The greatness of Father Ghiuș

There were other recently convicted clergymen in the Security Service van with me. After a short drive, we drove down a steep hill and stopped. My pulse quickened. I was back in the underground prison of Jilava! Voices were shouting:

– Bring them down!

The doors were forced open. A group of guards with truncheons led us down a corridor, beating us. They were drunk and squealing with joy at the sight of the priests. Our striped and soiled prison clothes were thrown at us, and those who did not change quickly enough had their own clothes torn off. The bearded men had their beards cut off with laughter. We were brutally shorn and herded into a large cell, bloodied and half-naked.

We sat on the stone floor, huddled together in the February cold[1]. A few moments later a guard entered and shouted:

-All the priests out!

Outside the door the giggling and sobbing had stopped. We lined up outside and walked through the tunnel again, between the sticks of two rows of thugs, shielding our heads as best we could from the rain of blows. Those who fell were kicked with boots and spat on.

Half an hour later the priests were called out again. Not one of them moved. The guards burst into the cell, beating them left and right, as if they had no choice.[2] I tried to comfort those around me. One of them had lost several teeth and had a deeply split lip. As I wiped the blood from his face, he introduced himself. It was Archimandrite Ghiuș. I had met him years before. I was in the antechamber to enter the Orthodox Patriarch Nicodemus. The archimandrite was working in his office. I told him of our difficulties. He put his hands on my shoulders and said:

– Brother, Christ will come again: we hope for His return.

This is something a servant of God should say often. I would never have forgotten the Archimandrite, but he was unrecognisable, clean-shaven, his face stained with blood and dirt.

Hours passed and we sat on the concrete, shivering. The Archimandrite told us how he and others around the Patriarch had tried to save the Church from becoming an instrument of the regime. They thought they would succeed, counting on the Patriarch’s better nature. But Gheorghiu-Dej had chosen well. Justinian was on a visit to Moscow, where his views were further influenced. He dealt blow after blow to Catholics, Unitarians and those under his authority who refused to compromise.[3]

– Here I am, like everyone else, said Archimandrite Ghiuș. I made a mistake in trying to persuade him: I should have resisted from the beginning.

Don’t be too sad about such thoughts, I told him. He raised his beautiful eyes to me and replied:

– Brother Wurmbrand, I know only one sadness: that of not being holy.[4]

Spoken from the heights of the pulpit, these words would have been just a beautiful phrase. But in that terrible cell, after the terrible beating I had received, they showed the true greatness of Archimandrite Ghiuș.

***

There was a wardrobe on each floor, and Ghiuș and I carried the tents to it every day. We had to stand in line with the other prisoners and wait our turn to pour the contents down the drain. The archimandrite, a fine and cultured man, did his best to perform these unpleasant tasks. One morning he slipped on the muddy stone floor and some of the liquid splashed on a guard’s boot.

– You dumb fool! The guard shouted and hit Ghiuș on the shoulder. You’ll end up in Rozsa Sandor!

Later, as I ate the porridge spoon by spoon, he asked me what it meant.

– The cemetery, I replied. They always say that, but don’t mind them.

***

While we were talking, Archimandrite Ghiuș, who was sewing the patch on his trousers, raised his bright eyes and said:

– Years ago I received an illustration from a friend in New York. Before climbing to the top of the Empire State Building, he did not examine its foundations. The fact that the building had stood for so many decades was proof that the foundations were good. So it is with the Church: it has stood for thousands of years because it has truth at its foundation.

(Richard Wurmbrand – With God underground, Stephanus Publishing House, Bucharest, 2007, pp. 227-229, 250)

[1] According to Fr. Benedict’s criminal record, he was transferred to Jilava prison on 3 April 1959, so the action described by the memorialist took place in April, not February. But even in that month the cold was a great problem for the prisoners.

[2] It is clear that both Father Benedict Ghiuș and the memorialist were subjected to all this torture and humiliation. Unfortunately, we still do not know which other priests suffered for Christ.

[3] Although Patriarch Justinian Marina was very controversial in his time and remains a controversial figure today, both research in the archives of the former Securitate and the testimonies of clerics who knew him well show that the Patriarch was an opponent of communism, on a give and take principle. In other words, he was not an opponent in the classical sense, but rather a strategist who thwarted or mitigated some of the blows that communism had orchestrated against the Church. In addition, Patriarch Justinian protected many clergy and laity with a legionary past, or those labelled “legionaries” by the Security Service, i.e. those most undesirable to the regime. In this context, Father Gheorghe Calciu recalls in an interview that “despite what is said about Patriarch Justinian, I think very highly of him. Two circumstances have shown me that this man, beyond the mistakes he made, also had a good intention. The first had to do with my problem with theology. When I went to him, he welcomed me. He welcomed all those who had been imprisoned. When he couldn’t return the priests from prison to their parishes, he gave them to other parishes that were just as good. He reinstated the teachers. Father Dumitru Stăniloae, for example, as soon as he came out of prison, he was appointed a teacher. So I went to the Patriarch and said: “Your Beatitude, I made a covenant and I want to study theology. But I’ve been in prison and no one will take me in! He said: “Give me the file!”… “Get this paper out of here!” – It was my autobiography, my sixteen years in prison. I took it out. I went to theology and they took me in. He must have said something… He went through a lot of things and helped me”. (Life of Father Gheroghe Calciu, according to his own and others’ testimonies, Christiana Publishing House, Bucharest, 2007, p. 77)

For more details on the life and work of Patriarch Justinian, see the study by historians George Enache and Adrian Nicolae Petcu: “Patriarch Justinian and the Romanian Orthodox Church in the period 1948-1964”.

[4] Father Nicolae Steinhardt also reports that “on the first day, when they were transferred from the Securitate to the prison and put in a cell where there were only priests, Father Archimandrite Benedict Ghiuș – quoting Leon Bloy – said to Pastor Wurmbrandt: ‘If there is anything that saddens me, it is that we are not saints'”. (Jurnalul Fericirii, published by Polirom, Iași, 2008, p. 607) But worthy of note is the humility of Father Benedict, who, although he had passed the most difficult test of Christianity, the test of persecution for Christ, still considered himself far from holiness. St Sylvanus Athonite teaches that “there are many kinds of humility. One is obedient and reproaches himself in everything; and this is humility. Another repents of his sins and considers himself a scoundrel before God; and this is humility. But the humility of one who has come to know the Lord through the Holy Spirit is different; the knowledge and the taste are different. When the soul sees in the Holy Spirit how meek and lowly the Lord is, it humbles itself to the end. And Blessed Father Benedict humbled himself in the most difficult and praiseworthy trials, because he was a man of holy life.