The second impression I would like to relate is that of the devotion of the people. Moldavia is quite obviously not a wealthy area; the people, by and large, seemed to be farm workers and simple countrymen. There were a few tractors, and the clothes were generally like modern western ones, but most of the haulage seemed to be done by horse and cart. Villagers would have a cow or two, tethered on the roadside outside their cottages. Few seemed in any way affluent, and yet everywhere they are building the most beautiful churches. In Falticeni (population apparently about 30,000), the town in which we stayed in the Hotel Polaris, there are several churches, but the Old Calendarist community there has built one of the most beautiful churches that I have ever seen anywhere in my travels. Dedicated to Sts Constantine and Helena, it is about as big as the Russian Patriarchal Cathedral in London, but in traditional Orthodox style, frescoed throughout inside, and with icons of the Saints and bas-relief carvings on the exterior. There are pictures of it attached to Bishop Klemes account. It is evident that the people live for their Church. Their homes may be poor but their churches are beautiful.
Nor is it only the poor. On the Sunday afternoon, we were given a lift back from the monastery by a young man, obviously educated and in one of the professions, who worked in Germany. He had arrived back home from Stuttgart at 2 a.m. on the Sunday morning, had a couple of hours sleep, picked up his wife and baby, and travelled 85 km to the monastery for the festival, and then had been detailed to take us back to Falticeni (an hour’s drive) before having to return to the monastery to collect his wife and baby, and then the 85 km back home. I think an Englishman might have made excuses! And on our journey, several miles from the monastery, we saw one of the priests hitch-hiking back to his home parish, trying to get a lift. Again, here in Britain, with our comfort-Orthodoxy, have we even begun?
The struggles that these people have been through to remain faithful to Orthodoxy, being persecuted both by the monarchist State authorities for remaining steadfast against innovation and then by the Communists, are again a witness against us, who are prepared to suffer so little, not even inconvenience or discomfort, for our Faith. His Grace, Bishop Demosten was for seven years in prison. The sisters at the Convent of the Nativity of the Mother of God at Moisa lived at first hidden in a hut in the woods: two small rooms about six feet square. Their first church, we were told, was built within the shell of a terrace of three houses, so that from the outside it still looked like a row of secular dwellings. Apparently when the regime fell, and only then, so not long ago, they were able to demolish the shell and reveal their church.
The fourth impression was rather more prosaic, simply the sheer numbers of people there. At the celebration on the Sunday at Slatioara, there must have been several hundred policemen and women within the monastery, - they all looked as if they had been on a six month fitness course in readiness! - holding back the faithful so that the Bishops and the clergy could process through their midst. To stand in the monastery courtyard and see literally thousands of people in serried ranks standing over against you, all crossing themselves and joining in prayer, was unforgettable.
There were smaller but nonetheless valuable impressions also. His Grace, Bishop Cyprian, who lead the group from Greece, and those of us who were attached to it (Archbishop Andronik of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, Abbess Alexandra and myself), would, in the quiet after a meal, ask us about ourselves and the situation of the Church in our particular fields - a very real and touching manifestation of pastoral concern and care.
And one last impression. This one is secular, but I am sure it has a spiritual value - the children! What blessed ones they have. On Saturday as we travelled through the countryside, we saw them helping their parents with the hay-making and working in the fields. On Sunday afternoon there they were fishing, padding in the rivers, playing outside. What a different life from the sad children of closet Britain today - forced to cram through exam after exam, confined to quarters for fear of everything, spending their lives in the virtual world of computers. Then they get a little older, and, poor souls, with little health of spirit, they are forced by peer pressure to pretend that sullenness is “cool,” that a studied indifference to everything and everyone is somehow grown-up. Only one more step before they reach adulthood and the enslavement of materialism, and now nothing to look forward to, not even the Saga holidays, because the pension schemes are failing! The teenagers in Romania we met were cheerful, bright, interesting. On our last evening there four young boys came into the parish hall at Falticeni to help with the work and to sing while we ate. They were not pious prats - they also played football outside in the church yard, but they were well-balanced and pleasant, healthy individuals. What, in contrast, is our post-Christian society in this country producing?
And a last paragraph, lest I bore you all too much. I cannot finish without a word of thanks to Bishop Ambrose who kindly cajoled me to make this pilgrimage - in actual fact a journey of a lifetime - but also for his invaluable help along the way. Being afflicted with multi-lingualism, he was constantly called upon to translate, from Greek, from Romanian, from English, from Russian, and must hardly have had a moment of peace. Thanks too to Mother Seraphima of the Convent of Aphidnai in Greece, who also often translated for those of us who knew neither Greek nor Romanian. To Protopresbyter Vasilie and his Presbytera Veronica and their parishioners for their warm hospitality which they so often afforded us - no wonder they have such a beautiful church, they are beautiful people. And to the faithful people of Romania who, having struggled to remain steadfast in the traditions of the Fathers, without any pretension or pretense, and perhaps without even realizing it themselves, have let the light of Christ shine before men by their very lives and their love.
