Vasile Voiculescu – a man of seraphic kindness and gentleness

What kind of man was Vasile Voiculescu?

Not only humble, modest, but of a seraphic gentleness. A seraphic kindness and gentleness. Once some guards – they were the secretaries who guarded us – made him carry a big barrel, but he was weak, frail, he couldn’t do it. And they told him: “If you can’t work, you can’t eat”. And they prevented him from getting food from the kitchen. So many people starved to death with that small amount of food.

They wouldn’t give him that either. And then we, some of us around him, wanted to give him some of our bread – bread was the most substantial food, but it was so thin that we said, I don’t know whether jokingly or seriously, that you could see through it. I mean, a slice of bread the size of your palm was three times thinner than your finger. And we’d tear off some of ours, a few, three, four, five, six, to give to him. He didn’t want to, and I forced him by saying: “This is suicide. If you don’t take it, you’re committing a greater sin!” And in the end he took it.

(Fr. Adrian Făgețeanu – My Life. My Testimony, Areopag Publishing House/Meditations Publishing House, Bucharest, 2011, p. 49)