In the foothills of New York State’s Appalachian Mountains at St. Dumitru Monastery and the mature verdure of late spring, another successful ROYA youth retreat has convened and come to a close this past Memorial Day weekend. This year, the 25 returning and 15 new attendees to the annual spring event were welcomed for the first time by the new addition of the property’s iconic and imposing wooden Maramuresean gate. Our largest youth gathering yet hosted on monastery grounds included a variety of Orthodox church services, a sober religious discussion, lively recreation and fellowship, and off-grounds tourism bringing together campers from ages 16 to 29 and locations as far flung as California and Eastern Canada and as local as the surrounding New York and New Jersey. On the occasion of the Holy Synod of Romanian Orthodox Church’s approval of the canonization of the 16 new saints last year, this retreat’s theme and topic for lecture and discussion was The Saints of the Prisons.
The first attendees arrived Friday evening through Vespers and by the time the day’s final few trickled in, dinner was a scene of distant friends reuniting and new acquaintanceships forming. With the monastery dorms at-capacity with campers, an off-grounds house was rented for the rest and served as a venue for the group’s introductions and icebreakers. Speed-friending and a round of ”Brașoveanca” closed the night’s activities.
Saturday opened with Divine Liturgy before a dismissal for a day trip to Manhattan, where the larger group split up to tour the city. Aside from the popular attractions of Times Square, Wall Street, Fifth Avenue, Rockefeller Center, and Central Park, we visited the St Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine at the World Trade Center, built at the location of the church of the same name destroyed in the 9/11 catastrophe. A seemingly windowless monument of white marble no more than four stories tall, it sits in stark contrast to the dark steel and glass structures neighboring it in the financial capital of the world. A graceful greeting from the church attendant of “Hristos Anesti!” with a gift of an icon for each attendee and a few moments to contemplate and marvel at the bright Byzantine iconography was a welcome reprieve and sanctuary before reentering the streets to meet for a group lunch of some famous New York pizza and further sightseeing until sunset. Back at the monastery, a late dinner wore off the adrenaline of a whole day’s walking through some of the most famous urban sites in the world and an unforgettable bonding experience for those travelling together.
Sunday served as the peak day for focusing on our spiritual mission and our contemplative re-grounding as Romanians and Orthodox Christians. There was not a more fitting way to close off the Paschal Season than being unified in a spirit of righteous anticipation and zeal. Father Abbott Ieremia held a spiritually edifying sermon in theme with the Sunday of the Blind Man. The simplicity of the blind man was an unexpected lesson for us youth, for as was pointed out, God reveals Himself only to a sincere heart whose faith needs not a rational list of answers and evidence. Thus, the greatest advice we gathered from this sermon is our need to focus on multiplying the Grace already present in our lives rather than demanding that which is beyond us. Youth’s thirst for knowledge is indeed admirable so long as the mind is not exalted above the heart. Otherwise, one becomes akin to the Pharisees from this Sunday’s Gospel who were able to accept the healing but not the Healer as a result of their rational inclinations. The gift of “seeing God”, as read in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:8), cannot permeate through our endless list of questions, just as the Pharisees’ interminable “why’s” and “how’s” blinded them from perceiving Jesus Christ as the Light of the World (John 9:5). It behooves us youth and all Orthodox Christians to heed the sincerity and pure simplicity of the blind man, faithfully acclaiming with open hearts, “I believe, Lord” (John 9:38).
After Sunday brunch and a few hours of recreation for pick-up soccer and volleyball, we continued the day with a discussion of our retreat’s theme: the Saints of the Prisons. Father Heiromonk Iacob delivered a presentation on notable representatives of the religiously and politically incarcerated, following a historical timeline and contextualization of Romania under the yoke of communism. The presentation opened with a run-down of major chronological events beginning from World War II (1939-1945) and ending with the fall of communism and the beginning of the post-communist revolution in 1989. The prisons of Aiud, Pitesti, Targu Ocna, the Danube-Black Sea Canal were introduced among others as true “Golgothas” where the incarcerated innocents struggled martyrically in the first and second peaks of religious persecutions—proof to us that communism was primarily a spiritual attack above anything else (followed by the better-known political calamities). Fr. Iacob continued with specific examples of contemporary Romanian saints from the communist prisons, canonized and non-canonized alike. Among them were Valeriu Gafencu, Fr. Gherasim Iscu, Ioan Ianolide, Fr. Arsenie Papacioc, Fr. Sofian Boghiu, and Fr. Ilie Lacatusu. We learned about how our saints of the prisons were deprived of basic necessities under subhuman conditions, beaten mercilessly and pressed to denounce everything they held dear. Some were tempted to blaspheme God, while others were led to insanity. We learned that even under the strictest supervision, these prisoners prayed, confessed, composed, and communicated through morse code tapped through the prison walls or knotted on loose threads. We learned how Divine Liturgy was conducted in secret at risk of severe punishment, with Holy Communion being prepared in the dark on the priest’s chest for lack of an altar and sewn into the lining of their clothing for smuggling through the guards and ”securitate” to the prison faithful. The depth of the prisoners’ physical and psychological tortures could only be glimpsed in description, but the most remarkable and touching reality is that many of those imprisoned were University students of our own age with ambitions and visions similar to our own. For us youth, the focused study of Romanian Orthodoxy at its most threatened and within our parents’ lifetimes served as a poignant perspective-shift for our own faith practice and a reminder of those whose shoulders we stand upon. If we would be able to gain a fraction of their spiritual nobility, then perhaps we too will be able to confess Christ in the times to come. To provide more detail than an afternoon presentation could allow, we were each given a copy of officially compiled testimonies about Valeriu Gafencu in the book “The Saint of the Prisons”. After the night’s dinner, a campfire and private discussions at the rented house ended the day.
Monday, the final day of the retreat, the youth drove an hour to Pennsylvania’s St Tikhon of Zadonsk Monastery for its annual Memorial Day pilgrimage. Visiting was the wonderworking and myrrh-streaming Hawaiian Iveron Icon of the Theotokos, which we took the opportunity to venerate and of which we received a miniature paper copy from its caretaker. As the oldest Orthodox monastery in North America, St Tikhon Monastery is a living museum and home to an extensive property it is a joy to wander through. The museum proper is home to a significant and well-curated collection of items historical to Orthodox Christianity in North America and saints’ relics. Finally, after a spontaneously-organized lunch in nearby Scranton to make the time together last just a little bit longer and some heartfelt exchanges and promises to visit each other, it was time for the campers to part their separate ways and bring the retreat to a close.
Lifelong friendships have been formed at these events and no doubt will continue to for many more years. Youth retreats have been held on the very same property for the first time nearly twenty years ago before ROYA was ever organized, and with a much more local attendance. It is exciting to see a new crop of attendees coming from such a diversity of locales to expand into an even greater cross-continental and international membership. It is testament to the quality of these attendees and their hunger for camaraderie of their kind in faith and ethnicity that we have such a high rate of return and so many are willing to travel hundreds of miles to participate in a few days’ event. We invite readers in our age range to join us and those beyond to refer their children and the children of their friends for future retreats. ROYA owes a debt of gratitude to the monastery and its monastics who so graciously shared their home with us. We likewise thank the volunteers, without whom our tightly-packed schedule and planned activities would not have been possible.
Glory to God for all things!
— Theodor Chirnoaga & Ana Maria Frujinoiu
