With Father Justin, at Aiud, volunteer in the service of the nation

I have heard about Father Justin since the beginning of my journey through the prisons, I have met people who asked me about the monastery of Durău, where he served, about the mountains of Neamț, full of churches and monasteries, cells. with anchorites, caves. And I was proud of the places I came from, because they were sung by Calistrat Hogaș and Alexandru Vlahuță.

But I met Father Iustin in Aiud, where we were together as “volunteers in the service of the nation”. Even then, Father had a halo around him. He was known to many as the “priest with grace”. It is difficult for me to pick out individual events from the many memories I have of that time, because we lived as beings surrounded by danger, hunger and cold, and our first concern was to survive. But I would like to remember one particular fact about my father’s life in Aiud prison. One particularly cold winter, the year I can’t remember, my father remained almost naked. If in regards to clothes it was still doable, the biggest problem was his boots.

The prison administration stopped giving us anything, there were no funds. That’s why, instead of shoes, the priest received a postcard from the prison administration asking him to write home and send boots. In a few weeks the boots arrived, they were new, brand new, just in time for the winter.

But in those days a new prisoner had been brought into the priest’s cell, and he brought with him a pair of boots that had only faces, the soles were missing, so the poor boy’s feet were all injured and he groaned with every step. Without hesitation, the priest took off his boots and gave them to the young man, saying:

“Here brother, take these shoes and enjoy them, because I don’t need them anymore, I’m older here and I can manage…”. There was a deep silence in the cell as the two embraced each other and shed hot tears: “Brother, brother…!”

(Testimony of Grigore Caraza – With Father Justin Pârvu on Death, Sacrifice and Love, edited by Adrian Alui Gheorghe, Conta Publishing House, Piatra-Neamț, 2006, pp. 30-32)