The courage of confession

Interview with Father Arsenie Papacioc:

I went to Aiud and filmed in the ossuary. There is a lot of political pressure to cover up all the sacrifices of those who died in Aiud. The ossuary was built with great difficulty. Now, with great difficulty, a body of cells has been built. They want to build a monastery there. Father Justin Pârvu has been there several times and is still trying to find the formula to finally build a church. For those who don’t know what it was like in Aiud, perhaps not out of bad faith but out of ignorance, I asked Father Arsenie Papacioc to tell us something from his own experience. Father Justin says that Aiud is the most sacred place for Romanians…

– Yes, because you don’t know if you’ll live to see tomorrow. This state of extraordinary tension gave you the opportunity to know your great intimacies. It’s not about suffering. Its tendency was extermination by starvation. Zarca is a prison within a prison, built by the Hungarians for the Romanians in order to kill them, where the desired regime was applied without question to each individual or group of individuals. For the last few years – one year, two years – I’ve only been held in Zarca. At a meeting they held for us there, I confronted them with the sold prisoners, which was tantamount to death. But God didn’t want that. They put me in the cooler. In three days you were dead, they found you. They put me in there for five days, I didn’t die! They put me in for seven days, I didn’t die. In the cooler, you know. That’s terrible! I don’t know if you understand me… As a child I was curious to see how the soul comes out… So I was at the edge of things. Impossible conditions to die in the wake. Many died. I didn’t die. I could only speak in Morse code, and the people next door were asking for confession. Also in Morse code. I could send, but I couldn’t receive, because if they caught you, they’d kill you on the spot. So I agreed with them, also in Morse code. “Tomorrow, at a certain time – I agreed with them then – stay on this side of the cell. I’ll give you a signal by tapping through the wall, and you tell me your sins, and I’ll unbound you. On one condition: if you die by tomorrow – for that was the question – the confession is valid. But if you don’t die, you must confess your sins again to the first priest you meet”. In other words, let us be honest about this Sacrament. I tell you this so that you may have an idea of our spiritual state there, when you were uncertain of the next moment at every moment. This state, which was not of a day, was of years. I could not see any sign of human, human goodwill in all that time. Many people asked me what was harder, in prison or in the desert, because I had experienced the desert. In prison, those who didn’t believe in God struggled, and they were sick. Because there was no invisible force that could stop the wild, cruel, hateful impulses that were always pressing on people. That was missing. In the wilderness, on the other hand, the devils you fought feared God, and it was easier, with all the vicissitudes of the weather: winter, snow, wild beasts, a tense state even there. But there was still a touch of freedom. Because you all don’t know how precious freedom is and what God has left us for.

About man

Nothing is more precious to God than the time He gives us to live. Because breathing and breathing are also from God. And then Christ had the great wisdom to tell us that “not one hair moves without My will”. We are controlled by God in all our movements, in all our hidden thoughts. Of course, it also depends on where you stand. With this and this alone in mind: eternal life. If you go stray, if you are careless or atheist – God forbid! That’s worse, this carelessness. It does not please God…. For God is not angry with us for certain mistakes we make, but He is angry that we are careless. We postpone our existence, we walk on sloth. That’s a big mistake! Each moment must be lived in its fullness. Know yourself. The great mistake of the world is what? Man, created in the image and likeness of God, isolates himself according to his own nature. God did not cast Adam out of heaven, Adam cast himself out. That’s man! St. Gregory of Nyssa, brother of St. Basil the Great, was asked: “What do you say about man?” And St. Gregory replied: “He is overwhelming and incomprehensible”. God still keeps secrets about man that neither the angels nor the world know. For man is made in the image and likeness of God. He is the only being created in the image of God. He is the only possible link between man and creation. Man has been given the great responsibility of caring for the whole of creation. And Satan is fighting hard, with a zeal that people do not know, to get it out of our heads that we are God’s image. Because we’re somehow taking his place. That’s his job, but that’s how we are created, in His image. And God’s creation cannot be refuted or interpreted. We are the image of God. So we have great security, but also great responsibility. That is why I told you that it is very serious not to know that you are alive and who you are. Of course, you have never talked to yourself about the great values: eternity… What about me? I’ve never thought about prison and desolation more than at the bedside of the dead. Screaming… They were entering an unknown, not for a thousand years, but for eternity! His little house wasn’t full of good deeds, it was empty! Or it’s empty, for people. Big mistake, this state of lack of self-knowledge!

Man, god by grace

The pig has this instinct to live, and so does every other animal. But that is all! Man has a conscience, a devotion that goes beyond reason. He is made God by grace. You see: God by grace! Adam’s fall interrupted our relationship with God. God came and brought us more than what Adam lost! He has brought us back only the knowledge that we are God again by grace and that there is no death. For He tells us: “And you will pass from death to life”. But death is not an end, it is another beginning, happy or unhappy. So why fear death when you have prepared yourself for the resurrection? It is a contradiction, and man decides in this vacuum of things, not in a state of continuous presence. It is not difficult. Because there’s never someone standing next to you for nothing. Either you don’t benefit yourself, or you benefit him, or you have to check yourself to see if you’re or aren’t putting up with him, ill as he may be. That this lack of presence next to your brother is a lack of love, and it’s contrary to the Creator. The act of presence.

I’m not for the spiritual asceticism, as a confessor. I’m 95 years old. I’m for a state of constant presence of God. I exist! And we ask ourselves: Why? What’s wrong with me? What about death? What about these elements that are valid? Death doesn’t come to sit down and have a coffee with you. It’s merciless! It takes you as you are! We can’t postpone it for a split second when it comes. The Last Judgement is not to be seen with God sitting on a judgment throne.

You judge yourself, quickly. We are a precious being, more than any other being. The devils were good angels. And I said it like this: if they embodied lost possibilities again, they would overturn the earth with their little finger! If you think so, being lost, why should I not think so of my guardian angel, who is not fallen! And in one place it is said of the guardian angel that it is impossible for you not to die when you see him in such a light! And this angel does not guard alone. We did not give him the guardian command, God did: “Guard this soul till death.” He is in relationship with billions of other angels, with great power. And yet they are without this great identity, “You are gods” (psalm 82:6). You are a creation of great possibilities, of great beauty that escapes our narrow minds. The holy apostle Paul also says that it is not given to man to know, because he has been taken up into the third heaven.

So man is God by grace. This so-called homo homini lupus, “man the wolf for man”, fell with the coming of the Saviour. Now it is the other way round: man is God for man. And look who we put in hell, and we are not satisfied. Why do you call him hell, hell, and not God, God? It would mean that every man who wants to be sober at all has to think a lot about it. That he is fighting hard to conquer us and gather us to himself. But he stumbles against the power of the cross, the power of God. The Cross is the Father, all height, the Son, all depth, the Holy Spirit, all breadth. The Holy Cross has an extraordinary meaning! That is why the Catholics have changed the sign of the cross, made it differently with the fingers, with a different arrangement, from left to right. It’s a big mistake! We’re not here because it suits us to be like this, like a pope… We are like this because of the Holy Spirit and we are judged by the Holy Spirit.

The Saints of the prisons 

– Since, for example, the Synod now refuses to make any reference to people who died in prison and who are considered saints by the people – and I am now referring, for example, to Valeriu Gafencu – tell us something about Valeriu Gafencu. Did you know him?

– Yes, we lived together. He was younger than me. He was a boy of substance, I wouldn’t have anything else to say about him except that he was a saint! But it didn’t matter in our world, because we were all living the same moment, the same condition, the same hopes and the same great hidden joys that the world cannot rationally understand. We were one with all. We thought the same. I knew his family from the stories we told each other. She had three sisters: Valentina, Eleonora and Elisabeta. His father had been killed by the Russians. It wasn’t a question of intelligence, because everyone had enough. It’s not about death, it’s about how you die. And, I tell you again, there were many moments for all of us when we were curious to see how the soul would come out of us! We were at the edge of existence! We couldn’t take it anymore! Otherwise they wouldn’t have put me in the refrigerator, in the cold rooms, where you couldn’t live without discussion. Three days was the limit to live. They put me in there for five days and I didn’t die. They put me in there for seven days and I didn’t die. God didn’t want me to. Of course I have to humble myself, there were so many times for all of us where you could die and if you didn’t die you would say this thing happened. God didn’t want it to happen, because the existence of a God is by grace. The big, big mistake of the world is carelessness! 

– What did the communists have against you? Why were the tortures so great?

– Your question is elementary. What the devil wants with us, that’s what the communists want! They were agents of evil. “Don’t believe in God” and “Man is an animal”! I was called up, framed by four soldiers with bayonets, dragged out of the Zarca, and when you got out of the Zarca like that, you knew you wouldn’t come back. And of course you were ready, you had no way out except “God help! Lord, forgive me!” and that was it. And they took me to a colonel. There were ten colonels. Crăciun was the biggest bastard, and he played the meek card. The truth is, the prisoners weren’t stupid either, like us. We could see the man huffing and puffing. Because, no doubt, there are unexpected deals you can get into. And he asked me, how does God exist? I was a prisoner, a convict. How I made a move, how he invited me to the chair. Big deal. They couldn’t move because they were afraid we would kill them. Crazy, evil nonsense! And I said, “Colonel… I had meetings with primary school children. And they’ve all asked me what you’re asking me. The eyes we have, with which we penetrate, the heart with which we understand in a silent form the being before us, the feeling of poetry, of pouring, all this comes from a Creator. It’s hard to understand, but it’s not my fault”. And I had the courage to ask him, “What about you, what is your reason for not believing?” That was a great courage, because they thought they were defeated. He says, “The war that Hitler waged in Russia.” I say, “That mad Hitler, do you think he was honest to deceive the Russian people that Stalin is an infidel?! They are Russians by nature before they are believers! And Hitler didn’t go there to conquer Russia. He went to Russia to conquer the whole world. Well, now you’ve won. Why don’t you believe? If that’s the reason…” He became confused. He realised he had no answer. And then he asked me, in order to get away, what’s the last word. I said: ‘I am ready to die for everything I say. And I would invite you to the same position.” “Take him away!” I escaped. They were all surprised! They were banging on the wall when they heard that I had come to the cell, that they hadn’t killed me. In short, that was our tension in Aiud. 

Decision of the Holy Synod

– The Holy Synod refuses any approach to the sacrifice of those in prison…

– Don’t rush… Don’t bind yourself to the Synod. Do not consider it as such. If they are saints, they are saints where they are. But there are ordinances, rules to be followed. And then, apart from the Synod, isolating ourselves, so to speak, from that value which has the last word, we must not interfere. They are saints among saints. But we are not in a hurry, because we could not do this without the imprint of the Church. When you lay an egg, the whole village has to know how the hen has crowed! It’s not like that! The important thing is to know yourself as a person of salvation and to put yourself in order, because you are a microcosm in which a macrocosm is reflected. No one is holy just because he has died. The authority of the Church, such as it is, has to say that it’s not there for nothing. And I said to a Metropolitan: “I would abolish the Synod! Because we don’t need Corneanu’s position. We don’t have a synod, Your Holiness,” I said. Let’s stop postponing an action we have to take. But that’s not the point. Because it’s not the Synod that is the point of strategic orientation, but what we have in ourselves. That is the big question: What have you done? Who are you? Recognise yourself! That these things are not done according to the voice of the street or the voice of the people – who are often right, poor thing – but that the Synod, according to its position, must first think seriously; and nothing is done without divine permission. I, who have lived through these fires, who have entered this world with great joy, know how precious this position is, that it is not he who strikes who wins, but he who has received the blow with love. That is Christ! That in situations like these we all wonder why Christ did not destroy them all. They flayed him, they humiliated him and he endured them! But all the beauty of the Saviour’s resurrection… When He rose, not only did He rise, but all of creation rose with Him! All this beauty would not have been great if the Cross had not come first. So it’s not right to curse suffering, which everyone runs away from and curses. It’s not good! It is necessary! Every valley is worth a hill. In conclusion, one thing remains: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner!” May you have a saving ministry and position. Whatever you are, and if you are, you have a responsibility. But you are human! You have a conscience. Know the great values. Stand in line. Because it’s not death I’m afraid of, as they say, but eternity. That is, I repeat, only the way you die. Gafencu and all the others welcomed death. Because we were misunderstood, we loved each other, in the sense of a true heaven, so much so that suffering didn’t even matter, which you saw as a soothing patch. You saw the results after the suffering. It’s not easy to predict things. But only when you’re in the fire do you realise the intensity of it. We had our contradictions there, but we all had the same implicit ideal that united us…

(Interview by Rafael Udriște)