Târgu Ocna TB hospital
From Gherla we went to Târgu Ocna with chains on our legs and handcuffs on our hands, all of us with sentences of more than 10 years. There they kept us in chains for another week and then took them off. Here we had other problems. Snitching, as it was called in the prison, was in full bloom.
Many people died without being treated, just because they didn’t want to betray others, that is, to bring others to prison. I knew names… but I no longer remember them.
I only remember that a sick monk-priest, who was being watched by other sick people, dying and perishing, was awakened by those around him and brought back to life. The monk then said to them, “Why did you wake me up? I was walking along such a beautiful path, with beautiful grass, with orchards of flowering trees!”
I was ecstatic to see such a landscape of paradise, which radiates and overwhelms the heart with a fragrant and living charm. Nature, in eternity, is an ecstasy of eternal life, for it too aspires to transfiguration and immortality in the perfection of eternity.
And then the monk said: “You should better pray for me when you see that I am going away again.”
An hour later the monk fell asleep again and went away forever. Everyone prayed with tears in their eyes, especially those who knew the pure life he led in the monastery.
It was the monk Iscu [Gherasim][1], we were told by others.
But there were also outbursts of anger and the desire for blind revenge among the prisoners.
In such cases, the attitude of Ioan Ianolide (1919-1986)[2] from Teleorman, a prisoner for more than 20 years, was well known. He always behaved in an exemplary manner and knew how to soothe and calm the many rages against informers, whom he always described as victims of the prison and of human weaknesses, from which he himself often suffered.
It was here that I met a Catholic bishop who spoke with such a gentle voice as I had never heard before.
I remember working in the Cavnic lead mine with a Greek Catholic priest, Vameșiu, and seven other priests who belonged to the same group as Sister Ionela[3] , a Greek Catholic nun from Transylvania who wore the wounds of Jesus on her hands and forehead on Fridays.
Our priests and all the rest of us got on very well with them in those days. Through her we learned of a number of miracles in the Catholic world. I was particularly impressed by the miracle of Fatima[4] in Portugal, when Our Lady appeared for the third time to children in the presence of solar miracles and an audience of tens of thousands of people from the Catholic world[5].
Our Lady said that part of Europe would remain in the hands of the evil one for a time. But that at the end of these times, a land would shine at the mouth of the Danube, which is the chosen garden of God.
There was one thing I did not agree with6. When people died in prison, the Orthodox priests confessed them before they died as either Orthodox or Catholic. The Catholic priests, on the other hand, pretended in such cases that the person had converted to Catholicism, and then confessed him and gave him Holy Communion, if he had received Holy Communion with them.
From Slănic in Moldavia I finally reached Aiud, the prison where I spent the longest time and from which I was released in 1964 after twelve and a half years of imprisonment.
(The complete writings of Blessed Elijah the Seer of God and his life, commented by his disciple and son in the Lord, Pr. Dr Dorin Octavian Picioruș. Vol. I, Theology for Today, Bucharest, 2010, pp. 289-291)
[1] I believe it is his surname.
[2] See: http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ioan_Ianolide.
[3] See: http://www.formula-as.ro/2006/720/societate-37/cserehat-dealul-cu-ingeri-7051.
[4] Idem: http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A1tima.
[5] Blessed Elijah was inclined to believe in the miracles of the Roman Catholic world, and I had several disputes with him in which I explained to him, in essence, that we cannot admit miracles that give heresy the same status as Orthodox faith and piety, nor can we consider those of Roman or Greek Catholicism as Holy Mysteries. He believed in their miracles because he did not want to offend God with his unbelief in the revelation of His mercy, and because he had read a lot of Roman Catholic “aghiological” literature without the Orthodox patristic corrective, i.e. without a thorough patristic knowledge in the field of heresiology and negative mystical experiences. These book notes were written before he met me… and the books he read and the data he learned from me changed him a great deal, because he had not previously had physical access to Orthodox theological sources discussing heresies, demonic deceptions, false miracles of various forms. That is why I know his final state of mind and the difference between these notes and his life, when he could no longer write, but discussed with himself various theological subtleties.
[6] He did not agree that the dying man’s conversion to Catholicism should be confessed by a Roman Catholic priest.