“Death is not death”
The passing “beyond” of the parent is not necessarily a moment of sadness. Father Arsenios is fine. He has practiced the spiritual virtues and will most likely continue to do so where he is now.
Those who are still spiritually small may have a regret that they are not yet commensurate with the spiritual height of the parent.
But this can be understood and even solved, because it is the very purpose of existence.
We can help Father Arsenios and also ourselves, accelerating our spiritual evolution, through the following:
– the offering of light of 7 candles for 49 days, mentioning each time, before even lighting a candle, the fact that we make this offering of light to help the parent, necessarily in perfect agreement with his merits and with the will of God
– Hesychastic meditation or Christian meditation of the heart every evening for 21 days, at least 30 minutes, praying each time God before we begin, to transform our spiritual effort into help for the parent, necessarily in perfect accord with his merits and with the will of God;
Can be used for this periods of meditation in unison from 10 am and evening, which are privileged moments, in terms of spiritual efficiency
– The Art of Grace, for those who know how to achieve it, minimum 30 minutes for 21 days.
These processes, if performed with intensity, can unsuspectingly accelerate our spiritual evolution, access to the state of spirituality in the middle of life and easily overcome obstacles.
They can also be used with great efficiency when we want to help anyone else we love who needs support, even if it has become inaccessible to us, either because it has gone far away or because it has passed into another stage of existence through the so-called death.
More important than this is, however, to live spiritually, manifesting, detaching from what is fleeting, manifesting love, courage, intelligence, discrimination, awake heart.
Because it is essential not if we live (we will live anyway) but how we live.
Leo Radutz – AdAnima Academic Society
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July 19, 2011 the day when in Techirghiol, at the age of 97, passed to the eternal Father Arsenie Papacioc who is considered one of the most important confessors of Orthodoxy.
Under the regime of Marshal Ion Antonescu, in 1941, he was arrested and convicted, for belonging to the Legionary Movement, he became a monk in 1946, and after his release he served at the Antim Monastery in Bucharest until 1949.
Between 1949-1950 he was a sculptor at the Bible Institute, and in 1951 he became a priest at the Monastic Seminary of the Neamt Monastery.
Between 1952-1958 he was a priest at Slatina Monastery. In the summer of 1958 he was arrested again, because he was part of the group “The Burning Bush” and was sentenced to 20 years of forced labor, he was pardoned in 1964 from Aiud prison.
THE “BURNING BUSH” WAS A MYSTICAL GROUP OF INTENSE PRACTICE OF ISIHASTE MEDITATION.
Since 1976, he was the confessor of Saint Mary’s Monastery in Techirghiol.
Father Papacioc went through the communist prisons where he suffered along with Father Iustin Parvu, Ioan Ianolide, Valeriu Gafencu, Nichifor Crainic, Mircea Vulcănescu and others.
Another great father of Orthodoxy, Father Justin Parvu says that “Aiud is the holiest place of the Romanians”
In the book “The Confessors” of lucman publishing house, about the Saints of Prisons, Father Papacioc said about the martyrdom in the aiud prison:
” that you didn’t know if you were living until tomorrow. This state of extraordinary tension gave you the opportunity to know your great intimacy, it’s blessed. This is not an affliction. Their tendination was extermination by starvation. Zarca is a prison in prison, made by the Hungarians for the Romanians, to kill them, where without question you are applied the desired regime to each ins or to each group of ins. The last few years – a year or two – only in the dice have kept me. We confronted them at a meeting they had made there with the inmates sold, which was equal to the death. But God didn’t want to. They put me in the cooler. In three days you were dying, noticed. They beat me five days, I didn’t die! Seven of them beat me, I didn’t die. In cold rooms, you know. It’s awful! I don’t know if you understand me… I had a curiosity as a child to see how the soul comes out… So I was on the edge of things. Impossible conditions, to die in awakening. Many have died. I didn’t die.
I could only speak through walruses, and they asked those next door to confess. Also through walruses. I could transmit, but I couldn’t get it, because if he caught you he was killing you on the spot. And I arranged that way with them, also through walruses. “Tomorrow, at a certain time – I appreciated with them then – stay in this part of the cell. I give you a signal through the beating, through the wall, and you tell me your sins, and I loose you. On one condition: if you die by tomorrow – because that was the case – confession is valid. But if you do not die, at the first priest you meet, confess your sins again.” That is, to proceed honestly with regard to that mystery. I tell you this so that you have a picture of our spiritual state there, when you were in every moment uncertain about the next moment. This state, which was not one day long, was years old. I could see no sign of human benevolence, of man, all this time.
I was asked by many where it was harder: in prison or in the wilderness, because I also lived in the wilderness.
In prison, those who did not believe in God struggled and were sorry. Because it wasn’t an unseen force to stop the wild, cruelty, hateful urges that were always pressing on the man. That was missing. In the wilderness, however, the devils you fight feared God and it was easier, with all the weather of the time: winter, snow, wild beasts, tense state there too. But it was still a note of freedom. Because all of you do not know how expensive freedom is and why God has left it to us. There is nothing more precious to God than the time He gives us to live. Because to breathe and to breathe is all from God. And then Christ had the great caution to tell us that “no hair moves without my will.”
We are governed by God in all our movement, in all our hidden thoughts. Of course it also depends on which position you sit in. With this in mind, and this alone: eternal life. If you get lost, if you are careless or you are an atheist – God forbid! That’s worse this condition, this carelessness. This is obnoxious to God… Because God is not angry for certain mistakes we make while he is angry that we are careless. We defer our existence, we go on inertia. It’s a big mistake! Every moment must be lived in all its fullness. To know yourself. The big mistake that’s in the world what is it? The human being, who is made in the image and likeness of God, isolates himself according to his own being.
It was not God who kicked Adam out of heaven, but Adam who kicked himself out. That’s the man! Saint Gregory of Nyssa, the brother of St. Basil the Great, was asked, “What about man?” and replied St. Gregory: “It is overwhelming and incomprehensible.” God still keeps mysteries about man, unknown neither to angels nor unknown to the world. Because it is in the image and likeness of God. He’s the only being created in image and likeness. It is the only possible link between God and creation. Man was entrusted with the great responsibility to supervise the entire creation. And Satan fights hard, with a zeal that people do not know, to get us out of our heads that we are like God. Because we kind of take his seats. His job, but we are created like this, in image and likeness. And God’s creation cannot be denied or interpreted. We are the image and likeness of God.
So we have great security, but also great responsibility. That’s why I was telling you that it’s very serious not to know that you live and who you are. You never talked to yourself, of course, given the great values: Eternity… What’s up with me? I, given the prison and the wilderness, did not use myself more than in the head of the dead. Screams… They were entering an unknown not for a thousand years, but for eternity! His life was not filled with good deeds, it was empty! Or it’s empty, to people. Big mistake this state of self-ignorance!
This instinct to live is also held by the pig, it has it and every other animal. But that’s it! Man has a conscience, he has a dedication beyond reason. He is made God according to grace. You realize: God according to grace! The Fall of Adam interrupted our relationship with God. God came and brought us more than Adam lost! It has just brought us the knowledge again that we are again God according to grace and that there is no death. Because he says, “And you will go from death to life.” Or death does not mean an end, but it means another happy or unhappy beginning.
Why fear death if you have prepared for the resurrection? It’s a contradiction, and man decides, in this vacuum of things, not in a state of continuous presence. It’s not hard. Because there’s never anyone next to you in vain. Either you use yourself, or you use it, or you have to check yourself whether or not you are rabiding it, bubos as it is. That this lack of presence next to your brother is a lack of love, and it’s at odds with the Creator. The act of presence.
I am not for need, as a confessor. I’m 95 years old. I am for a state of continuous presence of God. Exist! And we ask ourselves the question: Why? What’s up with me? What’s up with death? What’s these elements that are valid? Death doesn’t come to make him a coffee. It’s unscrupulous! It takes you as you are! We can’t postpone it for a second when it comes.
The Last Judgment is not to be seen with God sitting on a judgment throne. You judge yourself, quickly. We are a valuable being more than any other being. Devils were good angels. And I said so: if he were embodied again the possibilities lost, he would overthrow the earth with his little finger! If you, being lost, think like this, why not think so about my guardian angel, who is not fallen! And it is said of the guardian angel, in a place, so: that it is impossible not to die, if you see him in such a light! And this angel is not alone, in terms of guarding. The watchful word we did not give him, God gave him: “Keep this soul until his death.” He’s in relationship with billions of other angels, with great power. And yet they are without this great identity, Gods you are. They are a creation with great possibilities, with great beauty, which escapes our limited minds. Because the Apostle Paul also says that it is not given to man to know, because he was caught up to the third heaven.
So the human being is God by grace. That said homo homini lupus, “the wolf man for man” fell, at the coming of the Savior. Now it’s the other way around: man is God to man. And look who we put in hell and we don’t get along. Why do you call him devils, devils and do not call him Lord, Lord!? It means that he would put a great zeal for him in this finding, by every ins who would want to be awake at all. That he fights hard to conquer us and gather us to him. But it stumbles upon the power of the Cross, the power of God. The cross is the Father, all the height, the Son, all the depth, the Holy Spirit, all the width. The Holy Cross has an extraordinary significance! That’s why Catholics also changed the sign of the cross, made differently with their fingers, with another setting, from left to right. It’s a big mistake! We are not here because we would agree to be like that, like a pope. We are so of the Holy Spirit, and we are also judged by the Holy Spirit.”
These words of the confessor Father Papacioc are so full of faith, wisdom, Romanianism and spirituality that an interpretation no matter how well ticluita would seem poor and unnecessary, that’s why we continue to offer you the film – “Let’s have the sincere heart” with Father Arsenie Papacioc:
In “HIS TESTAMENT – DEATH DOES NOT MEAN DEATH” Father Papacioc, talks about ecumenism and what it means, the fact that:
“people are misinformed. They are told, for example, that Father Staniloae was an ecumenist, when Father Staniloae, before he died, said in an interview: “Ecumenism is the heresy of our times. I, for one, consider him the product of Masonry…” The interview exists, it’s on the internet, it can be listened to. But ecumenists say, “No, Father Staniloae was an ecumenist.”
Well, if you want to interpret that the Father is not the Father and the Son is not the Son, the Holy Spirit is not the Holy Spirit, – you are free! But, I answer: a Staniloae could not be an ecumenist. I talked to him, and we even met, and with him, and with Father Cleopas, I’m not talking anymore! We lived together in the wilderness.”
The interview can be viewed here and is called “Confession of truth”, this being considered the Testament of the Confessor Arsenie Papacioc.