The gates of eternity have also opened for Father Mark
On 28 February 1999 I went to Liturgy in the morning. I remember that it was the beginning of Lent and the whole monastery was in church. And at the time when the sixth hour was being read and the Holy Liturgy was about to begin, I saw Hieromonk Cyprian, the priest of the Sihăstria Monastery, going to the ark during the Holy Liturgy and retrieving a part of the the Holy Communion.
Suspicious, I waited for him to come out of the altar of the chapel, and when I asked him, he told me that he was actually going to Father Mark to give him Communion, because he was in his final moments. I left the Liturgy and ran as fast as I could. I found other Fathers and brothers there and exchanged a few words with the Elder. He spoke softly, slowly, you could hardly hear him. And when Father Ciprian came in to confess him and give him Communion, he said very slowly: “Brother Florine, please don’t go, I have something to tell you”. We all went out, the Elder confessed and received Communion and we could go back to his cell. It was as if a miracle had happened, for the whole cell was filled with a heavenly peace before which every thought was silent. I sat for a moment with Fr. Mark, who could no longer speak, and who leaned back a little against the bed and fell asleep. I waited, thinking he would wake up, but since all the other Fathers and brothers had gone to church, I thought I would go too, leaving only his disciple.
And after Liturgy, for my sins, although my conscience told me to go up to the cell, I went back to the refectory. And so it happened that during the meal, Father’s disciple came and whispered something in the ear of the then and present Abbot of the Sikhs, Archimandrite Victorin. Ioanichie, who was present and heard, stood up and told us that Fr. Mark had rested in the Lord. I ran as fast as I could and quickly arrived at the little cell. I could hardly kiss his hand, with so much pain in my heart that I had not done so a quarter of an hour earlier. He told me that his novice in the convent had woken up and had not spoken for half an hour, then at about half past eleven, almost noon, he slowly closed his eyes and that was it. Dear Father, forgive me for having wronged you!
I took out of the drawer the black notebook in which I had written down what he had said to me, and I did well, because the presbytery sent for the papers, the brothers came to take a little souvenir from the old man of Christ, and if I had not been there, even these lines would not have been written. Later I took the two boxes of papers and books that were beside the table down to the monastery to sort them.
We all wondered how and what could be done to put Father Mark into the coffin, for he was so bent over that he had never straightened his back in 30 years. But as I took him in my arms and stretched him out on the floor to put on his funeral clothes (white monk’s shirt, inner cassock, outer cassock), oh, wonder, I saw him lean back in front of us and slowly, slowly straighten up. Then we were able to pick him up and place him in the coffin and on the bier. From there he was taken to the great church of the Sistine Chapel. For the next two days I stayed at his bedside as long as I could (because that was the teaching, to read the Psalter next to the one who had died and was waiting to be buried).
On the third day, after all his relatives and suffering brothers had arrived, as many as possible, his funeral took place in the Winter Chapel of the Sihăstria Monastery. Father Ioanichie made a wonderful speech (which, to my shame, I did not record or write about afterwards), deeply moved by the fact that the one in our midst, for whom we were celebrating the rite of passage in this life, was perhaps the most persecuted and tormented of the victims of the anti-Christians of 20th century Romania, that he had spent 20 years in prison and that he had kept so many souls behind him with his prayers, so many of whom had never known his asceticism. Even Metropolitan Daniel of Moldavia, when he heard of Father Cleopas’ death, sent the Exarch of the Archdiocese, Archimandrite Clement, to read a short eulogy, since the Metropolitan had also known Father Cleopas when, as a young man, he had gone up to the beehive to visit Father Cleopas and had been impressed by the spirit of the old monk.
We placed him at the back of the cemetery, somewhere near the tomb of the former Abbot of Sihăstria, Hieromonk Ioanichie Moroi, as he had left it in his dying words: to be buried without a coffin, only in an outer cassock.
Beyond these lines I can only come with the testimony of his prayers, in the power of which I hoped even at the time of his earthly passing, and now I see more vividly with my own eyes their help whenever I call on him for help. Venerable Father Mark, pray to God for us!
(Confession of a Christian. Father Mark of Sihăstria, edited by monk Filoteu Bălan, Petru Vodă Publishing House, 2007, pp. 83-87)