“The light in the Father was mending the evil in you”

Raluca Tănăseanu: How did you meet Father Sofian?

Silvia Radu (sculptor): I met him by a miracle, simply by a miracle – otherwise I couldn’t have met him except by a miracle! A young girl, whom I had baptised one of her children, took me by the hand and led me to him. The moment I met him I realised that he was a very special man, I had the feeling that something very unusual had happened. And my meetings with him were always full of joy. After the first confessions, I was so happy, there was such happiness in me, I wanted to dance out of joy! When I saw him, I had never seen anything so wonderful in my life as Father was: he was like a light, he had a light in him. He was bright, he was radiant.

R.T.: What impressed you most about His Holiness?

S.R.: His gentleness, his warmth and this light that he spread. As a confessor he was extremely gentle and understanding, he had an enormous gentleness in him. He, a man who knew the artistic world, had great understanding for me and my husband. He knew we were lost, but he tried to embrace us with all gentleness, not to frighten us. He never forced anything on you, never created uncomfortable feelings – everything was gentle and pure.

For me, the meeting with Father Sofian was the event that was at the centre of my life, it meant an enormous, significant change. My life took on meaning. I simply discovered the world around me, I discovered the world again, I discovered it differently. The values in my life changed, the whole meaning of my life changed when I walked through the door of Antim Monastery. I was enriched, enlightened, transformed from an individual into a person – certainly not in a moment, but during a period of time. Father Sofian became the centre of my life and I realised that my whole life would revolve around him.

R.T.: What did Father Sofian insist on the most in the counsels he gave, in the sermons he preached?

S.R.: The teaching of the Church. I was no stranger to the Church, but I didn’t know much about the Church, and he taught us all the important things we needed to know. He taught us the importance of the Liturgy, the importance of every spiritual teaching.

I remember how shocked he was once when I said to him, “Father, I feel I don’t love Christ. He was just stunned. I was telling the truth because I realised that I was not close enough to Christ. I loved him, but it was an insubstantial love. I hurt him when I said that, because he was a very sensitive man.

R.T.: Can you tell us about an event you experienced with Father that marked you?

S.R.: It’s difficult to choose one event because there were so many. I had many experiences with Father Sofian, very special moments. My life changed from the moment I came under Father Sofian’s aura, life took on a new meaning and a new purpose, and that seems to me to be very important. Without Father Sofian, my life would have been the life of a man who gave importance to other things, I was someone else in every way – although I was not a stranger to the Church, I went from time to time, but I didn’t feel things so deeply. I didn’t love Christ, but from then on I began to try to love Christ, to understand things differently and to understand them differently.

I had countless meetings with Father Sofian, not only at confession, but also at the meeting about the Holy Liturgy, evening service, Holy Unctions… My life revolved around Father Sofian, my life began to revolve around Father Sofian by the fact that I really entered the Church and never missed a service. I became a normal Christian, a normal person. Until then I had missed the point. It completely changed the course of my life; I was going in a different direction and Father changed my direction. What I didn’t think was important became important to me. 

“In the clutches of goodness”

R.T.: Do you pray to him for help?

S.R.: It came slowly… Father Sofian was a kind of guiding star for me, after Christ and the Mother of God. I always asked him for help and I’m convinced that he helped me and still helps me. There was never a moment when I didn’t turn to him in different situations.

And I think the greatest quality of Father Sofian in relation to me was that he wanted to save me. That is, he realised that I was such a sinner that if he took me very gently, I would not run away – because otherwise I would have run away in fear. He didn’t give me the feeling that I should understand that he understood that I was a sinner. He took me with great gentleness, so that I would not be afraid, so that I would not run away, so that I would continue to cling to my sins. He let me down gently to catch me, to make me realise that I had to stay in the Church. And when he saw that I was indeed sufficiently anchored in the Church and that I was not running away, he began to tell me how I should behave. It was very delicate. He knew how to deal with the man to catch him in the snare of goodness, to do the right thing.

R.T.: Where do you think this kindness and gentleness of Father came from?

S.R.: From a luminous soul that realises that the human soul is something very delicate and that you have to touch the human soul with great delicacy so as not to hurt it. The human soul is very delicate… When serious things happen, I pray a lot to heal the wound inflicted on my soul by certain events, by certain people. He knew the delicacy of the human soul, so he would treat his soul first, so that it would not be hurt, he would just bind it. As a human being, if you came in contact with your own sin, you would be so frightened that you would hurt yourself out of fear. But in this way you were surrounded by his gentleness, which made this grasping of the truth much easier to bear, that is, it made it so that you did not feel it as a grasp that treated your wound, but as a joy that repaired everything. The light in him heals the wound in you. Everything was enveloped in a divine grace that repaired the wound beautifully, gently, without producing so much pain.

(Raluca Tănăseanu, “Archimandrite Sofian of Antim Monastery” in Orthodox Family no. 9 (92), September 2016, pp. 14-16)