Priest Aurel Lazarov, fearless confessor of the communist dungeons
It is Holy Week. The priests are busy hearing confessions and sympathising with their suffering brethren. Both Orthodox and Greek Catholic. I’m going to confess to Father Aurel Lazarov. He is from the county of Tulcea. He was a priest in Hârșova. Although he wears glasses, he is known as the best perforator in Cavnic. […] Father was a quiet and thoughtful man. I never saw him laugh. Only a discreet smile sometimes lit up his face. His best friend was the engineer Virgil Vlădescu, a man with a very special soul.
This missionary confessor would end up in prison. A few years later, a comrade who witnessed his agony and death told me how his departure for eternity came about. In Aiud he contracted meningitis and was admitted to the prison infirmary. The disease broke out virulently and entered a galloping phase. Very soon Father was in agony. The suffering brothers around him witnessed a dramatic dialogue between the dying man and an unseen interlocutor. The strange conversation began with an interrogation that was repeated at intervals:
– Why, Lord, why?
It was the great question that every soul asks when faced with its imminent departure for eternity. Who knows what mysterious answers the dying man received, which he repeated after a while:
– I know, Lord, I know…
When the last energies of the being were extinguished and the convulsions ceased, as if from the distances to which his soul had been carried, there arose the sigh of supreme reconciliation:
– I understand, Lord, I understand…
Thus passed into eternity the servant of God, the priest Aurel, the fearless confessor of the dungeon and the prison. I don’t know if he has descendants and if they will ever read these lines. But now, after so many decades, we can murmur the blessing with the voice from heaven: “Blessed are the dead who now die in the Lord. Yea, saith the Spirit, let them rest from their labours: for their works go with them” (Revelation 14:13). Yes! Blessed is the servant of God, Aurel the priest, who died in prison during the anti-Christian persecution! May he rest from his many labours and sufferings, for his acts of apostolic courage went with him as a witness to heaven!
(Liviu Brânzaș, Raza din catacombe. Diary from prison, Scara Publishing House, Bucharest, 2001, pp. 116-117)