The passion of the holiness in the communist prisons

We have the right, those of us in the “diaspora”, outside Bucharest, to consider Father Iulian as our priest. Although I have known him since before he was a priest, I will not speak about his work in Bucharest, but I would like to look at another parish that has become general and that outlines the future of tomorrow’s faithful: the prison in Aiud. And this is in order to dispel the little knowledge that our faithful have about prisons, to bring to light the role that priests in particular have played in prisons.

Virgil Ierunca, in his recommendation of Steinhardt’s “Diary of Happiness”, said that for the author, who was converted in prison, it was an academy and an altar. In the book, Steinhardt, seeing the spirit of sacrifice that existed in the prisons, recalls that “there are many saints among us here”. I would like to include Father Iulian as one of those saints Steinhardt describes at the top of the pyramid. Why?

Because he arrived with his priestly vocation at the very moment when, within the walls of the prison, I felt for the first time – and perhaps all those who were with us – that the words of the prophet Amos, who said: “The time will come when there will be no famine of bread or water, but of the word of God…”, will be fulfilled. We have passed over the other natural necessities. In a few years of imprisonment, you will be satisfied with a crumb of bread and a watery soup, but a longing and a thirst for the Word of God will begin. It’s as if God said to us: “Give them something to eat”. We priests felt ashamed – we had nothing to give – and we replied that we only had five loaves and two fish. Father Julian was able to feed these hungry people by his way of being, according to the Word of God, according to the love of God, according to all that God has planted in us.

What were these great qualities of the father? First of all, Father Iulian prayed like I have never seen anyone else – he dripped tears in every prayer. There is enough to say about the gift of tears, but I would like to crystallise what Radu Gyr said in prison about the blessing of tears: With tears you wash my soul / To gather sweetness in the fruit / To find in it neither mist / Nor bitter worms, nor doubts / With tears you wash my soul.

Father Julian faced these tears, but he also gave proof of the spirit of sacrifice that is the red thread of Christianity. No one sacrificed like him; he always had an extra piece of bread – maybe some of us were driven into isolation, maybe another didn’t like food, so he was always ready to help. In the work camp, when he saw a prisoner struggling with a wheelbarrow, he would jump up and take his wheelbarrow, leaving his own aside. In our cell, when work was called for, he was the first to sign up. He could see that a sicker man had a hard time doing it.

This spirit of sacrifice shows what prison has done to people. It made new people. That’s why we thought that if we ever got out, we’d have to start a new parish. Father Stăniloae also encouraged us when he saw this thirst for the Word of God. We all saw that this was the only thing we wanted. We had become people hungry only for spirituality. We taught people Psalms and whole Gospels. But this was only after we had gone beyond the things of the flesh, as St. Paul says that “the things of the flesh do not understand the things of the Spirit”.

Thus arrived, we thought we were making a new beginning outside, we understood our priestly roles differently.

But when we left prison, we still encountered pain. I remember once, when I was on a tour of Transylvania, he wanted to come and see me. When he returned to Bucharest, the security service immediately took him in for the few minutes we spent together. So, in the almost 30 years since 1964, we have not been able to meet, we have not been able to fulfil our dreams of creating new people here, outside, for the Kingdom of God.

I also met Father Stăniloae and we pretended not to know each other, because we hurt each other. With this we go to the pit, because at this hour we are wrecks. When a man is over 80, there is nothing but toil and pain. But we can never give up our dreams: Neither the battles lost hurt / Nor the wounds in the chest / Nor the sluggish arms / That no longer want to fight / You are not defeated when you bleed / Nor your eyes when they cry / True defeats / Are the abandonment of dreams.

Father Julian’s dreams will be translated by his disciples, who will know how to put into practice the wisdom of a great apostle, a great priest. He has sent a message for tomorrow’s millennium, a millennium that will belong to those who love their neighbour, as we have been there, ethnicities and confessions together, as Father Iulian has been pursuing all his life, so that we may live as children of God.

(Testimony of Father Ioan Sabău – A Priest of Fire. Father Iulian, edited by Costion Nicolescu, Byzantine Publishing House, Bucharest, 2000, pp. 197-200)