Resurrection of the Lord with Father Gheorghe Calciu – Aiud Prison, 1980
I now return to my Easter story. I prepared for the feast. I purified my soul as best I could, deaf to insults, impervious to blows, armoured against hunger, warmed by an inner prayer. On the night I knew it was Easter night, at twelve o’clock in the morning, I heard the bells of Aiud ringing.
Their roar was very… spiritual. I mean, it wasn’t a roar like you’d hear next door, it crackled through the walls. It was like a message from the outside world, this world celebrating the resurrection of the Lord.
And we sang “Christ is risen”. At first I thought, then I felt the need to sing it, not out loud, but to hear myself. It was deathly quiet and every movement in the cells was reflected outside in the corridor, and sure enough, the guard heard me singing and came up to me and insulted me. And I decided to stop singing so as not to disturb this Holy Night of the Resurrection. I remembered everything that had happened in my childhood… My best memories during this period of isolation were my relationship with the students at the Theological Seminary and my childhood memories. It was innocence – the innocence of childhood and the innocence of those young people who supported me during my sermons.
The next morning, at 7 o’clock, the guard changed. In our ward – it was a special section for sanctions, for punishments – there were six guards (it was a much bigger section). They came in one after the other. The guard on duty went in between the others and the one who stayed in the ward opened the door. We had to face the wall. He came in to see if everything was all right. And we weren’t allowed to face the door again until we heard the door lock.
That Easter morning I didn’t turn around, I didn’t face the wall. There was a guard… If you have ever seen a handsome devil, this man was indeed a handsome devil. Of course, he was a young country boy, a thin, tall boy, with blue eyes, absolutely angelic, with a very handsome figure, always elegantly dressed, with his suit on. The others came in a bit dirtier. He was always very neat, very elegant. But he had an inexplicable cruelty. It’s hard to understand how someone with such angelic beauty could be so cruel? If this man didn’t beat 5 or 6 prisoners during his shift, he probably didn’t feel well. And generally speaking, in prison, under terror, under fear, it’s easier to endure your own torture than to hear someone else being tortured. If you heard the screams…
Most of those who were beaten were ordinary prisoners, because there were few political prisoners. They screamed when they were beaten. We were silent, we never screamed. But they screamed and your imagination started to work. And you imagined terrible things. There was such a tightness in your heart that you’d rather they came to beat you up, just so you wouldn’t hear the screams of the others. And this was one of those people who took pleasure in torturing others. That morning when he opened the door, I had been praying to God all night. I may have said hundreds, thousands of times, “Christ has risen from the dead, treading on death, and to those in the tombs he has given life”. Perhaps thousands of times. So that the truth of the resurrection might penetrate deep into my mind and heart. I stood facing the door as he entered, and I said to him, “Christ is risen!” The guard looked at me, turned his head and looked at those behind him. He turned back to me and said, “Indeed, He is risen!”
It was like a blow to my head. And I understood then that it was not he who said to me, “Indeed, He is risen!” but that it was the Angel of the Lord. He stood at the tomb and said to the myrrh-bearing women: ““Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen!”. Through his mouth the angel confirmed my resurrection because I needed this confirmation and because God wanted to confirm the truth of this resurrection through the mouth of my enemy. My cell was filled with light. And my joy was so great that the 5-6 hours until noon when the food came were in light and spiritual joy.
I was entrusted to a political colonel of the prison who gave me special orders, in the bad sense of the word, not in the good sense. The colonel was not a bad man when he was drunk. When he was sober, he was a very bad man. Fortunately for us, more fortunately for me, he was more drunk than sober. So I heard him coming down the corridor at 12 o’clock.
There was a tremendous echo in the corridors. I could hear the footsteps in the corridor and I knew, I recognised his footsteps, because the ear sharpens and the mind follows his every move, so you knew who was coming and you knew what his intentions were.
And I thought like in a play. I’ll stand with my back to the wall. I’m going to turn my face towards him, look him in the eye and say: “Christ is risen! He wasn’t the one he was before. It was no longer an inner impulse. It was like a play. I mean, I knew what he was going to say to me, he knew what I was going to say to him, we knew each other. He knew my stubbornness, I knew his ability, his little fantasy where you had to react exactly as I knew him. That’s enough. And I said to him, “Christ is risen! He looked at me and said, “Did you see Him? I said, “Colonel, I didn’t see Him when He rose, but I believe in the truth of the resurrection on the authority of those who saw Him, the apostles, the disciples, the martyrs, the millions of Christians who died glorifying Christ, either through torture or natural death, but that is the guarantee that Christ is risen. Have you seen the North Pole? But you believe it on the authority of these scientists. You have not seen Stalin or Marx except in a picture, but you believe in them on the authority of the Communists who speak of them”.
The more I talked, the more I argued logically, the more my heart became sad. The more the light in the cell disappeared. Because I was trying to argue logically, with human logic, a truth that does not need to be argued. Just saying “Christ is risen” was enough to convince him or lose him. And I understood that I had committed a sin and that God had abandoned me. The angel who had said, “Indeed, He is risen!”, who had brought light into the cell, had disappeared…
I’ll tell you some other things. At the time of the establishment of communism in Russia, the scientific brigades began to work. They would come to a village, gather the villagers and tell them about the impossibility of Christ’s resurrection. And at the end they asked: “Does anyone have anything to say?” And a priest from there, a Russian, stood up. He was like a peasant. And he said, “Gentlemen, I have something to say.” “Here’s this red table.” “I’m a stupid man, like a peasant. I don’t know many things. You’re clever people (there was even a philosopher at the table). But I want to say one thing to these people in the hall”. He leaned on the red table and cried out, “Christ is risen!” and the whole room replied, “Indeed, He is risen!” This is the greatest demonstration of the resurrection of Christ. And I hit the truth of the faith.
(Pr. Gheorghe Calciu Dumitreasa – Suffering as a blessing)