The prison cell – the most authentic monastery cell

Left alone, I continued to fight the great enemy that is the cold. I wrapped the blanket around my back and walked around in it. The blanket was dirty and almost transparent with age.

Wrapped in it, I looked like a monk. I said to myself, “See, I have put on the rough robe of a monk! In this form, my intention from last summer to go to Neamț Monastery has been fulfilled.” I had also shared this intention with Father Petru Plumbaș, the new parish priest of Finiș. I consider this cell to be the cell of Neamț Monastery that I had longed for.

Nowhere are the conditions of life harsher than in prisons, especially the Bolshevik ones. The ascetic life is lived with maximum intensity: perpetual fasting through starvation; harsh sleeping conditions, on a tattered blanket, rags, or even concrete; total isolation from the world, without any contact with family. The universe of life is reduced to the size of a dark cell. These conditions make the prison cell the most authentic monastic cell.

In this total isolation and solitude, where no concrete activity is possible, there is unlimited time for meditation and prayer, disturbed only by the guard’s rounds, who peered through the peephole at various intervals. Later, in the larger prisons, especially in Aiud, I found in many of the suffering brothers the conviction that the prison cell was a monastery cell. In this way, imprisonment was seen as a divine gift, and the execution of the sentence a necessary stage in the rebirth of the soul—an effective school for becoming a perfect Christian fighter.

(Fr. Liviu Brânzaș – Ray from the Catacomb)