The last days of martyrdom of Father Haralambie

Having suffered two surgeries, terribly weak, barely able to walk, barely able to speak, lying under a blanket most of the day, absorbed in prayer, Father Haralambie [Vasilache] is waiting to die[1]. But he finds the means and the strength to speak to us sometimes, a little at a time. Like a good man who prepares for a long journey and knows that it is not to be laughed at, that it is better to think about everything in advance, to make the necessary preparations and to equip oneself, thinking that it is better to be in abundance than to be in need.

He also gives me some time, and watching him, talking to him, I am overwhelmed by the conviction that suffering has a meaning, that all of life cannot be meaningless (…).

To Father Haralambie, as to a saint, I dare to share – he is the first – the two dreams I had a year and a half earlier in Jilava, in cell twenty-five. (…)

Father Haralambie listened attentively, did not smile, did not flinch. Then he stated that he doesn’t think that the dreams or the visions are suspicious. On the contrary, he considers me blessed. But he asks me for a lot of discretion and modest self-control. And above all – it’s hard to understand, he says, but he asks me to make an effort – to take them as natural, as something unexceptional, something that doesn’t take me out of the ordinary way of life. A good thought from my mother, like a greeting: And the Lord’s mercy is abundant; when it passes, it happens that the lap of His garment to touch someone randomly.

We also make plans for the future, Father, like any real dying person, is one hundred percent convinced that he is going to die, and still one hundred percent convinced that he is going to live.

But only a few days pass and there’s a massive haemorrhage. It knocks him out. The prison doctor, who had been persistently summoned, arrived with difficulty and shook his head. The warden wrapped Father Haralambie in a blanket and I took him, along with another prisoner, to the door of the cell, where the guards lifted him from the floor and carried him to the infirmary with his face to the wall and his arms over his eyes.

We found out later that he died the next day.

(Pr. Nicolae Steinhardt – Jurnalul fericirii, Polirom Publishing House, Iași, 2008, pp. 183-184, 187-188)

[1] The action takes place in Gherla prison. In his diary, Fr. Nicolae places the action around May 1963, which is wrong because Fr. Haralambie was to die on 23 November 1962, a year earlier, in winter, not spring.