The Soul’s Journey after Death

By Elder Cleopa

Brothers, never forget that our soul is immortal. Let me tell you one thing: we are mere strangers and passers-by here on earth. Listen to what the Psalm book says: Unworthy is man on earth and a stranger, just like all his ancestors. Nobody stays in this world. We are not here to stay. Down here is a ceaseless passing-by; we come by birth and leave by death.

Divine Jove says: From my mother’s womb I have fallen into the pit. Did you hear? That is all that life on earth seemed to him after 400 years. As after having put him through all that trying time, God gave him another 140 years of life – after having tested him with so much torment and so many illnesses – and that’s all that life seemed to him: that from his mother’s womb he had jumped into a pit. Life seemed like a mere jump to him.

Don’t you know what the Holy Spirit compares us to? Man is like grass; his days are like the flowers of the field; that is how he will bloom. And again: His days pass like shadows. And again: My days have gone down like shadows and I have withered away like grass.

Preserving Tradition

Interview with PETER RILEY

Poet, Cambridge, UK

“If Bucharest does not consider preserving Romania’s rural tradition as a treasure of humankind, you may say good-bye to the Romanian specificity within the European Union”

After having travelled to Maramureş once, many foreigners’ lives change unawares.  They become “addicted” to the villages of Hoteni, Bogdan Vodă, Breb or Vadu Izei. Nothing is the same as before. Much more sensitive than the Romanians when faced with values that they themselves have lost forever at home, these foreigners believe that they have found “the meaning of the universe” on the Iza or the Vişeu rivers. While the Japanese, with their kamikaze spirit, buy themselves graves in the Cemetery of Săpânţa, the Americans, the French or the English go out of their way to buy “signs of life” or not miss celebrations that take place throughout the year, such as weddings, nedei [traditional festivities], and Sunday dances. More than once, due to their direct impact, traditional dances have resumed in some villages, traditional dress and customs have been preserved, old wooden houses (otherwise threatened by bad-taste, through the offensive tide of the little gypsum pillars and coloured ceramics) have been left standing. Without any exaggeration, if Maramureş is still the dreamland of a strong traditional lifestyle, this is partly due to the foreigners who love this unique area. Almost every Maramureş family is linked, by invisible threads, to one or more families abroad. When someone is born, gets married or dies in Maramureş, no one could care less in Bucharest, Timişoara or Constanţa. But they are sure to care in Paris, London or Washington. In a way, what happens in Maramureş today will happen tomorrow to the entire Romania, when it gets to be really discovered by Westerners. At least this is what a British poet and his wife, Peter and Beryl Riley, from Cambridge, believe.

“We cannot conceive spending our holidays outside Maramureş any more”

-         How has a remarkable English poet as yourself come to spend his holidays in Romania, particularly in Maramureş?

-         To us, 1993 may be considered as the year of our discovery of the Romanian music, and 1998, the year of our first visit to this country. We were in a pub one evening, in Cambridge, when strange sounds of celestial beauty resounded next to us. We immediately inquired about the magicians who were interpreting those unheard-of tunes. “Romanians from Soporu de Câmpie”, said the bartender. It was an evening unlike any others we had had.

The Four Laws by which Christ will Judge the World

By Elder Cleopa

I have said a few words about death. I will now say something about conscience. Whoever will guard his/her conscience clean, will undoubtedly be prepared and happy when death comes. One’s conscience is the just judge that God has placed within us.

One’s conscience cannot ever be a mere reflection of matter. It is God’s voice in man and it always reprimands him when he goes astray: “Man, why did you do this or that?”

This law of one’s nature is also common among the Chinese, among Christians, or among the Buddhists, Brahmans, and Mohammedans. It is the first law that God placed in man’s soul ever since He created him, based on which the world guided itself until the written Law. An non-believing lawyer asked me once:

-         Father, I just cannot come to terms with the idea of the Last Judgement!

-         Oh, why can’t you, brother? How come?

On Adam and Life in Eden before the Fall

By St. Symeon the New Theologian

God is the creator of the world and of man. During the first five days, He made the earth and everything that is on it, as well as the sky. On the sixth day, He created man. On the seventh day, He rested after all the work that He had done (Genesis 1, 1-10).

The seven days of the world creation symbolise the ages that follow one another over time. Heaven was built on the eight day, imagining the age to come, which is not subject to the passing of time. God placed Heaven eastward, in Eden, and planted all sorts of trees there that were pleasant to the eye and good for eating (Genesis 2, 8-9). God made Adam a king over all the visible creatures living under the sky.

Adam was made of two natures: a thinking one and a feeling one; he was made of soul and body. And the Lord formed man of the dust of the ground – we read in the Bible – and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (Genesis 2, 7). The breath of life is the phrase for the thinking, simple, immaterial soul, which is made in the image of God.

Spoken by Children (1)

I think peasants believe in a peasant God. (Anca RUGESCU, 8th grade, 14 years and 5 months)

The Cross and the prayer are a kind of weapon, with bullets of goodness, before which the devil cannot defend himself, because he doesn’t have a bullet-proof vest against something like that. (Deniz ALI, 5th grade, 11 years and 6 months)

Santa Klaus doesn’t want to be painted on the walls of the churches, because he knows his place and says that the goodness he brings happens only once a year. (Cătălina Georgiana OPAINA, 8th grade, 14 years and 8 months)

The earth deposits are money that God has put aside for us ever since the making of the world. (Iulia GHIŢĂ, 15 years and 2 months)

Even if in our dreams, we ask our guardian angel what Heaven is like, he doesn’t tell us, because if he did, we would want to die right away. (Sorin Ştefan TRANDAFIRESCU, 3rd grade, 9 years and 3 months)

Spoken by Children (2)

God gets along more easily with small children, because the little ones have roomier souls. With grown-ups, there is such a congestion of bad things in their soul that there is hardly any place to sit. (Pavel MARTÎN, 3^rd grade, 9 years and 11 months)

If our Lord Jesus Christ showed up here now, I would ask Him if He can take me to His Mother, to ask Her how it is to have God as a child. (Alina Andreea ZANE, 2^nd grade, 8 years old)

The Bible is the way to read love. (Robert Felician HORTEA, 8^th grade, 14 years and 1 month)

The measure of prayer is to pray without measure, because prayer is good – therefore, it doesn’t hurt anyone to do good endlessly. (Adrian IONIŢĂ, 4^th grade, 10 years old)

Spoken by Children (3)

God didn’t put Heaven on earth but high up in the sky, because if Heaven were on earth and bad people are not received in it, they would make themselves soldiers and would try to get into Heaven by force. (Teodor ZAICA, 2nd grade, 8 years and 9 months)

Swearing is the devil’s language and this is the foreign language that is the most easily learnt; because the devil has been tutoring people for free ever since they started speaking. (Sorin Ştefan TRANDAFIRESCU, 4th grade, 10 years and 8 months)

Because they don’t stop the films with violence on TV, I am thinking that these guys who make the laws in our country suffer from the never-wake-up disease. (Tudor MATACHE, 5th grade, 12 years and 1 month)

The devil makes the microbes and God keeps putting them to sleep, but the devil is never idle, as he works until late in the evening making new microbes and waking up the old ones. (Teodor ZAICA, 2nd grade, 8 years and 4 months)

About Prayer

By Fr. Paisie Olaru of Sihla

Any prayer is a gift from God. But we, the weak ones, we have the prayer of the mouth. For now, you do that, my son. The well is deep, but the rope is short and the bucket is small.

In the morning, read the Akatist of the Holy Theotokos and in the evening, read Her Paraklesis. The Creed is a must-read, at least once a day, and read Psalm 50 two or three times a day…

About Fr. Arsenie Boca

Born in the county of Hunedoara, Romania, Fr. Arsenie Boca (September 29, 1910 – 1989) was one of the most important Romanian monastic figures of the 20th century. Ordained as a celibate Dean by Metropolitan Nicolae Bălan in 1935, he spends three months at the Romanian Prodromu Skete in Mount Athos, and is then established at the Sâmbăta de Sus Monastery (Braşov county), and receives tonsure in 1940. In 1942, he is ordained a Priest. By 1940, he had already sparkled in Sâmbăta de Sus what one of his contemporaries would describe as: “That uplifting time when the whole of Transylvania would make its way on singing pilgrimages defying chest-deep snow, to Sâmbăta de Sus, built by Martyr Voivode Constantin Brâncoveanu.”

Besides his outstanding contribution to the translation of the Philokaly alongside another reputed theological figure, Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae, he will always be remembered for his activity as a Priest, which earned him the surname of the “guider of souls”. Persecuted by the communist regime but highly respected and loved by the faithful, he was buried at the Prislop Monastery, which is now one of the country’s most important pilgrimage places.

“Fr. Arsenie was a unique phenomenon in the history of Romanian monasticism; a figure of high monastic stature, of a kind that the Romanian Orthodox Church never had before him.” Fr. Dumitru STĂNILOAE

“We Should Tell the Truth, Come What May”

Interview with Fr. Pantelimon of Ghighiu about Father Arsenie Boca

By Claudiu Târziu

Words and Examples for One’s Spiritual Awakening

-        Do you remember any particular advice that Fr. Arsenie Boca would give to people?

-        Father Arsenie could see that people loved him and he was afraid they might fall into idolatry. He used to tell everyone: “You all come here for useful advice and then expect me to save you, but I cannot do that. I can only wake you up from the sins you have been living in. Because this life is short and the other one is eternal and I wouldn’t want to see you cry on the Judgement Day”.