Christ is Risen! 
Truly He is Risen!

The purpose of this site is to make the lives and the writings

of Romanian Orthodox Spiritual Fathers and Holy Mothers

known to the English-speaking world. 




This is a short selection of his teachings and reflexions.


1. All people, with no exceptions, are at the same time sons of men and sons of God. This means that according to our bodies, we are earthly creatures, and according to our spirit, we are heavenly creatures, who nevertheless live temporarily in earthly tents. We come out from God, we spend some time on Earth, and then we return to God. Blessed is he who returns and arrives Home again, completing the circle. This is the path. (The Path to the Kingdom, p. 13)


2. The fact that God, on His part, did everything for man, and He even died on the Cross, proves that man has an incredibly immense price. Man has the dimensions of the divine intention, the center and the synthesis of His creation: the visible world combined with the invisible world.


This is why we ought to live according to this divine intention. We ought to live simultaneously as visible and as invisible persons, because man is of great value, as it was shown by the sacrifice on the Cross. When man lives at his true value, he is a subject of history; when he renounces his divine dimensions, he becomes an object of history, he comes down to the level of any other object; he bears no longer a name, but a number. (The Path to the Kingdom, p. 295)


3. We have a unique position in creation. We are still in the making. We are simultaneously God's creatures as well as he result of our own work.


Man is the result of Creation. We are at the same time visible and invisible creatures. It is in the way we are fashioned that all our tragedy and our sublime reside. And from here all our invisible war begins. We are spiritual beings, knitted in a fleshly material being. The soul—this direct breathing of the mouth of God—inclines sometimes toward God the Father, and other times toward the body—its passing habitation, the world. (Father Arsenie, p. 374)


4. We are not only things or biology so that we may abide by the laws of necessity. We are also spiritual beings and, as such, we abide by the laws of freedom. That is why we search for truth, we search for God. We were given instinct and reason to help us find our way in the visible world. We were given the faith and a model—Jesus—to enable us to find our way in the spiritual world.


At the gates of man's soul, God ceases His dominion, because He wants her love. Here, in the soul, He wants to be received from our own initiative. Therefore, when our destiny in creation is fulfilled, we are expected to become free from the world and aware of our kinship with Him. (Father Arsenie, p. 375)


5. The cause of man's disfiguring lies in him mistakenly searching for happiness in the things of this world. Man's being, as a son of God, has something of the infinity of his Father; therefore, he is not satiated with (…) anything else other than God's perfection. Man's soul is so big—according to his origin—that only God can fill it. (Living Words, p. 32)


6. When we live our days on Earth driven by the commandment of the love of God, we see our neighbour differently. We see him with God's eye: we neither judge him, nor condemn, curse or hate him; we do not separate himself from us; we suffer him, we wait for him, and above all, we understand him. For us to be able to behave like this with him, we must know—out of reflex, I mean, profoundly and without being taken by surprise—that he (whoever he may be) is also a son of God, and that all of us are brothers, sons of the Same Father. (Father Arsenie, p. 357)


7. Where do we find Jesus?
Hidden in His commandments.
Covered in His Mysteries.
Unseen, yet present in every cross of our lives.
Entirely in the Church, in the big congregation of the Church.
(Living Words, p. 98)



Selected and translated from:
Corlean, Natalia, Ed. I Want to Change Your Tears into Joy. Anthology of Spiritual Words by Father Arsenie Boca. Agaton: Fagaras, Romania, 2014.


References:
Boca, Arsenie. Cararea Imparatiei. [The Path to the Kingdom.] Episcopia Aradului: Arad, 2006.
Boca, Arsenie. Cuvinte vii. [Living Words.] Charisma: Deva, 2005.
Stoenescu, Daniil. Parintele Arsenie: "omul imbracat in haine de in" si "ingerul cu cadelnita de aur." [Father Arsenie: "the Man Dressed in Linen Clothes" and "the Angel with the Golden Censer."] Charisma: Deva, 2008.


Hieromonk Arsenie Boca (1910-1989)


Fr. Arsenie Boca was a Romanian hieromonk (priest monk), theologian and artist. He was persecuted and imprisoned by the Communists. He has not been canonized by the Romanian Orthodox Church yet, but the faithful consider him the Saint of Transylvania and one of the greatest Romanian spiritual fathers of the 20th-century.