Father lives in a studio Double or what is called in the West a small studio. Receivable is received between rooms, of not more than ten square meters. Beyond the bedroom windows, where the foot of the bed double, the parent table is Stăniloae Dumitru has worked much of his writings.

This side is a large library on two walls, a table-desk, behind which usually sits father, a sofa and two-three seats. Books, too many library capacity, as can be stuffed without a certain logic, ending by pouring through all corners of the room in stacks whose balance is always unstable.

On the walls, several icons on glass, some very beautiful, probably brought by parent home from Vlădeni. By sliding windows of the library, alder, all kinds of reproductions of famous icons, photographs etc. Beyond barely glimpse the spines of books with titles in Romanian, German, Greek, Latin, English, French, Italian, Russian, etc.

To get here is something unimaginably easy. Father receives anytime anyone came by, perhaps thousands. A memorial theirs would be particularly telling. He would comprise a highly diverse world of here and elsewhere: Vlad country and priests, monks and students, famous scholars and doctoral students, intellectuals of various professions modest, cultural personalities, etc.

Some went only once … Others have become something of a household and went there several times a week. Not a few go there because they know that “looks good” or obtain writings with which to support their publications. I crossed with some steps, others heard only.

There are a few days a year when the “cell” father widens enormously. St. Demetrius and his birthday. Sometimes the Holy Mary, Mother priestess. Then the phone rings constantly in Bucharest, the country abroad. With unwavering patience, Father raises traditionally receiver dozen times, answering greetings and wishes. Longer fills the cell and Christmas, when the parent or close groups of students come in Christmas Eve with carols.

The repertoire is not too wide, the joy of birth is but meet together great. Finally, the father divided apples, nuts, pretzels and especially speaks …

About Christmas virgin birth, the wonder carols about childhood times at Vlădeni and the like. At these celebrations I saw going into that closet and thirty people without anyone to feel embarrassed. On the contrary…

To work for nothing better than sitting in vain

This exhortation of Father Arsenie Boca father guided him Stăniloae at a time when the appearance of his books was prohibited. And further translated into Filocalia …

Father always working on something. Something important or original writings or translations of the Fathers. Now I hear that he’s sorry he does not have time to do this or that now and see that it has finished.

Always latest book is the best. Holy Father always translated last is the most important, most profound. Father love is present or localized far, his contact with God and His saints is always alive, it leads to friendship. I think, where is, Fathers are very satisfied when I see translated and commented by Father Stăniloae. Any book you write or translate a parent you summarize in a few words. Everything seems clear and complete. You ask yourself what needs to be added. What you find, but, then, it is an endless analysis of nuances, details, all with their importance in the economy of the work (text). Father Stăniloae reveals unsuspected depths where others see places obscure or unimportant.

Philosopher and theologian

A friend told me how he led every parent Dumitru Stăniloae a philosopher known and how it was left somewhat disappointed by the simplicity of speech that we met.

Parent language in oral conversations is always simple, clear and accessible. But his words have power, they understand and live coverage, have aura. They are given on each measure in the form, but they are in fact deepest thoughts. Without launch historicism or speculation hauntingly spectacular free Stăniloae father has something new to say and told his unabashed is built.

Philosopher story leads me to Nicu Steinhardt’s reflections about the death of Socrates and Christ. It is certain that our philosopher search for a particular type of speech (purely speculative) that the parent was not found, and the parent speech he was not ready. Because theologized and another one is philosophizing about faith.

A light coming from Tabor

Someone said that the man known as laughing. Father Stăniloae be seen and throw you laugh. Always rests a light on his face, but when you laugh seems that this light is amplified. His eyes are still small, in fact, two torches and joy that is contagious emit.

An angel has watched him constantly father

The recent book of conversations with Father Sorin Dumitrescu Stăniloae begins abruptly with a question about angel. I would say that I saw an angel always present around Father Dumitru.

You can not refer them Srăniloae father and his cell in the middle of Bucharest immediately and without thinking about the Mother Priestess Maria. Who knew him knew her father and mother necessarily priestess. Present discreetly in a corner, it warms the place. Enthusiasm in her eyes glow find a soul who gives honest and relentlessly. Always find availability ask you not formal, but full of interest about yours and your family’s. Parent her whole life was extraordinary and tireless support. Hereby, heat, through self-giving, in a word, by a boundless love, calm and devoted. Father Stăniloae be trusted he had, all his life, an angel beside him.

It comprising around this pair holy peace and calm of a powerful love, a love that was really. A full living together in a body and a soul, after urging the Church of Christ. It is absolutely impressive to see them today, after almost 70 years of living together, burdened by years of old age and diminished, with what infinite tenderness and delicacy surrounds each other.

Finally, Stăniloae father is a man like all of us. Does anxieties and joys, has perplexities and questions without response, has longings unfulfilled fears that will not see some printed books, rejoice when you hear a good word about him, he likes to joke, suffering with his friends , eyes annoy him and his courageous you wholeheartedly when it does and kisses you really …

Our Father

It will take years, it will take ages (it will be one that will be ten, God knows!) And generations of lovers of theology will toil and try to get the beauty of texts Father Stăniloae as trying to do this working now with the writings of the Fathers of past centuries.

Watching icon will then be the one who will ask the Father earthly journey. We had great mercy of God as Father Dumitru to be contemporary and to occasionally sit around. We bear witness to him and to God we are obliged to do. We are called to detail Raphael we form. Fr. life was in sight, nothing hidden.

Theological work is and will be available to all, but those tender moments of communication they spent every cell of our Father is a personal treasure to be shared and others surely now and later. Rereading the article Holiness and delicacy, I realized how poor are our words to those of the Father. St. portrait made of him there is in fact (today we can say!) A self-portrait. Nothing you could paint better than Father Dumitru own words. For these two belonged to him and his holiness and gentleness.

Make it to be, as it was Father, for all the same and each in a certain way, personally, it is only the great Fathers who reached spiritual likeness of God. For Father, as Christ, every man and he was given important attention and openness in love. From here, the fact that the door was always open to everyone, and tenderness with which you deal. For those who step often threshold, he was not only the great theologian, only the priest who take their full seriously grace, and father, the man you embrace who you listen question or trouble, he advised and I cheer at the chest which could find shelter.

Sure, the family occupies an important place in his heart. A friend told me how he once saw the morning, at dawn, at Rosetti Square, with a bouquet of flowers; then he realized it was mother’s day priestesses. On the poetry of his daughter, commenting it, he built an entire theology that only a father could love so much spirit enters develop. Grandson, Dumitraş, starting owes his entire life. With how much love he received his relatives in his home village! But we, we approached him, felt the same immense tenderness in contact with him. No birthday or birthday passed to any of those close without to make a call to bless and wish her well. What joy producing these gestures made with a disarming naturalness.

I remember the last meeting at the hospital. Each of those who have been there is of course a precious memory of last meeting. Father was already on the threshold into another world. (We have much to learn about the man watching him when he’s in the door … It was like facing a bright room, whose door ajar by a beam fall on his face thinned by asceticism suffering. It shone Father, răsfrângând that light unapproachable, Tabor. it smelled of holiness that last his cell at Fundeni. He sparks watchful guarding the lamp reproductions of icons pasted on tiles: Madonna with Child Saint Gregory Palama … “I can not speak” she told me. “No more. you talk and you wrote all my life”, trying to comfort him. In such moments, it is a great saving. In exceptional cases can communicate extensively with little means. I kissed his hand. he raised it to bless me. i would not have dared to ask him such an effort. the gesture, turned from him, it was clear, full and vigorous. one had done so many times over the years but if I never had the feeling that when a force so great, concrete, obvious that I was handed as a terrible discharge of grace.

Where so much power in that body emaciated from illness? Holding her hand, I feel it’s shaking me slightly, but clear. It was also a way of speaking, we confess to each other. I wanted to hug him, kiss him, not with pity but with a kind of childlike start. “Thank God!” She said. “Thank God!” I replied. So split the peasants in the streets, here in Transylvania. These were the last words between us. No big words. In fact, everything is so simple it is in order. In fact, there is no separation for Christians. But there are three ways of being together: when we’re together here, in this world, in the flesh; when we are some here, some beyond, spirit; when we are together and we will have other world bodies, those transfigured. We have learned that communication and body with hugs blessings, overlooked faces and, in this regard, Father’re missing much. We have, of course, and now mystically with us as a saint, to shield us with his prayers. And how is this going consoling and comforting. But what we want more than to get to be together forever, and there with our spiritual bodies. Let’s meet and take it where we left off: – “God help us!” – “God help us!”.

Do not be carping! Let us thank God that it gave Fr Dumitru until almost 90 years and not just any year since worked in every way to the last year. And when we think Dogmatica occurred in 75 (!) And other important works were the fruit of his old age! Father Dumitru already no longer just ours. Who would be a fool to say that St. Isaac of Syria is Santic Gregory Palama the Syrians or the Greeks? Father is the whole church, including the now victorious.

In November and December 1978 I attended the last three Dogmatic courses for PhD students of Father Stăniloae. It was already night when beginning lessons in taking part in around ten people. I remember how I went one evening after Father from tram to college. I looked thrilled silhouette quite high. Race was overlaid with a black balonzaid pretty old hat to wear wide-brimmed known and carrying a small briefcase in hand the old model. Walking was old, yet determined and lively. Only white beard shone in the night. Enter the class with the same lead safe. It was strikingly noticeable way while his humility and greatness. Around a long rectangular tables were rounded students. In the end he sat. He took off his hat and put together, but not undress, because it was cold and moisture. It was prayer and then we sat. From little old-fashioned briefcase, took off a few sheets they put in front of him. He is holding them there as a conductor who knows by heart that keeps score and has to face without a browse. In the first hour talking “About Trinity” and the second “About forms of permanent prayer.” He spoke with his eyes almost closed, slowly and emphatically, without stir. Yet that word much power! He seemed like a man who sees the work, placing the next stone lifting stone thoroughly solid construction. Dim light, cold atmosphere of the college gave a strange feeling of space soldierly. It was complete silence, only slightly and hurried rustle of pencils on paper. At the end, pick up and leave just as he had come: light as an angel who has also made the proclamation. We stick with the construction.

A fourth lesson has not been permitted. While I was waiting for her father entered professor Ilie Moldoveanu, then “spiritual” at the Faculty of Theology in Bucharest, professor of Moral today to the Sibiu. We researched each who we are, what we do. I was wondering least that an engineer had come to that course. And then he had this wonderful word about Father Stăniloae: “The Greeks say that there are only three” Theologians “: St. John the Evangelist, St. Gregory Nazianzen and St. Symeon the New Theologian. We Romanians say that there are four, because it would add Dumitru Father. “

A St. Demetrius called him “theologian” is neither a spontaneous statement and uncoated, and even a canonization. We do not saints, but only their work with God. The name Holy Theologian is the continuation of a tradition very austere and cautious, who scored once in a while (in the first century, in the fourth, in the X century and the twentieth th) by way of our faith “theology.”

Father Dumitru meet at least three conditions which the Church requires a canonization:

– Its end which, according to eyewitnesses, consisted of an hour of conversation with God and the Virgin Mary;

– Wonders that made them: what else are his writings? (But not only them);

– Faithful devotion to him.

To these were added a lot of smaller signs, which no longer show now, but that are proven. From these premises accurate and true Church can not detach than a conclusion. The church expects that time to prove, but no canon establishes this time. Time we are with our witness. Immediately after the Lord gave up the ghost, who first testified about Him – “Truly, God’s Son is It!” – It was not an apostle or another disciple, but a centurion anonymous and humble. It is not permitted any abatement. In fact, Father Dumitru membrane is thinned by the Spirit that Christ străvede chip close.

(Costion Nicolescu – Salt of the Earth – crosses, meetings, tracing Publishing Doxology, Iasi, 2011, pp. 106-108, 111-114).

source: fericiticeiprigoniti.net