The Saint of the Prisons

This book is about a man who transformed his time incarcerated in the terrible Communist prisons into an opportunity to win his freedom in Christ. A man who loved God until the end – paying the ultimate price for Him, his life – Valeriu Gafencu was a model not only for all his fellow prison mates, but also his fellow countrymen. Indeed, he continues to be a model for all Christians who struggle against sin and against the passions of this world. Intelligent, well-educated, passionate in his ideals for his country and ardent in his faith, he was twenty years old and a student of law when he was first arrested, guilty of nothing but his convictions. What followed were eleven years of incarceration in the Communist gulag, a time of persecution and torture – both of the body and of the soul – for Valeriu, alongside his fellow inmates. Rejecting all potential thoughts of despair, revenge, bitterness, or any other human reactions to the unjust conditions they were being subjected to, he used this time for inner purification, for the struggle to become closer to Christ and to his fellow men. God bestowed upon him the gift of unceasing prayer, and in the same way as Saint Silouan the Athonite, he reached an adamic conscience, suffering and praying for a fallen world. It was obvious for everyone who knew him – even guards, doctors and atheists prison mates – that Valeriu was made for another world. As he was living in extremely harsh incarceration conditions, while being seriously ill, his inner peace and happiness were clearly a gift from God. Through Christ, he conquered fear. The published memoirs of those who suffered with Valeriu in prison reveal in him a soul made snow-white through conscious suffering for Christ. Although a “cloud of testimonies” emerged from the Communist prison cells, the one mentioned the most is “Valeriu Gafencu”. All those who knew Valeriu mentioned him with great piety, considering him a saint. Father Nicolae Steinhardt, a Jew converted to Christianity in prison, called him in his evocations “the saint of the prisons”. Father Gheorghe Calciu-Dumitreasa, another important Orthodox witness of the Communist period, said, “I have no doubt he is a saint; he lived God’s word at a height incomprehensible for us”. “Valeriu and his brethren not only resisted, but rose to a height of Christian sanctity that rivaled that of all the greatest confessors of Christianity” (The Orthodox Word).Valeriu’s life on earth ended in the same spirit of sacrificial love with which he lived all his years in prison. Deathly ill of tuberculosis, when he received a hard-to-acquire medicine from an admirer of his, medicine that could have saved his life, he gave it to another sufferer, Pastor Richard Wurmbrand, a Jew turned Protestant. Thanks to the medicine, the Pastor lived, while Valeriu did not. However, Valeriu did not await death in fear, but in joy and hope of resurrection. This book seeks to stimulate, to comfort, and to set an example for any time of trial or persecution. It is written with love for all who are, even without knowing it, seeking the true Joy: our Christ, the Lord.