The unknown sufferings of Father Galeriu

Most memories of a person can be learned from those with whom he or she spent the most time. A spiritual portrait of Fr. Galeriu could not have been better drawn than by another altar server of St. Sylvester, with whom he spent more than 20 years, Fr. Nicolae Bordașiu. His words present us with a man fully identified with his mission, that of being an image of humility and love of Christ for the world, listening to its weaknesses and bringing healing to those overwhelmed by suffering and need.

Throughout his life, Father Galeriu was in good health. So he was able to withstand the scolding of the communists when they took him to the canal and when they did him so much harm afterwards.

But he never hated them, and he bore their suffering in silence. These are his unknown, unspoken sufferings. When you suffer with your body, you let out another sigh, another word, you cannot remain unnoticed and the person next to you will ask you: “What ails you?” But if you have something on your soul, it’s hard enough to be discovered. That is why Father Galeriu suffered so much. He suffered in silence. He suffered with the poor because he could not alleviate as much pain as he saw in the needy, especially when he went on pastoral visits or when various poor people came to him. He suffered indescribably when he had to work with young people who took drugs. He tried to convince those who were brought by their parents or who came of their own accord. And there were many who visited him, knowing that he was a great confessor. Sometimes he would spend hours talking to one of these lost young men, and when he found that the message had not penetrated his soul because the one before him either rebelled or did not receive what was offered, Father’s suffering was boundless. But he never disarmed anyone. He resumed the conversation with the same young man and was still not discouraged.

Always hoping in God’s mercy

He expressed his sorrow among us when many young people who belonged to MISA (Movement for Spiritual Integration in the Absolute) came and had direct talks with the leader of this movement. He accepted that they would come to our church and even received him as a godfather at a baptism, along with other vowed godfathers, thinking that they could bring him back to the right path. And when he saw that it was all in vain, he said to me sadly: “This man is lost forever. And I remember that when this man, with a dose of impudence, arrived a few hours late for a baptism that had been scheduled for a certain time, the priest waited, waited for his return. We started the baptism with the good godparents, only for this one to finally show up, somewhat disregarding the priest. And I felt the bitterness of the father’s soul in those moments, seeing that their selfishness and deceit is so strong. Nevertheless, he hoped that God would have mercy on them too.

Now I would like to recall a moment of even greater pain, not only of the soul, but also of the body. I remember how Father used to say: “Nothing is accidental, everything is providential”. The very day that I heard about the gathering of young people from ASCOR to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Fr. Galeriu’s eternal death in the monastery of Oașa, as I was leaving the church, on the steps at the entrance, I met a lady whom I knew somewhat but had not seen for a long time. I went up to her and told her that I had never seen her before. She replied that she was working somewhere else. I thought that wherever she was, she was still in the House of God, but I repeated the question: “Why don’t you come to us anymore? The answer was completely unexpected: “Fear!” “What do you mean, fear?” “I’m afraid because I know who beat up Father Galeriu.”

The woman probably just wanted to remind me of something that happened in the 1990s. I told her, “I remember those times, but I also know that Father forgave those who hurt him, because he was good”. But the woman said, “But it’s not those who Father saw in court who are the perpetrators, the perpetrators remained and will always remain unknown. And it could happen, she said to justify her fear, that one day they might take revenge on me if they knew that I was going to expose those who beat the priest”. And then I asked her, “Who beat him?” “What, you don’t know? The Security Service.”

The unexpected visit

Then I remembered the night it happened. Father had an elderly lady typist who had known him for many years, since Father had served in Ploiești, in the church of “Saint Basil”. I have forgotten her name. She used to come from Ploiești and spend days typing Father’s words and writings. Father Galeriu was suffering from Parkinson’s disease and could no longer write in a calligraphic manner. It was a summer night, they slept with the windows open and Father, who never thought that people could be so bad, took no precautions. That night, some people broke into the house, went into a room where Father’s library was and started throwing everything on the floor. The typist woke up, but the men put a pillow over her face and threatened her, telling her that if she said a word they would kill her. There were four of them. Then they went into the father’s room and, without saying a word to him, they hit him several times with a “knuckle duster”, a metal weapon of the kind you put in your fingers and hit with a clenched fist. They beat him so badly that they knocked his teeth out of his mouth. Dad’s teeth were quite weak. But that wasn’t enough. They made him tell them where he had the valuables. Dad had nothing of his own. But in the house there was what was left of the priest Chiriac Bidoianu, the founder of the Church of Saint Sylvester. He had bequeathed all his possessions to the church, a gold chain with which he wore his iconom stravophore pectoral cross. There was another golden cross. Here is all the wealth that the priest, as parish priest, had kept from his ancestor. They were taken by the night’s uninvited guests. But they didn’t stop beating him, and with one punch they broke his bow so that his eyebrow fell over his eye. After they left, someone called and I alerted the people, and when I saw the priest, he had such a sad face that it made a deep impression on me. I will never forget how painfully he looked at me with one eye, because the other one was covered by his eyebrow, so that to see if they had not gouged out his eye, I hardly lifted my eyelid to see if the eye moved. He could barely utter a few words. The whole mouth was swollen, the teeth were loose, the eye was covered by the crushed eyelid. We called Dr. Moses, one of the priest’s students, a dentist, who examined the bloody face, and after the priest recovered, he expressed his sorrow at what human beings are capable of. These are the unknown sufferings of Father Galeriu. They were much harder to bear than those at the Canal or elsewhere, because then you knew what to expect. But here, with people to whom he had done nothing and who, if they had asked him, he would have given them whatever they wanted, why such cruelty?

He went wherever he was called.

Father had no possessions, the poor man had no earthly goods. He had the wealth of his soul, which he shared with great love with everyone, with everyone who wanted to ask him for help. It was the indescribable pain of the soul, as a result of physical suffering, that marked Father’s life.

When he went to court, however, he forgave those whom the authorities presented as the perpetrators of the theft and assault, telling the court that he had no claim. But the reality is that those presented were not the real perpetrators, but had been conditioned to admit to acts committed by others in order to intimidate the parent.

But they could never silence him, because he continued to speak with the same love, the same pathos, the same conviction, preaching truth and love. He flew from Bucharest to Baia Mare, to Timișoara, to Iași, wherever he was called, especially when he was asked by the youth of ASCOR. He didn’t care about anything, about tiredness, about time. He knew how to arrange things so that he could preach what was in his heart, faith in Jesus Christ as the Saviour of the world.

“He had from God the gift of speech”

Through everything he did with his being, Father Galeriu managed to express his ideas in the best possible way for all his listeners and to convince them. There have been great Christian orators since ancient times: St. John Chrysostom, St. Basil the Great, and they all had the habit of reinforcing their words with gestures. Hence the expression “homiletic finger”, the finger that points to the idea. In my life I have listened to many preachers, but none had such an expressive gesture, and you could see how much conviction his whole being expressed.

Father spoke with his whole being. He didn’t speak only with his mouth and he didn’t speak only with his brain, but Father spoke with his eyes, with his beard, with his hands and with his whole body. You could see him at one point when he had the tetrapod with his books, with his documentation, jumping around like a tiger and speaking powerfully, gesturing with his hands, emphasising his ideas, so that everyone was amazed at the way he spoke. A painter, Nelu Grădeanu, who was impressed by the way the priest preached, came several times to hear him, to see him, and he drew some of the priest’s gestures. Seventeen paintings were made, forming a series called “The Gestures of Father Galeriu’s Hands”. And although Father Galeriu’s face appears in the twilight, it is his hands in different positions that stand out. Father Grădeanu said of the painter: “He reveals to us this touch and this grace of the icon, and that is why I have a holy respect and love in Christ for him!”

Faces of great Christian speakers of the last century

In contrast to Fr. Galeriu, I remember the figure of Fr. Gala Galaction from 1945-1946, when the Faculty of Orthodox Theology in Bucharest organised a series of conferences given by different professors each week during Lent. The lectures were held in the Dalles Hall. As a theology student, I was in charge of the conference props, i.e. making sure that there was a chair, a table in front, a glass of water. When it was Father Gala’s turn to speak about St Paul, the illustrious professor looked backstage before the conference started to see what the scene was like, and then he said, “Go and get the table and chair over there”. In the middle of the stage was Father Gala, who was nicknamed “Father God” because he had a big beard, was bald and looked a bit like God the Father in those unofficial paintings of the Holy Trinity. I excused myself and quickly took the table and chair, although I wondered how this man could stand for several hours and still talk.

Father always wore two hats, one of reverence and the other of self-respect, and on his feet he always wore boots. When the conference began, he would put his hands together and place them in the wide sleeves of the outer cassock, and for an hour or so while he held the conference, except for his beard and the lap of the cassock , nothing moved in the crease of his garment, nor did he move from his seat. This was considered by the Romans to be the height of oratory, to be able to communicate convincingly by the power of thought and utterance without using any gestures.

We can contrast the image of these two great Christian orators, Father Gala and Father Galerius. The latter, with all his devotion in his speech, accompanied by total gesticulation, electrified the crowd. To see people standing still for more than an hour left one speechless. The word of Father Galeriu was so fascinating, so full of power, that no one dared to disturb the atmosphere of Father Galeriu’s words with a gesture or a cough. When you look at this series of 17 paintings by the painter Nelu Grădeanu, when he has studied every movement of the hands or the face, it is impressive to go from one painting to another, because you imagine how he spoke and it seems as if you want to hear in your memory his powerful and convincing speech and explain why the people were so close and obedient during his sermons.

Father Galerius had this gift of speaking from God and we cannot say that it was the result of any preparation. Although he was a disciple of a great orator, Father Toma Chiricuță, of whom Father Galeriu was a student and the editor of the Orthodox magazine that the preacher of the Zlătari church printed, the disciple far surpassed his master. Father Toma Chiricuță was a great ecclesiastical orator, but he was not of the stature of Father Galeriu in what he exposed. In Zlătari, a handful of people came to listen to the preacher, but in Sfântul Silvestru, where I listened to Father Galeriu for more than 20 years when it was his turn to preach, the audience was much smaller than in Zlătari, although the latter church was located in the centre of Bucharest. In my memory I can compare him with several teachers I had at the Faculty of Theology. For example, Father Grigore Cristescu, a man with a sharp and incisive mind, a speaker with a thorough and well-documented discourse.

Another famous orator was Father Haralambie Rovența, who had a different way of speaking, with a soft voice that dripped his ideas like honey into your soul, with a special ability to expose. Or I am thinking now of the martyred Bishop Nicolae Popovici, an extraordinary preacher, who spoke with great courage about the political changes in our country, when in the town where the Most Reverend lived, someone had the impertinence to display in a shop window a painting of St. Andrew Șaguna, to which he added a comment suggesting that he had contributed to the arrest of the revolutionary Ecaterina Varga. In this way it was suggested that Metropolitan Șaguna had lured her with the promise to rescue her and that he had taken her in his carriage and handed her over to the Hungarian authorities. For this reason, Bishop Nicolae Popovici made several speeches, several sermons in the Cathedral of Oradea, in which he courageously addressed the crowd of the perpetrators of this act, who were absent from the Church at the time, calling them “pygmies of my time” and revealing to them the personality of the great Transylvanian hierarch. Nicolae Popovici was an accomplished orator who knew how to go through all the stages of a speech, from the captatio benevolentiae to the development of the subject, in order to reveal the doctrine that he wanted to remain in the soul of the people. Like Father Galerius and Father Gala, they all spoke as if on a clock. And wherever they spoke and ministered, in St. Sylvester’s or in the Cathedral of Oradea, no one moved when these men spoke.

In his word one could find knowledge from different fields

There was so much variety in the priest’s words that, within the same sermon based on a Gospel pericope, he could take you, without tiring you, through all the branches of science that were in some way related to the theme being developed. And there was something else. It was always accompanied by documentation. There were always three or four books on the analogy on the lectern, and you didn’t know where he began his discourse, with what argument. If he was “arguing” with Freud, he would present his theories to the crowd and quote from the author’s book. Or if he was talking about the immortality of the soul, he would come up with other scientific proofs. So for every man in the church, the priest had something to draw one’s attention, to follow the idea and the argument brought directly from his field.

Sometimes these arguments were from molecular physics, sometimes from medicine, sometimes from philosophy. I remember that once he was talking about the relationship between people, about this dialogue between me and you, and he mentioned the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, who considered this relationship between me and you to be a dialogue of love. From this the Father concluded: When I say ‘I love you’, I am saying ‘I love you’. And he wanted to show that there is a great connection between people who communicate their ideas through words, and that these words, when they take chosen forms, are pleasing to the soul of every person, whether they have a high level of intellectual training or are more simple. So everyone could find something pleasant in the words of Father Galeriu.

Now, ten years later, when we no longer hear his booming voice, the pictures that recall the gestures of Father Galeriu’s hands make us feel, as if from beyond the world, his wisdom-filled graces.

(Article based on the recording made by Augustin Păunoiu with Father Nicolae Bordașiu – Ziarul Lumina, online edition of 7 August 2013)