Those Who Lie in Jail

Rumania's Communist government cut off all official communication between Rumania's Roman Catholic hierarchy and the Vatican last year. Since then, little news of the church has reached the outside world beyond the fact that still more

Catholic clerics have been arrested. This month, by channels which church authorities refused to discuss, the Vatican received a message, patiently memorized and passed on by a trusted intermediary, from one of the imprisoned priests:

"I reached my prison on the afternoon of the day of my arrest. How long ago that was, how many days have passed, I don't know, because I am always in the dark. On that day, in complete darkness, I was led to this cell. When the door closed behind me, through God's mercy I was thinking of God, and remembered to offer up my troubles for His glory, so that my humiliation was filled with God's glory and became an immediate comfort to my soul."

Two Boards for a Bed. "I tried then to get to know something of the place wherein I was. I was already aware of much dampness and of a smell of human excrement. Guided by my nose, I drew as far away as possible from the place which I later found out was where the drains of five lavatories of the guards on five floors above me emptied themselves.

"I thought with horror that sometimes it is easier to resist actual pain and bodily wounds than the wave of sickness that assails one's stomach at a foul smell. I dreaded the possibility that I might weaken, and through God's mercy I was able to concentrate upon God, and it pleased God to fill my cell with an infinitesimal but overbrimming small part of His great glory.

"Feeling with my hands, after a long time I found two boards. They were damp, but they were whole, and they became my bed. They were about three feet long. I was able at first to get little sleep because rats kept scurrying over me. I have always been a friend of small animals, but the thought of rats kept me from sleeping, so I passed unforgettable moments of intimate union with the crucifix, which I conjured up before my mind. My own had been removed at the prison gates."

The Face of the Cross. "Believe me . . . all of you who are outside, there is a face of the cross which cannot be apprehended save by those who lie in jail. There is a part of the living God which is only known to those who are themselves hidden in some subterranean cell, in darkness and in chains. There may be happiness in the light which streams through a small barred window of an above-ground prison cell, but God's happiness rests longer upon those who have not light's distraction.

"God, in His mercy, beat at my door, and the All Highest entered without keys. I recite the rosary--the glorious mysteries--and I know Our Lady is a comforter to the afflicted, and often my lips cannot form the words because my heart is overfull . . .

"Then I remember that I must not grow lax, and I pray for the union of all Rumanians; I pray that through my suffering I may be the subterranean mine which blows up the wall of division between Rumanians, so that all Rumanians shall be brothers, and the church shall be freed promptly and completely."

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