An Orthodox Christian reader saw me on Tucker Carlson Tonight last night, and says she was moved when Tucker asked me how living with the stories from these anti-communist dissidents had changed my thinking — and I answered by telling him that it made me realize more deeply the value of suffering. The reader writes:
You didn’t know when you started Live Not By Lies that it would publish in a year of suffering. You didn’t know about the pandemic. You didn’t know how churches and other religious groups would be singled out during the pandemic. You didn’t write this knowing that John MacArthur would be battling the state of California and city of Los Angeles. You didn’t know that people would be separated from ill and dying loved ones, or unable to attend the funerals of friends. You didn’t know the fear and panic that would fuel our already highly charged election year. You didn’t know about the resurgence of BLM and the riots. You didn’t know that there would be outrage of how and if communion would be distributed in Orthodox churches, or even if those churches would be open at all. You didn’t know about the mass unemployment. You didn’t know this was going to be published after months of our culture suffering.
So I say this seriously, not as trite flattery, that I think this book is to some degree the Holy Spirit at work.
Man, that is some stuff. It made me think about how I have reacted to the Covid stress in my church with a lot less anxiety than I would have normally had. When I would start to feel sorry for myself, not being able to go to church, I would think about the stories I had heard from these people living under communism, who could not go to church at all, or who, if they did manage to go, would have to suffer real persecution from the state for it. Yet they kept the faith. If they had gone to pieces, they would have been ruined. Hearing these stories made me realize that we Christians have to be prepared for the long run. We need to develop patience and forbearance. If we don’t, we’re not going to make it.
And when I have been tempted to pity myself for the fact that Covid has stopped so much of my life, and the lives of my friends, I always go back to the stories of Silvester Krcmery, the young Slovak physician who was a pillar of the underground church in his country. An English translation of his incredible prison memoir exists; I don’t know if it’s still in print, but if it is, get it — it’s one of the most incredible books I’ve ever read. The original Slovak title — This Saved Us — is much better than the anodyne one (Break Point) the English publisher gave it. I quote him in Live Not By Lies:
In totalitarian Czechoslovakia, Kolaković follower Silvester Krčméry emerged as one of the priest’s most important disciples and organizers. Years of Bible study, worship, and personal spiritual practice under the guidance of Father Kolaković prepared the young physician for a long prison term, which began with his arrest in 1951.
The basis for his resistance was the firm conviction that “there could not be anything more beautiful than to lay down my life for God.” When that thought came to Krčméry in the police sedan minutes after his arrest, he burst into laughter. His captors were not amused. But refusing self-pity, and teaching himself to receive whatever the interrogators did to him as an aid to his own salvation, saved Krčméry’s spiritual life.
Behind bars, and subject to all manner of torture and humiliation, Krčméry (pronounced “kirch-MERRY”) kept himself sane and hopeful through cultivating and practicing his faith in a disciplined way and by evangelizing others.
In his memoir, This Saved Us, Krčméry recalls that after repeated beatings, torture, and interrogations, he realized that the only way he would make it through the ordeal ahead was to rely entirely on faith, not reason. He says he decided to be “like Peter, to close my eyes and throw myself into the sea.”
“In my case, it truly was to plunge into physical and spiritual uncertainty, an abyss, where only faith in God could guarantee safety,” he writes. “Material things which mankind regarded as certainties were fleeting and illusory, while faith, which the world considered to be ephemeral, was the most reliable and the most powerful of foundations. The more I depended on faith, the stronger I became.
That’s what saved the prisoner Silvester Krcmery and his fellow prisoners. It’s what’s going to get us through or vastly less severe trials too, if we take this teaching seriously.
Accompanying other persecuted people in their suffering can lead us to deep repentance and spiritual strength. One of Wurmbrand’s fellow Piteşti prisoners was George Calciu, an Orthodox Christian medical student who was eventually ordained a priest. In 1985, he was sent into exile in the United States, where he served at a northern Virginia parish until his death in 2006.
In a lengthy 1996 interview, Father George told about his encounter with a fellow prisoner named Constantine Oprisan. They met when Calciu was transferred from Piteşti to Jilava, a prison that was built entirely underground. The communists put four prisoners in each cell. In his cell was a man named Constantine Oprisan, who was deathly ill with tuberculosis. From their first day in captivity there, Oprisan coughed up fluid in his lungs.
The man was suffocating. Perhaps a whole liter of phlegm and blood came up, and my stomach became upset. I was ready to vomit. Constantine Oprisan noticed this and said to me, “Forgive me.” I was so ashamed! Since I was a student in medicine, I decided then to take care of him . . . and told the others that I would take care of Constantine Oprisan. He was not able to move, and I did everything for him. I put him on the bucket to urinate. I washed his body. I fed him. We had a bowl for food. I took this bowl and put it in front of his mouth.
Constantine Oprisan—“he was like a saint,” Father George said—was so weak that he could barely talk. But every word he said to his cellmates was about Christ. Hearing him say his daily prayers had a profound effect on the other three men, as did simply looking at the “flood of love in his face.”
Constantine Oprisan
Constantine Oprisan was a physical wreck because he had been so badly tortured in Piteşti for three years, reported Father George. Yet he would not curse his torturers and spent his days in prayer.
All the while, we did not realize how important Constantine Oprisan was for us. He was the justification of our life in this cell. Over the course of a year, he became weaker and weaker. We felt that he had finished his time here and would die.
After he died every one of us felt that something in us had died. We understood that, sick as he was and in our care like a child, he had been the pillar of our life in the cell.
After the cellmates washed his body and prepared it for burial, they alerted the guards that Constantine Oprisan was dead. The guards led the men out of the windowless cell for the first time in a year. Then the guard ordered Calciu and another man to take the body outside and bury it. Constantine Oprisan was nothing but skin and bones; his muscle tissue had wasted away. For some reason, the skin pulled tight over his emaciated skeleton had turned yellow.
My friend took a flower and put it on his chest—a blue flower. The guard started to cry out to us and forced us to go back into the cell. Before we went into the cell, we turned around and looked at Constantine Oprisan—his yellow body and this blue flower. This is the image that I have kept in my memory—the body of Constantine Oprisan completely emaciated and the blue flower on his chest.
Looking back on that drama nearly a half century later, Father George said that nursing the helpless Constantine Oprisan in the final year of his life revealed to him “the light of God.”
When I took care of Constantine Oprisan in the cell, I was very happy. I was very happy because I felt his spirituality penetrating my soul. I learned from him to be good, to forgive, not to curse your torturer, not to consider anything of this world to be a treasure for you. In fact, he was living on another level. Only his body was with us—and his love. Can you imagine? We were in a cell without windows, without air, humid, filthy—yet we had moments of happiness that we never reached in freedom. I cannot explain it.
In terms of sacramental theology, a mystery is a truth that cannot be explained, only accepted. The long death of Constantine Oprisan, which gave spiritual life to those who helped him bear his suffering, is just such a mystery.
The stricken prisoner was dying, but because he had already died to himself for Christ’s sake, he was able to be an icon to the others—a window into eternity through which the divine light passed to illuminate the other men in that dark, filthy cell.
I’m telling you: these people, these heroes of the anti-communist resistance, know things we don’t. They have what we need.
When I was in Eastern Europe interviewing these people last year, I heard often how grateful they were to America for providing support and hope for them during the Cold War. Kamila Bendova told me that when the government arrested someone in the dissident movement, Radio Free Europe was talking about it in a flash. They knew they weren’t forgotten. History is a funny thing. We helped them once upon a time, and now they are in a position to help us.
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