gesture, but one you couldn’t forget. We used to say that the friendship between us was indestructible precisely because we had learnt the science of avoiding alienation, separation, antipathy towards one’s fellow man, and replacing it with gentleness, kindness, love – which manifests itself in small but enormous gestures when weighed against indifference, apathy. We were not indifferent to what happened to us. To live one was to live the other. If one was punished with isolation, all the others suffered. We thought: “Poor thing, she must be cold or hungry…”

– And of course you prayed for each other. Tell us about the miracles you’ve worked through prayer…

– Prayer saved my life. At one point I had a TB infiltrate in both lungs at the same time. I had a fever, but I didn’t notice it. I didn’t know I had TB until I was healed. It was during the time I was running the Romanian sewing workshop. I had an order from the Ministry of the Army for their choir: 300 costumes for men and women, for about seven popular regions, and some strips of white embroidery with which they were to make decorations wherever they went. The rule was too strict. They worked day and night. The order was given in the spring and it had to be ready by 14 December. It was autumn, when the day was shorter – and without light we couldn’t work very many hours a day. I told the commander that we might not be able to finish the embroidery. The costumes were ready, but we still had some work to do on the embroidery.

The commander threatened to put me on sabotage duty because “you don’t mess with the army!” I didn’t say anything to the girls because I didn’t want to torture them working by the flickering light from the oil rigs – notorious for working on thin canvas (the prison was in an oil area and electric light was supplied by the rigs). I said to myself: “They will charge me with sabotage and prolong my imprisonment. What difference does it make if they give me more years in addition to the years I already have?”

But the girls found out from the production manager, a young woman employed by the M.I.A. to oversee production. The girls would get the tapes from the workshops, come into the bedroom with them and work on the beds upstairs by the light – they worked all night, and so by the 14th of December the order was ready. December 9th was my birthday. I had to do the sketches, do the accounts for the materials used. I worked 16 hours a day and didn’t have much contact with them. But from time to time I took part in the communal prayers. After the Akathist, there were special prayers for people who had special problems. And I would hear them say: “Lord, give her health, help her and set her free”. And I would say: “Give her, Lord, health, help her and set her free,” not knowing that this prayer was made for me!

On the 9th of December they gave me a little feast in my cell. On the coffee table was the famous cake made with dry bread, collected over the months, and sprinkled with syrups from the doctor’s office or jam from the girls on the TB diet. Next to the cake was a hand-embroidered little book – “Spiritual Bouquet”. The tabs were made of cloth and the letters were written with thread, indicating how many prayers had been said for me. I was amazed at how many thousands of the Most Holy Mother of God and how many thousands of the Our Father had been said for my health. I didn’t know I had tuberculosis, but the doctors around me did – but they didn’t tell me so as not to demoralise me. Thanks to the prayers of my comrades, I was cured of tuberculosis. When the caravan arrived with special machines to detect TB cases, because they had been on the increase lately, I was already suffering from the consequences. I still have them today – and the radiologists marvel at what a spectacular TB cure I have had. One of the doctors told me that I had a very serious problem in both my lungs, but that there was hardly any evidence of it. I replied that I was definitely cured. “But how can you be so presumptuous, because the Koch’s bacillus can reactivate at any time!” I replied, “I was not cured by medicine, but by the prayers of my comrades – and what is cured from above remains cured!

– From prison literature we know that the hardest times were those spent in solitary confinement. Have you been in solitary confinement?

– Several times. During an interrogation, before I was taken to the solitary confinement cell, I was handcuffed with my hands behind my back. They were so-called “American” handcuffs, very delicate nickel-plated bracelets, but they had a mechanism that tightened on the wrist. The men’s cuffs were too wide for our small wrists, and we women could take them off. These handcuffs would tighten as you moved your hands until they cut into your flesh. They were very hard to wear because they squeezed the nerves that controlled the whole circulatory system. You could even lose your hands if they kept you in that position for too long. So I was handcuffed and taken to the isolation ward! In the room I saw that there was a very large basement with two skylights for lighting, through which a weak light came. I saw a lot of stairs all the way down. I was in front of the door, on a platform. From this platform the stairs went down. It was damp, cold, and I was only in a dressing gown and couldn’t move because the handcuffs were tightening. I began to pray. Still praying, leaning against the wooden door, I saw tufts of straw scattered on the floor. When I looked closer, I saw that these straws were moving. I was frightened and said, “My God, are they rats?” A rat confirmed it. It started climbing towards me, stopped halfway up the stairs and looked at me for a long time. For months I was haunted by those terrible beady eyes…

“What am I going to do, Lord, what am I going to do that they’re going to nibble at me tonight?” If I didn’t have my hands tied behind my back, I would try to defend myself against them. But like this, with my hands tied behind my back and unable to move them, what am I going to do? Despair came over me and I said to myself, “I’m going to throw myself to the ground and finish the story! Up to here, God, I could hold on, but now I can’t! But I recovered immediately. “This is stupid, who gives me the certainty that I’ll end up dead down there? I can get hurt and worse!” And then I screamed, I really screamed, because I heard my voice: “God, don’t leave me!” I couldn’t say another prayer, I couldn’t. Everything that was in me, strength, spirit, materialised in that cry: “Lord, don’t leave me!” The moment the cry ended, everything around me disappeared: skylights, rats, the cellar… All the details I had taken in up to that point were erased. It was just a white expanse. It was very bright, but not the light we’re used to. To give you a better idea, I can say that it was like fresh snow with a bright sun coming over it – and then the snow glistened in a thousand little lights. I couldn’t figure it out. I knew I had a problem, and I don’t anymore. I was overwhelmed with an immense joy, the kind of joy you get when you love someone very much and find that you are loved in return. It was something overwhelming, of an unbearable intensity… This state lasted for about two days, until the prosecutor from Bucharest came and summoned me to the investigation.

– Did you tell your comrades what had happened in the isolation room?

– No. I was afraid that all their nights would be haunted by the thought of rats walking over them. There were some who were more sensitive to sleep and felt that someone was walking on their feet. I always told them it was a bad dream. But it was actually rats swarming all over the prison. And so as not to be afraid of them, I endured the nightmare that one of the rats gave me – because its eyes followed me for a long time. I got rid of this obsession by entering into our spiritual life of praying together.

– Is today’s generation still willing to make sacrifices?

 

– I live behind a school. The words I hear coming out of the mouths of these children and their demeanour just frightens me, frightens me and I say, “God, where are we going with this? But I’ve also seen them go after the parent who teaches religion. All the children wanted to be as close to him as possible. This man knew how to take their souls in his hands. That’s what we lack: the educator, the role model. Their souls are confused, official education is so planned that it is confusing, chaotic. They want to collapse, to demolish certain values, and they succeed as long as there is no element that coagulates what is in the depths, in the depths, in the child’s self.

– What is the role of the parents?

– It is of paramount importance. It is not for nothing that we talk about the seven years at home. But if the parents are not prepared, if as a child they fought with their peers, as young people do today, they have no way of giving the right education. We need providential people who can create a certain atmosphere in the world of parents and in the world of children. I am not losing hope. However, there are people who have not lost their way and could walk the narrow path full of risks. I believe that the generation that will be called upon to sacrifice itself for the resurrection of the nation will have to pass a much harder test than the one we have passed. We were destroyed with a whip, but this generation is being destroyed with poisoned sugar! Our children will be forced to do things they would not do out of the urge of their hearts, but they will be forced to do them by the consequence of things….

– Were there times in prison when you found it hard to forgive?

– In Botoșani prison I was beaten because I was the head of the room, allegedly because there was disorder in the cell. The pain was terrible. For weeks, the guards would come to the bathroom to admire my back. The one who beat me lifted a very wide belt, about a metre long, with both hands and crossed me with all his might. He wanted to show the guards how obedient he was. He even beat up two of my friends who were defending me: “Why are you hitting her? Just because she’s a warden? Beat up the ones who did wrong, the ones with the dirty beds!” They were among the most beautiful, and I felt that he wanted to destroy their beauty. I didn’t scream or cry when he gave me really bad beatings. That was my nature. This made the bullies angry because they thought they were doing it out of pride. I felt the pain fully, but I reacted with silence, the pain made me bitter. Once this very cruel bully bent down to see what was happening to me. When he saw my face glowing with pain, he brightened up. The satisfaction I saw on his face made me hate him. It was the only time in my life that I felt hatred in my soul. And I was so frightened, I realised that hatred is so destructive, that I fasted for forty days, I only ate at night so that I could forgive him….

– And did you succeed?

– Yes, I forgave him, but only after intense prayer. And when my comrades saw how hard I was trying, they helped me. I won’t forget Eugenia Fuică’s gesture. In order to make me cross that threshold of hatred and think about the beauty of Christian love, she taught me “The Angel Cried Out” in a psalmody that I liked very much. It happened when we were walking and couldn’t hear what we were singing….

– You have suffered a lot. How can we accept suffering?

– Suffering has to be transfigured. And suffering is transfigured through acceptance. You have to find a reason for suffering. The moment you find the reason for suffering, you are saved because you have accepted it. From that moment on, suffering becomes a joy, it becomes an honour. You realise that Jesus took a spoonful of His suffering and gave it to you. It is your own cross. You carry it, not Him. You become happy because you are a child of God.

(Interview by Raluca Tănăseanu, “Prayer saved my life” in Orthodox Family no. 16 of 2010)