"Rugul Aprins". The Burning Bush movement - Part I

Exodus 3, 2-5: And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush; and he looked and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. And Moses said, "I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush and said, "Moses, Moses." And he said, "Here am I."And He said, "Draw not nigh hither. Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground."

1945 was the year of the creation of the Romanian christian orthodox movement "Rugul Aprins" ("The Burning Bush"). Many commentators agree that it was an unique spiritual movement among the Romanian intellectuals of the century and among the Orthodox Church. The story grows around of the Antim Monastery in the middle of Bucharest and of a few names of erudite monks who lived in its cells or frequented it regularly, the most important being the leader of the group Alexandru Teodorescu (alias Sandu Tudor, brother Agaton and later hieromonk Daniil), the father confessor Benedict Ghiuş and Ioan Kulîghin, a Russian father from Rostov.

Other members were: Father Dumitru Staniloae, Alexandru Mironescu, Paul Sterian, the poet Vasile Voiculescu, Paul Constantinescu, Constantin Joia, Alexandru Elian, Arhim. Sofian Boghiu, Arhim. Felix Dubneac, Arhim. Andrei Scrima, Ion Marin Sadoveanu, Ierod. Cleopa Paraschiv and others.

What made this movement unique and special was the fact that its essence was not theological, but rather mystical, more precisely at the heart of all the activities of its members was the Prayer of the Heart: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner." This very short prayer was to be repeated as often and as much as possible. The aim of this technique was to internalize the prayer, to transform it from a Prayer of the Mind into a continuous Prayer of the Heart that wouldn't cease during the normal activities of the day, or during the sleep.

The one who brought the Prayer within the Burning Bush, was Ivan Kulîghin, the around 60 years old celibate priest who first visited the monastery in the fall of 1945. He was the father confessor of the metropolitan bishop Nicolai of Rostov. He had been brought in Romania during the war by the fascist troupes and had been established at the Cernica Monastery. Father Kulîghin was an authentic practitioner of the Prayer, which he had learned at the Optina monastery in the north of Moscow.

"Very important for us were his personal confessions concerning the Prayer, which he uttered truly unceasingly. Since many years, the Prayer had descended into his heart and he was praying even in the sleep." (Father Sofian Boghiu*)

During the years 1945-1948, the Antim monastery underwent restorations. Two big towers of the church have been newly made and also its paintings have been remade. This contributed probabily to ist spiritual rebirth.
In this period, in the library hall of the monastery took place a series of conferences around the Prayer of the Heart. Many visitors, among whom many students, came to hear these speeches. Parallel to this, after the Vespers, the seven Divine Services were explained, with an accent put on the Vespers and the Matins, and also the Psalms and especially the Divine Liturgy were interpreted. The latter was for instance commented Monday from a traditional point of view, Tuesday from a musical point of view, on Wednesday the iconographic vision was emphasized, on Thursday the interpretation was mystical, and so on. (as Father Sofian Boghiu recounted*)


Father Benedict Ghiuş (in the picture above), the Father Confessor of the whole group, has striven to give cohesion to the newly formed community. The reference points that he imposed were: fasten, rosary, frequent confession, the Holly Communion, prayer, all these corresponding to the practice of the Holly Fathers.

There are two things that gave birth to this intense and highly disciplined movement: firstly some exquisite Romanian intellectuals have met each other and have encouraged themselves in finding a way for getting nearer to God in the purest and truest way possible. Secondly, this movement meant an act of taking attitude vis-a-vis the regime that was installing itself in Romania: the awful communism.

"We suddenly found ourselves in the presence of the communism, this Soviet animal with apocalyptic stenches, with the smell of vodka and of the sweats of commissaries, that had filled the country with posters, carnivals, gatherings, a dirty media, political prostitution, the reversing of values. We all felt terror-struck, that this roller would transform us all in an anonym mass, formless, without consciousness and without responsibilities. Where could you run, if not in the deepness of your being? Where to fence yourself in, if not in the pantries of your soul? And here did the miracle happen: the man, looking for himself, has encountered God, has entered in the order of the Spirit."**


The founder of the movement, Father Daniil (in the picture above), has convinced himself even since his visit to the Athos Mountain in 1929, that the Romanian people can only save itself through a deep spiritual transformation, that would reinvigorate its roots. That was to be made by the rebounding of the Man with God, by prayer.

"This bush is the symbol of the Holly Virgin. Although celestial fire is Jesus Christ, The Holly Mother has remained unburnt, untouched, but deified through the Holly Child. [...], the Burning Bush is also the symbol of the ceaseless prayer. The one who prays ceaselessly resembles that bush that burned and wasn't consumed." (Father Daniil)


In the year 1947, the meetings of the group took great proportions. Series of visitors from outside of Antim began to take part. Such fact could normally not be ignored by the communists.

One year later, in 1948, the organization and the taking place of such meetings have been prohibited. The group received orders from the archiepiscopate that their gathering is forbidden by the law.
In 1958, the members have been put under arrest. During the inquiry (which lasted for a very long time - around one year) the communists tried in vain to connect the Burning Bush group to the Legionary Movement. The process - a parody with closed doors - ended with punishments of up 25 years of hard labor for the imprisoned members.


Now, back to 1948...
Sandu Tudor, who in between had become monk Agathon, left for the Govora monastery and later became father superior in the Crasna monastery. In 1950 he has been imprisoned for two years for alleged unlawful acts on the Eastern front. He has been freed in 1952 and became the Hieromonk Daniil, Father superior in the Rarău monastery. Father Daniil has systematically tried since 1955 to awaken the consciousness of young people, forming them as free personalities, living in Christ and purified from the dirt of the communist ideology. In 1958 he has been arrested for the membership in the Burning Bush movement. He died in 1960 in the communist prison from Aiud.

In 1950, Benedict Ghiuş left for the Neamţ monastery, as professor at the theological seminary from there. He remained there till 1955. During these years he periodically made trips to Bucharest, in order to meet the priests-monks Sofian Boghiu, Felix Dubneac and the professor Al. Mironescu. In 1955, he returned to Bucharest as a servant at the patriarchal professor's chair. In 1956, he meet Father Daniil, who proposed to him to take care of a group of young people from Bucharest, who would very much like to deepen their experience in the ways of faith. Wee may observe here the preoccupation of some members of the Burning Bush to reenact the movement. At a much lesser scale, this thing did happen. The youth and the fathers met in the home of Benedict Ghiuş or of Al. Mironescu, as well as in the monastery Plumbuita. At Plumbuita the students participated to conferences and also to divine services.

In the year 1947, Father Kulîghin and his interpreter (a soldier from Bassarabia, who had been near him for the last two years) have been arrested, then reccuperated by the Soviet power and deported to Siberia.

Here are some examples of accusations brought to the members of the Burning Bush group:
- subversive meetings;
- hostile accusations towards the regime;
- they made antinationalits, antidemocratic education;
- they organized counterrevolutionary stirrings against the state order and so on.

Here is a list with all the people who had been imprisoned in 1958 as members of The Burning Bush:
- the painter archimandrite Sofian Boghiu;
- the archimandrite Roman Braga;
- the physician Gh. Dabija;
- the painter monk Vartolomeu Dolhan;
- the painter and choir director Felix Dubneac;
- the hieromonk Andrei Făgeţeanu;
- the exbishop, archimandrite Benedict Ghiuş;
- the writer and university professor Alexandru Mironescu;
- the hieromonk Arsenie Papacioc;
- the poet and journalist Sandu Tudor (later monk Agathon and then hiermonk Daniil)
- the priest Dumitru Stăniloae;
- the poet Vasile Voiculescu;
- the students: Emil Mihailescu, Şerban Mironescu, Dan Pistol, Nicolae Rădulescu, George Vâsâi.***

Most of these people have been liberated in 1964, when all political captives in Romania have been liberated thorugh a national decree. (issued mainly because of the international pressure)


(to be soon continued...)


* in the article "The Burning Bush and the prison" from 1996
** Arhim. Roman Braga - "The Burning Bush - new aspects", in "Porunca iubirii" No. 4/2004
*** List taken from the book "Rugul Aprins"("The Burning Bush") by Mihai Radulescu, Proxima Publishing House, Bucharest, 2009

- I must as well note here that much of the information in this article is taken from articles published in the magazine "Rost" (http://www.rostonline.org/rost/index.shtml)

The Happiness Diary by N. Steinhardt (Translation)

February 1962

And no one will take your

joy from you.

John 16,22

In this way I too keep myself straight!

Not to lose my soul.

Paul Claudel

The cells from Reduit , at Jilava, are uncommonly gloomy and have the reputation of a more severe regime than “on sections”. In 34 I arrive coming from the “secret”, where I have been kept, as long as I went to the hunger strike, in a cell that has never been warmed since the fort has been constructed – at the same time with the useless belt road surrounding the Capital – by the engineer Brialmont. The coldness, more terrible than the hunger and the thirst (but the worse is the lack of sleep) has penetrated me deeply…

I must look really wretched, because the famous sergeant Ungureanu, who receives me at the gate of Reciting, almost smiles at me (like the lover of distinguished dishes would subdue facing a joint of certain tender venison) and ascertains me to the chief of room recommending him to give me a single bed and to take care of me. I am being placed in the bed near the door, like a suspect and looked at with attention by the chief of room, a Basarabean* with a Russian name, a bulky huge thing, sullen, with harsh looks; I find out soon that he is dangerous; they say he is an unfrocked priest. The cell 34 is a sort of dark long tunnel, with numerous and strong elements of nightmare. It is a tongue, a canal, an underground bowel, cold and profoundly hostile, it is a sterile mine, it is the crater of an extinct volcano, it is a pretty successful discolored hell image.

In this almost unreal** lugubrious place, I was to know the happiest days in all my life. How absolutely happy I have been in the room 34! Not even in Brasov, with mother, in my childhood, not even on the endless streets of the mysterious London; nor on the splendid Muscel hills, nor in the blue post card décor of Lucerne; no, nowhere.

There are also many young men in the room, who were put to a special treatment by the guards and especially by the chief of room. (The hate of the old men against the new generation, that goes up to the alliance with the most frenzied jail guards for the constitution of the common front against the shameless and the disrespectful. A sort of a generation and age solidarity, very similar with the class solidarity because of which some peasants, workers and little employees hate the titled co-detainees, nobles or bourgeois, much more passionately than they hate the representatives of administration.) From the first day I state in the whole cell a tremendous thirst for poetry. The learning by heart of the poems is the most pleasant and more tireless entertainment in the prison life. Happy are the ones who know poems. The one who knows by heart many poems is a trouble-free man in prison, his are the hours that go by without knowing and in dignity, his is the hall of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel and his is the coffeehouse Flore. His the ice cream and the lemonades served at the small tables of the brewery Florian in the San Marco place. He knew, the abbot Faria, what he does by preparing himself for the Monte-Cristo island by learning by heart all the books. And Nicolai Semenovici Leskov didn’t even guess how well had he spoken, advising: “Read and try to choose with benefit. You will have a share of good fun in your grave. " The prison being itself a grave, the advice turns out to be true in an excellent manner: who likes learning poems, will never get bored in prison – and he will not be alone.

From this point of view, I am alright. I know by heart Luceafărul, The Letters***, lots of Coșbuc and Topârceanu (he is very in demand), thousands (I think) lyrics by Gyr and Crainic (swollen from the beginning, together with the Morse alphabet, from the legionary**** veterans); I caught also lots of Verlaine, Lamartine and Baudelaire; Arvers’ sonnet, of course (Ma vie a son secret, mon name son mystere*****), Samain – Au jardin de l’Infante – which, when I rehearse or teach, takes my thoughts to Ojardindilifant from La Medeleni****** and to the paradisiacal afternoons from the street Pitar-Mosu. I find myself rapidly a circle of young men who want to learn Luceafarul and who waited like on fire for someone who would know it to come. In the room there is also a young Lutheran pastor from Brașov, who looks like Gosta Berling; German is his maternal language and he is a poet himself. An enthusiastic admirer of Rilke from whom he has translated; and he knows countless poems of the great poet, which he recites superbly, with a vibrant feeling and an incredible overtone; he has a patience of iron and a goodwill that is refractory to tiredness. Everything by him oscillates between demigod and saint. If he would tell us that

Mein Vater Parsifal traegt eine Krone

Sein Rittersohn bin ich, Lohengrin genannt.*******

or if he would confess that he himself is Siegfried fallen after the Rheinfarhf of his straight to Reduit everybody would believe him.

Bruder Harald Sigmund – because so is he named, Wagnerian enough – proves himself suddenly, to be that miracle which is rarely given to the prisoner to meet, but from which, when he meets it, he finds out what could joy mean: he is courageous, he is proud, unconquerable, polite like in the Salon of the prince Conti where they serve la the a l’anglaise, always smiling and dignified like the models of the portraits of La Tour, Perronneau or Van Loo, and good-humored, never sleepy or grim, eager and ready in any moment to teach anything, to discuss, to listen, to recount, to communicate everything he knows: a sir, a noble, a hero. Such a man gives you, strongly, the nostalgia for the middle ages and you start feeling, in the presence of one like him, a dreadful hostility against nowadays and against the democracy in the tram at high hours. (Why are you pushing yourself? If you don’t like it, buy yourself a car! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? You think you’re a lion or what?!) But (contrary to this), he is a lion, lions exist! There are not only skunks and reptiles. Life can also mean something else than the supreme ideal of maintaining the order in the queue or taking the neighbor out of the room next-door so that you can extend yourself in his place.

The presence of the youth – incomparably more resistant (morally, for most of them have tuberculosis), kinder and more vertebrate than the old men – and of the pastor have made an atmosphere of grandeur, of hieratic medievalism possiblle in this room; there flutter invisible purple cloaks, there shine flashing blades of Damascus. Every gesture reveals a smoldering donquijotism. I don’t know how, but my coming here, repulsively thin and impressively pale, reeking of frost, shivering even in the glances, accompanied by a hunger striker aura, contributes also to the emphasis of the atmosphere of noble defiance of reality. There are also two physicians, very nice men and some soldiers from the Army of God and some sectarians, apiculturists and craving for psalms (I know also psalms, almost all of them learned from the good-natured Hariton Rizescu, honorific verger at a big church in the center of Bucharest); and it is as if all of them compete in being gentile with each other and everybody learns poems from early in the morning till evening, all in one breath, and serious books are being recounted, and Bruder Harald surpasses himself – he recites, translates, teaches – and relates at large – with modesty, love and the ecumenical sense of relativity – the life and doctrine of the doctor Martin Luther. From everywhere – like the clouds in the mountain – that ineffable and incomparable atmosphere, which just the prison may create, appears and condensates in the cell 34: something very close to what may have been the court of the dukes of Burgundy or of the king Rene from Arles or of a Provencal court d’amour, something very similar to the paradise, something very Japanese, gallant, something that would drive Henry de Montherlant, Ernst Jűnger, Ştefan George, Malraux, Chesterton, Solzhenitsyn, crazy, something made out of courage , love of paradox, stubbornness, holly madness and the will to transcend the miserable human condition no matter what; something that evokes the aristocratic exquisite names as the most important ones by Barbey d’Aurevilly: Hermangarde de Polastron and Enguerrand de Coucy; something that, without understanding exactly how, reminds me painfully of the unsuccessful assault from 20 July ’44 of von Stauffenberg and of the German aristocracy. Something that recalls in my memory these words by Leon Shestov: “It seems like there are two theories, completely opposed, about the origins of the human species. Some assert that the man descends from the monkey, others that he was made by God. They fight awfully. I myself believe that both of them mistake themselves. My theory is the next: those who believe that the man descends from the monkey, really descend from the monkey, and form a special race, exterior to the one of the people created by God and who believe and know that they were created by God.” Something that sounds similar to the magnificent rhythm of the verses of Gyr: “Where is Vodă Caragea? Iancu wants to see him!” Something that confirms in a splendid and tangible way the affirmation of Simone Weil: “Because of the joy, the beauty of the world penetrates our souls. Because of the pain, it penetrates our body.” In the cell 34, the joy – risen from aristocracy, poetry and defiance – and the pain (because there reigns a terrible coldness, the food is completely scarce, the water continues to be maggoty, the room is oppressive like in a horror movie, the snubbing flows abundantly, every observation of the prison guards is accompanied by thumps under the jaws and fists in the head) mixes so inextricable, that everything, including the pain, transforms itself in ecstatic and uplifting happiness. When the cow eats grass, the grass changes itself to cow meat. Likewise, when the cat eats fish, the fish changes itself to cat meat. The suffering we assimilate becomes suddenly, euphoria. The verses of Georg Trakl, learned from the father Harald, reinforce them too this sensation:

„Wanderer tritt still herein

Schmerz versteinerte die Schwelle;

De erglaenzt in reiner Helle

Auf dem Tische Brot und Wein.“********

Yes, it is as if we all are being penetrated by the sensational joy from after the holly communion with bread and wine, with the greatly pure Body and the very dear Blood. Didn’t the Hasid get drunk with bare water invoking the name of Savaot? Shouldn’t we also be able to change the misery bowel made out of stone and degradation into enthusiasm? The lack of enthusiasm, Dostoevsky says, is the sure sign of perdition.

But the enthusiasm is the last thing that could be absent in room 34, and if the things are like this, nobody and nothing is lost. We are not ashamed neither of the exaltations at cold and of a sort of uninterrupted ecstasy, preventing and solemn, also according to the recommendation of Dostoevsky whose words “The man exists only if God and the immortality exist” we repeat smiling with intimation and they seem to us blindingly true.

And here, at 34, it is showing itself to me again, what had also flashed me at the 18: that the miracle is part of the real life, that it is a component of the world. Adhemar Esmein, on the level of Constitutional Law, stated of course, the same thing when he asserted – against the so-called realists of the law science – that the fictions too are themselves realities. The wonder in cell 34 is known and accepted as an indisputable fact.

A wonder is also the manner in which we behave with each other, competing in helping each other, in speaking to each other delicately, making each other's the life as pleasant as possible. A search confiscates me the only small bottle in which I kept the black liquid which – to my luck – is being served to us in the morning as coffee, in the place of the more consistent porridge. Because I don’t eat anything from what is being given to us, “the coffee” is for me a precious reserve. The confiscation of the small bottle takes the proportions of a catastrophic loss. The search has taken place in the morning and for possessing the small bottle I have been violently scolded and menaced. In the evening, at the time of putting out the light (nominal, because the bulbs don’t cease spreading their powerful light), when I push along the blanket, I find underneath a bottle, bigger than the other one. The charity is conformable to the stricter critical precepts, because I don’t know who put the bottle there, I can’t ask, I can’t find out. This charity (and how was it possible that the precious object has slipped out from a severe search?) is gratuitous did in full gidian sense, it is more gratuitous than the murder of Lafcadio. The absolute discretion recommended by the Lord is faultlessly present. This gesture overwhelms me, the thrills of pride pass through me, I totter and – could it have been otherwise? – I wet my so called “pillow” with the sweet hot tears of happiness.

*Basarabia - approximately the actual Moldavia

** He meant "almost in an unreal way lugubrious" ("aproape ireal de sinistru")

*** Poems by Mihai Eminescu, the Romanian romantic national poet.

**** "Legionarii" were a far-right, ultra-nationalist, antisemitic, with an emphasis on orthodox christianism and with a fascist character party and movement in the interbelic Romania (a post about them will come on this blog soon)

*****"My life has its secret, my soul, its mistery."

****** "La Medeleni" is Romanian book by Ionel Teodoreanu

*******"My father, Parsifal wears a crown, I am his son, the knight named Lohengrin.", Richard Wagner, Lohengrin, Act III, Scene 3

********"In stillness, wanderer, step in:/Grief has worn the threshold into stone./But see: in pure light, glowing/There on the table: bread and wine.", the poem Ein Winterabend - A Winter Evening (Translation taken from here)

# I want to note here that the translation is made by an amateur, thus far from being perfect.

# Unfortunately, this wonderful book has not yet been translated in English, you can find for the moment some more excerpts from "The Happiness Diary" here.