Beyond death, in Love

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Friday, October 06, 2006

Beyond death, in Love

Script of “ Beyond death, in Love” a film about Ioan Alexandru and his work




Narrator:
It was a great blessing for me to spend those 10 years in the presence of the poet, teacher, public speaker and parliamentary Ioan Alexandru, a time of spiritual growth. I pray that I am able to share with you at least a (small) part of his huge inspiration and the spiritual impact that this man had upon me. I passed through the 10 years of my memories, documents, images and original testimonies to paint for you the picture of the one that was maybe the most important spiritual point of reference of my generation.

I.A.:
Fragment of Poem:
When the oak tree leaves the forest, the place becomes useful as a stable and for a fountain. The Romanian Country is left with this gentle inheritance of faith without voice, beyond death, in love...

Title: Beyond death, in Love, a film about Ioan Alexandru and his work

I.A.:
Fragment of Poem:
After sacrifice vigilance is required
That it would reach beyond the stars
The splinter of the oak tree
Touched by the axe of the destiny, in them.

Narrator:
The summer of 1989, before the Revolution, we used to come here on the alleys of Herestrau park, running, walking and talking. It was a special time for me. I felt that something was going to happen in Romania, I already knew what happened in the ex-Communist countries and I had a premonition about what was going to happen here in Romania . We became totally involved in this revolution and also after it.
In those incredible nocturnal (night) hours of the Revolution Ioan Alexandru was carrying a simple wooden embelished cross, before the armed soldiers, and he prayed in the street for the wounded and for the dead in University Square. In Bonn, where he spent his last years in suffering with the Lord, he recalled those crucial moments for the history of the Romanian people.

I.A.:
I was on the streets of that night of 22 December with this cross that you showed in Parliament and saw the blood on the street and I used it to write with my fingers on a screen of the sky: "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Christians."

Narrator:
He went around the walls of the Central Committee (the Communist Center) which he compared with the Jericho walls that same night of the fall of Ceausescu regime. On this road he kneeled and prayed to God, on the stairs of the locked churches from the center of Bucharest, he prayed for Romania to be set free from Communism. Early in the morning, the soldiers of the regime were in line, ready to shoot. Holding strongly that same cross in his hands towards the soldiers, he asked them “do not shoot the people, do not shoot Christ.” When Ceausescu ran away, he was taken by the people to the Television Center, where he proclaimed, live, the fall of Babylon and the victory of Christ. Later he confessed that he confrunted before the tanks, not with Buddha, Socrates, Zamolxis, Jupiter, Stalin, Lenin, Marx or how many others may be, but with Christ, whose weapon is love.

Song : We shall not be afraid or anxious, for with us is God. Hear to the end of the world...

Narrator:
Those December nights and days of fire, Ioan Alexandru together with a group of friends founded the first Christian-Democrat Party, actually the first Romanian Party after the revolution, which later fused with the historical National Peasant Party, made up mainly of former political prisoners; I witnessed this fusion in the house of Corneliu Coposu. At the first presidential election he was asked to participate as a candidate of this party but he refused out of respect for the generation that suffered in the Communist prisons.

I.A.:
I had the joy of taking this country after getting out of the communism regime and record it to International Christian Democrat Party at Bruxelles at the beginning of the winter when we entered the biggest word organization, we are a part of the Christians of the world; we are Christians! we stretch our hands (open our arms): Christ is risen!...it is the greatest moral force of humanity!

Tutea:
Two people, lay people, have spoken at university level about religion: Nae Ionescu and Ioan Alexandru.

I.A.:
The spirit of wisdom and knowledge, the spirit of council - hetza and chibora (in Hebrew) - of strength and courage, ruahdat – the spirit of knowledge and wisdom and yearat-Yahve, the spirit of the fear of God.

Narrator:
We are in the amphi-theatre where Ioan Alexandru was holding his Hebrew classes in the University of Bucharest.

I.A.:
I had the happy privilege to discover so many great Hebrew words and to find the burning essence in them that is Jesus Christ, who burns and flickers as a consuming fire emanating for centuries, eternal. The resurrection through the power of the Holy Spirit, everybody’s own resurrection.

Narrator:
I was shocked the moment I saw him behind this pulpit and I was immediately attracted by his personality. He was full of life and he was giving this life to everything he was saying.

I.A.:
At the roots of the tree of life, Christ’s holy life starts infiltrate by the power of His bloody sacrifice and of His agony when the heavens and earth shakes and God starts to walk lamely, pushing aside the waves from the right and from the left, the waves of sin and of death, the two great enemies of mankind, sin and death, for no one dared attempt, throughout the history of mankind, to drive them away from our life. And no one will, until the end of time, except the sacrifice of the Lamb of God hung on the hill of Golgotha.

Narrator:
Often, Ioan would start his class reading slowly, almost whispering, reading fluently in Hebrew from the Holy Scriptures. The students, whispering, creating that atmosphere of a class of students whose attention is not yet attracted by the teacher. The moment when Ioan Alexandru would start suddenly to shout and read loud from a psalm or from the prophets or from the beginning of Genesis, is very fresh in my mind and heart:

IA:
Beresit barah Elohim(...Hebrew)....the shouts of God, (...Hebrew) the moment when God (...Hebrew)creates Adam out of the dust and He places Adam in paradise in order to serve him, to watch over him (...Hebrew).

Narrator:
He was fusing himself with the original text, emptying himself, he would allow the text to speak and set free those energies (power) that were living latently (inactively) in the holy books.

IA:
In Hebrew ruah means smell, it is the same word from the Book Song of Songs chapter 2 when the bride has a divine smell, when the bridegroom puts ointment on the handle of the door in the night pre-imagining Christ, ruah also means a gentle breeze, if you remember – ruah – as many days there are in a year, so many times ruah apperas in the Old Testament. Ruah is a mysterious presence, you can hear it at the splitted rocks of Horeb where the monotheist Elijah took refuge believing he was the only one on Earth left. When the storm comes and God was not in it, then the fire comes and all others and then in a gentle breeze he hears God, in the gentle breeze, in the mysterious breeze, they say that in the prophet Elijah the Spirit of God came the closest to man in the history, in a form that is, as a gentle breeze, as a murmur until the day of Pentecost when He comes inside of us. During the Old Testament He comes and just slightly touches the people of the world, like in the evening at twilight in the orient God at Jericho and also in all their gardens at En Ghedi from the Song of Songs. At evening and before the sunrise, a rocking starts and all the perfumes of the blossoming are pouring over the earths and fills with balm and with beauty and with yearning after God. He would come, touch and leave. Samuel would come with the horn with ointment over the head of David the shepherd, “I was the youngest in my father's house and I was taking care of his sheep” and suddenly his face is lit as it was lit the blond and golden head of Saul when he was taken from between his father's donkeys that were lost and he was anointed king over Israel, and he starts to prophecy, and then the Spirit dwells over him as it will abide over the offspring of Elisei, over whom will rest the six Spirits of the living God.

Narrator:
Before the revolution in 1989, Ioan Alexandru was known even at an international level. He had received an international prize for poetry in Japan, people from domains other than the university would participate in this amphitheater that would become almost full at the classes he would hold in order to be enriched spiritually from his exegesis. I am sure that he was monitored and watched by the secret police of the Communist regime, which he also knew very well, so that the courage to hold those classes meant very much to me.

PetreTutea:
I love Ioan Alexandru very much, I love him very much! To dare to be a Christian in a positivist university, it is like you an old man would slap someone younger and stronger than you, it is unlimited courage.

Narrator:
Another class that Ioan taught and I joined with a great joy was the one that he held at the institute of arts. Here in this place, close to the cathedral of Sf Joseph, I discovered the Byzantine spirituality.

I.A.:
Justinian the King brought the bread to the basilica so that the basilica would use it for the communion. His wife, Theodora, gathered the grapes from the field together with her community where she served, and she would bring the cup with wine to be used for the holy Eucharist.

Narrator: Often, as it happened at the university, Ioan would find the classrooms locked, so that many times he had to teach up in the attic.

I.A.: (Greek)

Narrator:
He would submerge into the original Greek texts of the Byzantine public speakers Roman Melodos (the Melodic) and Efrem Sirul (the Syrian), centralizing (gathering to himself) and setting free around him the perfume of Christ (spreading) that we would find hidden in these words.

I.A.:
My model is, along the the great European poet Dante, Roman the Melodos from Byzance, who called us to study the Word of God – where truth is.

I.A.
Fragment of Poem:

So that the disciples would be able to see Him,
they needed to have that faith,
only then their eyes
were opened
so that it would be example to us
that were not there
so that our eye would be
the eye with which He saw us in resurrection
instead the eye that denied Him
when they placed Him on the tree
and stabbed Him
and in their running away
they were condemned to death.
He would reach them resurrected
in their abandonment
only the empty thumb
is not enough
on firing ships
in blood He would embark
in order to defeat the death
that had pierced Him.

Song: Holy God...

Narrator:
as a visitor here in the cathedral Saint Sofia from Istanbul, built by King Justinian, Ioan forgot to leave at the closing visiting hour and the guardian didn't observe him inside and locked him inside for the night in the basilica. He was fascinated by the mystery of this place and by the moments in time past that marked the destiny of this enduring place of worship. The greatest and the most tragic of these, that he would often speak to us about, was the massacre of the Christians in 1453 by the Muslim Turks inside the basilica, as they brought their praises to God, this cathedral and Constantinopol were falling under the Muslim siege. But in the ashes of Byzance there is still embers left. Knowing the capacity of Ioan to enter the heart of these events, I was not surprised by the fact that he got lost between the signs (remains) of those times in that basilica that was speared and placed on the cross of Bosphorus, as Ioan Alexandru called it, 'eastern mother of the Romanian nation'.

He evoked in detail the profound spiritual experience he had that night, alone – excep a dove that took refuge in the cupola, hearing the rhythmic waves of the sea, it was the crucial night of his conversion. Starting at that point in his life and work had a new spiritual dimension. He dedicated himself totally to Christ and to the expansion of His kingdom.

I.A.
Fragment of Poem:

we had dispersed from His presence
as the water that sneaks into the split
He had to call us again
By name
to find Him in the Scripture
Not His words to move now
in these dry clay vessels
holdings in His hands
but the resurrected wounds
and loosed from sight of
the grave
when the twilight comes
stepping over the dragons
holding the snake in His hand.

Narrator:
I had the happy occasion to go with Ioan as a pilgrim through different hermitages and monasteries. I met again, in these spiritual houses (abodes) old spiritual leaders with improved lives. We were fed by their teaching and simplicity that they would offer to all those that would visit them.

Fr. Ilie Cleopa:
Hey, God is above the billions of beginnings, if He had a beginning...but man was created by somebody!

Narrator:
I have been with Ioan Alexandru in the house of Father Staniloaie, another shining face of the Orthodox Church. While they were talking about the mysterious connection between theology and poetry.

I.A.: Baltazar said that the 20th century is lacking a theology of kneeling, of prayer. Someone else (Rhanner) said, 'this is true but it lacks especially a poetical theology'.

Fr. Staniloaie:
our future theology shall be a theology of love and of communion with God and with each other.

I.A.:
Why is this Christian Poetry is so good?

Fr Staniloaie:
We go with the word to a certain point and we experience God as a great mystery, our usual words have no power from there on, so either we remain silent from there on or we strive to find words that go beyond our rational definitions.

I.A.
Poem:

Stay with us
Because behold the evening is close
And the moon decreases
over the country,
And in the darkness
all are immersing,
And the road is long
till other villages
and our house is too empty
as we being old have returned
from pilgrimage,
and the foreign appearance (person)
came inside
and allowed them
to wash his feet
and in the light in a corner
their hearts were caught by fear
and they hurried to gather
around the table
The bread was given unto him
to break it
And when he suddenly touched the bread
they recognized his willingly self breaking.

I.A.:
our church shall raise from the dead...

Narrator:
Ioan Alexandru desired that the Orthodox church of Romania would give up the nationalist triumphalism and would have, by meekness, ministering and watching, real missionaries for its nation to other nations.

I.A.:
We shall revive, in those things where Jesus told us after resurrection, “Go and make disciples”. Making disciples is what our mother-Church lacks now, it doesn't make disciples, it doesn't work enough now, poor church, it does what it can. I don't want to accuse it because I am a part of it, look what he did Kirkegard in his church, what did other churches do, we need the prophetic, apostolic, missionary dimension.

Narrator:
The grace and the vocation of communicating that Ioan Alexandru was gifted with helped believers from different denominations to come closer to each other.

I.A.:
Church, as Iorga (historian) said, means in Romania,first the Orthodox Church, but also the Greek Catholic, also the Catholic, the Protestant Churches and NeoProtestant( evangelical) Churches, all those Christians that confess God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
We have the asurance that God is the Holy Trinity, through Jesus Christ who is alive and “The Word became flesh and dwelt amongst men” , and with these arms, with these eyes and with these ears and with these nails and as with with Thomas - today is the day of Saint Thomas, we touched His side, his wounds, we touched Him after resurrection, we tasted Him, we ate Him, we saw Him, we held Him strongly, and we killed Him; he was sighing, and his sighing and his blood were entering our hands and skin and flesh and our blood and sweat and eyes and hearing, God was here. We know that God is a Trinity because He was here in His Son and He said: 'I am sent here by the Father and the Father knows that I am His Son and I reveal My Father and he who sees Me, he saw the Father'.

Narrator:
The sermons and lectures he held in different Christian communities transformed him to be one of the best known servants of the Word in Romania.

I.A.
Fragment of Poem:

With carelessness or with hate and with the fist,
we all crushed Him to death on the skull hill.
The hungry mouth or the fed mouth wouldn't go by Him without saying words of blasphemy.
From Atlantic until the salt pillar of Sodom marched with the guards of legions of Rome,
Like a tear, the little country of prophets was the target for arrows.
These monotheist knees sparkle as they climb the stone
For us all that have denied Him are these words from the cross,
Until the ages end. Father!'Forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Narrator:
Ioan Alexandru was explaining to us the meaning of Easter that was confirmed in the Pentecost using the religious symbolism of the Old Testament, first he was explaining to us the meaning of the old holidays that were before the resurrection of our Lord and before the coming of the Holy Spirit.

I.A.:
This holiday of the first fruits has very deep roots in history, the ancient Jews took it from others before them, the roots of this celebration are go back to the beginning of history, but gradually it has received meanings until it became what it is for the Christian world for 2000 years now, the day of the coming of the Holy Spirit in history, the day when Jesus Christ penetrates with the fire of God's love into the hearts of all people.

Narrator:
Pentecost has symbolic and analogical roots in the celebration of thanksgiving day for the fruits of the land of the ancient people Israel when at the temple the High Priest, at 7 weeks after Easter, would receive from the Levites and from the people the bread of remembrance and the faith confession.

I.A.:
This faith confession, stating that this world doesn't belong to us, that God gave the fruits, that God is the master of the cornfields, that God commands the seeds to go deep in the ground and die there and grow as the grass and carry in the year the hundredfold seed of wheat, colored by the light and heat of the sun, blown by the wind, shaken and cut on the ground, brought to the
stone of the mill, made flour, at the light of the evenings the flour is kneaded with that miraculous leaven that grows and fills and fills the trough and it pours over and it is placed on the warm cheek of the oven and it becomes rosy (ruddy) beautiful bread, that is the food of mankind. The mysterious body of the bread, the body that passed through the fire and the oven of suffering on the skull hill, resurrected from the dead, the bread from heaven that comes down and gives life to the world.

Narrator:
The pouring of the Holy Spirit is the event of the entrance of the Lord Jesus Christ in the heart of each one of us as Lord, it is the moment of the inauguration of God's Kingdom within us.

I.A.:
those tongues of fire were golden, purple, golden because it represents the Kingdom of God and purple because it represents the essence of God itself that is revealed to the world, that is agape...(Greek), in the Spirit He came and wakened the apostles and told them, 'watch for the essence of God comes down into you, which is love'.

Narrator:
in the power of the Spirit, the resurrection of the Lord moves the hearts of all people from nations who would come to faith.

I.A.:
The Holy Spirit descending as tongues of tornadic fire and as great waters, with bell like resonation sound, celebrating the Trinity that finishes now His work that His Kingdom would extend, to draw us all –do you realise this!?– to draw us in the love, in the dance of love of the Holy Trinity, so that we would be members of this love, to receive in our hearts this consuming fire that burns, this fire that purifies and cleanses, to light in our heart the hope, the faith, the love that moves the univers and that filled and fills the world until the end of times, confirming each man as sanctuary, temple, our body as a sanctuary and as a temple for the Holy Spirit, precious vessels, holiness for all people, for all nations, for all dialects, for all tongues and finally for us also, we, the unworthy and weak ones, halleluia, maranatha.

Narrator:
I never met a man that was so passionate for his belief. Ioan was passionate for the lives of people of faith from the Holy Scriptures, also from the Romanian History, especially by the lives of the martyrs, before whom he felt he had the duty to make known their sacrifice to the young generation.

I.A.
Fragment of Poem:

the eagles premonition through the forest,
the rumor of the sunrise is far,
Brancoveanu passed throught the borders together with his children to above and beyound death.

May my eye rejoice for eternity
touched by pain and joy,
At Horez (where Brancoveanu prepared his tomb) I also, decapitated,
I hold on my shoulders the fire as a testimony.
Wheels as the Big Chariot are burning on the sky
remembering the four children, one after the other, crowned, all around the solar-father.

Fr Galeriu:
The last word never belongs to evil, but only to good. He has turned your evil into good.

Narrator:
Father Constantin Galeriu, the well-known teacher and counsellor, who is now with the Lord, said these words that the testimony would be complete:

Pr Galeriu:
“You know that I wrote a book while you( his mother)was alive, about Brancoveanu, he also salutes you, he has translated the Bible that is so precious to you.”

Narrator:
this confession of faith is maybe the last one that Ioan Alexandru left to this world, as a discussion with his mother from beyound death and time, in which he introduces, one after the other, the martyrs of the Romanian nation and lastly the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ to whom all came to bow down.

Fr Galeriu:
Our suffering also, when we live it in the light of Jesus' cross, becomes a way to resurrection. Ioan Alexandru lived this way, he lived his suffering as a way to resurrection.

I.A.
Fragment of Poem:

May my flesh become dry on the face of the world
may my bones become dry with in me
if I will be ashamed of your faith
you Brancoveanu Constantin.
Your children are now my children,
at Horez with a Carnation in their hands,
I search away the soil over them
until I find the butterflies in the dust
until the holy country is filled with the fragrance of the promise
and on the sky you hear, immaculate, the victory chorus of the lily.

Narrator:
On his knees, with eyes closed as a sign of respect for the subject in discussion, Ioan tries to live those emotions, to feel the agony of the suffering and death of the Brancoveanu family, even more – he wants to actualize those moments when their suffering was unbearable, was transferred to Christ and they became by this way became free and victorious after death.

I.A.:
They were not fighting anymore in their hearts, it was not them fighting anymore, but Christ. Without the Turks to know it, they already dressed them in white tunic like as righteousness of soul, beyound death, and being resurrected will never know death again being the saints of the living God being with Christ wherever He is, they were carrying this glory on the roads of Constantinopol.

Narrator:
Ioan Alexandru immersed himself in the history, life and martyrdom of the Brancoveanu family, he even spent a few nights in the dark and cold lobby of his house imagining himself in the cold cell from Constantinopol where the royal family was imprisoned and tortured. This he did in order to understand what could the old father told his sons that they would not give up the Christian faith but accept beheading.

I.A.
Fragment of Poem:

My son, your small frail body is the fine clean bread,
hold on, lighten a word to lift the wound from the trough.
You also have been redeemed with a great price,
you shall have the hope of the holy tears,
weep my son, without comfort, until we pass over the threshold to our Father.
I can see an offspring over the Carpathians, coming from your tears' spring,
as it awakens the eagles and transforms them into stars of praise.
The drops of pain are returning in cups of gold and love,
the whole vine pours out fire that upholds it in each fruit.
And when you were unable to endure anymore
and when the persecution is above your strength,
you shall know, my beloved son, that we reached the mother country safe and sound.
I will follow you soon, my dear children, and we will be forever together,
what the Spirit unifies on earth the heaven only crowns and anoints...

Narrator:
The temptation succumb to the Sultan for the Brancoveanu family was greater when they were promised life and freedom through absolution. It was like a formality becoming Muslims. It is clear that only the power of faith in the Lord that they witnessed by acts and service during his reign, was able to gather them together as a monolith in that same conviction that could not be moved.

I.A.:
They knew that the one that follows Christ must carry his cross and that one day that carrying of the cross may bring shedding of blood and also they knew – as they had the text before their eyes in Revelation chapter 20
Seeing them all, around the Lamb, dressed up in white robes. All those whose head has been beheaded for their witness of Jesus Christ, which, says the text, did not die by deathe but resurrecsion.

Narrator:
Ioan Alexandru has gathered in the cup of the human language, itself sanctified in the Pentecost days, the blood of these Christian martyrs, the saintly witness for Christ before a pagan empire.

I.A.:
The little one has faced the Ottoman empire in the last hour, ‘Christian I was, Christian I want to die, strike! And the little, curly-haired head has rolled down and the oceans of the Earth began to roar within the shores, and the skies of the skies grew bluer when the head of the martyr boy rolled at the feet of the unhappy empire. The head of the old man rolled fast after not to lag behind his boys’, sticking his cheek to he his little curly one’s.
O, Lord, where’s the golden cup. Where’s the Grail, where’s the holy vessel, how come that no one could collect it? The most saintly seed of this land, the most saintly seed of this people, the seed of Christian martyrs, apostols to the Otoman empire, then to the Muslims. And their mother was present and Europe was present, and the Sultan was present, seeing with their very eyes in the 18th century, not in mythology not in illo tempore, not in unknown times or in the first days of Christianity. In the 18th century when people were playfully hunting, when they had ‘Enlightenment’ for food, amidst jewelry, parties and balls, when people were ‘civilised’ as they said, then these people were dying for Christ like people didn’t in the best/most beautiful times ( of Christianity)

Narrator:
His body was cast into the Bosphor, later on recupereted by his wife Maria The Lady and brought here secretly to the church The New Saint Gheorghe not to be profaned by his enemy.

I.A.
Fragment of Poem:

His body sleeps under an icon lamp in quietness
I Maria the servant of God I place this light (candle) as a remembrance,
With the hope that I will be next to my lord's bones, in the icon of the dust,
waiting for the adoption of the hot wind.

Narrator:
Do we appreciate today enough the light of Christ that defeated the depths of demonic power through those that have made the ultimate sacrifice of faith?

I.A.:
The warranty that we are on the good path as a nation is given by them, they are the heart of this nation, the saints Constantin, Stephen, Radu and Mateiash.

Narrator:
Just before the revolution, Ioan had the idea that we would go in a study trip to trace the steps of the Christian martyrs from Dobrogea. He had documents and texts (manuscripts) from those spiritualities that have lived in the past in these areas: daco-romans, the old Greek world, and the old Hebrew world.

I.A.:
This nation that was living in darkness saw a great light and over those that were living in the land and darkness of death saw the light rising.
Song: I come at the sunset and I see the light of the evening...

Narrator:
Ioan Alexandru, between the ruins of the Christian basilica from Dinogetia, tries to discover the motivation and signification of the martyrdom acts from the third century on these lands, where the Danube meets the sea.

I.A.:
When we read and comprehand what barbarity was there, what a thirst for blood, what desire to crush, to attack with the armor and shed blood till evening and then go to a feast, such wild attitude between people you can hardly find in history. They were martyrs, these lambs who wept before God with tears of blood and said, “let this savagery stop, let the shedding of blood stop”, we shall love one another brethren, we are brothers, let this revolt between us stop. They came with this message of love, this is why the world loves them and seeks them, not for their heroism. There were enough heroes in the ancient world, heroes that would kill with no mercy, there was an Achille who wouldn't stop killing even under the eyes of his wives, mothers and children that were on the wall, he kills another without mercy and he ties him by the tail of the horse and then he takes another 12 young men and stabs them over the grave of his friend, with no mercy, the mother and children are crying on the wall while he kills with no mercy and he is made a hero. The martyrs didn't kill anyone. The martyrs had a great mercy for the human soul, martyrs had a great mercy towards the savageness of people.

Narrator:
In our trips we did 3 stops (halts) to know more the meaning of the discovery from 1971 of the Christian catacomb from Niculitel.

I.A.:
Here is describes the symbolism of the sanctuary and analyzes philologically and theologically the inscription: “Hode cahode ihor martirion”, this word “ihor” is not articulated, it means “blood to the martyrs”, so that the subject of the energy that is here are not the martyrs, but is the blood of Christ that is present in them, it is “blood to the martyrs”, it is “energy to the martyrs”. The flame that I give to this candle does not belong to the candle, it was given to the candle from outside, here it is the same grammatical form, “ihor martiron”.

Narrator:
The architecture of this martiron is the prototype of the later basilicas. He describes in details the meaning of the three crosses “tau shape” T, the number 3 referring to the Trinity.

I.A.:
Here are the 3 tau (a “tau” is the Greek letter T), the Great Friday when the cross is placed into the ground, the placing of the body in the ground, the Saturday and then the Sunday of the glory – the Sunday of the resurrection, these are the 3 great days of our history that are described here in the 3 tau here.

Narrator:
The historical interpretation that Ioan gives is the foundation of the whole eastern and universal Christian spirituality that was discovered in the depths of the Dobrogea land.

I.A.:
We are witnessing here in this martiron today the inter penetration of the Tau – the risen Christ, into the barbarian nation, in our nation in Europe.

Narrator:
I discovered, together with these beautiful archaeological vestiges, the entrance gate into the Romanian language, as Ioan called the first writings in stone referring to Christ and God in the church of the first millennium, in Basarabi, on the chalk hill from Murfatlar.

I.A.:
Here it is, come here, I found the inscription, here it is the inscription with Jesus Christ, it is the most awesome gate of entrance in the Romanian language, it gave national language to a nation of 25 million people – as many as we are today, all we that speak Romanian.

Narrator:
Starting from the last study of the researcher Constantin Daniel, who analyzes a few words that are 1000 years old, kept in the rumic writing, they found the signs of the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ that are left in the chalk in this church one thousand years ago.

I.A.:
“with Jesus Christ and God sue (sue in Latin or old Romanian means we are)”, these are the 3 words in the Romanian language that are 100 years old and are kept here in the rumic writing from Basarabi. Let's follow Jesus Christ in the language of this nation; we thank you Jesus Christ for giving us a language that we can understand, we thank you for giving us this Romanian language, beautiful – as a scholar said– full of spiritual richness, in which we have been able to express all the godliness and adoration of this nation for the cross of Jesus Christ and His holy resurrection. Thanks to this language we have been able to sanctify our families, lands, houses, mountains and hills and retain this inheritance as from our ancestors, our Romanian land: 'from Nistru river to Tisa river all Romanians wept to me' (line from a national poem), this wheel of land, blessed by God, this eastern Romanity (Roman ascendancy)) with its godliness and holiness. After the first wave of martyrs there comes the second wave of saints, saints that sanctify themselves by knowledge, 'the kingdom of God is to know God the Father and Jesus Christ whom He has sent', as Saint John says. They start this work of sanctification and they sanctified themselves by His knowledge. One of them is Dionisie Exiguul who went from here into the holiness, another one is Ioan Casian, he started the western monasticism.

Narrator:
In our researches for the origins of the Christian faith in this area, we found the village of the leprosy at Tichilesti, a place that is isolated, where rarely someone would visit, a community of leprosy that is isolated from the world. Ioan Alexandru brought to this place also the Gospel and a word of hope and courage, for those that suffer because of this terrible disease.

I.A.:
Christ is risen! - He is risen indeed! (answer from people) Christ is risen! - He is risen indeed! Christ is risen! - He is risen indeed! May the resurrection of Jesus Christ be with us all our days.

Narrator:
At the end of our trip, we prayed a prayer of thanksgiving, at the cave of Saint Andrew, the Apostle of Christ, he who is remembered in the corporate memory of the people living here as being the one who had the mission to make Christians in these areas.

I.A.:
Jesus Christ, you are subject of prayer for the Apostle, and the joy of the martyrs, Jesus Christ, you have been sacrificed in them, you have been preached in them, you are sacrificing yourself always through their sacrifice and through ours...

Narrator:
Ioan was a man of prayer, he used to say: I sing always because there is a doxology in me, a presence inside of me that makes me sing all the time.

I.A.:
(singing) The virgin Mary
Gives birth to Messiah.

Narrator:
The format of Ioan's prayer would start using the format of the old prayers used in the Orthodox Church, then the words would come by divine inspiration and he would become free in prayer.

I.A.:
We shall penetrate ourselves with the meek meekness, we shall live a temperate life, a holy life, clean and righteous, we shall love one another, we shall be hard workers, we shall not hide our talent in the ground but we shall bring forth fruit, he who has received one shall bring forth two, we shall bring the right fruit at the right time, we shall live in the cornfield the remains for the widow and for the orphan, we shall think of the ones that are in need, we shall share clothes – he who has two shall give one to the one that has none, we shall be meek, humble and clean, having a heart according to our Lord Jesus Christ.

Narrator:
He was the only public figure that practiced the power of prayer, initiating and supporting a prayer group in the Romanian Parliament and organizing every year an evening dedicated to prayer at national level, with guests from all over the world.

I.A.:
Now release your slave in peace, Lord, according to Your Word, for my eyes have seen Your salvation that You have prepared before Your eyes for all nations, a light for all nations. I saw the light of Your resurrection, Lord, my heart is witness of your resurrection and now if we live or die, we belong to the Lord.

Narrator:
There was someone in the Romanian Parliament who was speaking with the power of Christ, but unfortunately it was a voice that was speaking in a desert place (in vain).

I.A.:
The Socialism, the atheistic Communism, the Humanism without Christ are not accepted in Europe or in America, we Romanians must understand that we can not be accepted in Europe with neocommunism, with neosocialism, we won't be accepted if we don't have at least respect for Jesus Christ.

Narrator:
Ioan knew that the power that the dictators were using and also communists, was not legitimate before God and the tragedy was sure. He knew that only then when someone is the property of God, meaning His servant, only then is he qualified to use authority.

I.A.:
The state, we have a fundamental text that helps us understand it, in the Letter to the cristians in Rome chapter 13, here people are called to be submitted to the authority because it is serving God.

Narrator:
From this rostrum Ioan proposed with power the protection of the unborn, the oath using the Bible, the introduction of Christian teaching in schools, the introduction of Christian teaching in mass media, giving back the lands to peasants, scholarships for students, in one word: the revival of Romania on the foundation of the Gospel of Christ.
Ioan's burning desire was that Romania would experience a real resurrection from the atheistic death to the life of Christ. This is the first Christian magazine that appeared after the Revolution, it is called “The Renesance”, we wrote it and published it together in conditions that were almost impossible.
I have many other manuscripts from Ioan Alexandru, many of them are about Resurrection.

I.A.:
The greatest sign that God gave us, as Matew said, ' ti est in ', what is this 'eknecron anastenai', what is this resurrection from the dead? And the answer is: Jesus Christ.

Narrator:
For Ioan, the resurrection was the passion of his life. I think that he was able to say together with the Apostle Paul, 'I know one thing, I run to know Christ and the power of His resurrection'. He tried to understand the meaning and signification of resurrection more than is possible.

I.A.:
God is revealed in this Christ, through the fact – the only great miracle in history, Alpha and Omega, is His resurrection that went through suffering and moved into our life.

I.A.
Fragment of Poem:

This is why first all of them didn't recognize Him,
He seemed to them to be either a gardener, either a pilgrim,
on the embers in the morning with the wounds in the Scripture
is struggling in food, the divine 'ihtis' (Greek);
on the same lake the fishermen without strength,
from where He called them first,
now oceans of resurrection were leaving to the universe with His love.

Narrator:
I was here in Timisoara in 1990 before Christmas to commemorate one year after the revolution. This square before the opera was filled with people that came to hear the messages and discourses of the political leaders, invited from all over the country for this manifestation. Ioan Alexandru was also invited. I was standing behind him in the famous balcony of the opera when he was invited to speak. I could see over his shoulder the metropolitan cathedral and down in the street there were thousands of people that gathered to hear the discourses of the political leaders. When he was to speak, he inaugurated his speech shouting loudly in the microphone from the balcony of the opera: 'Christ is risen!' The next second a huge answer came from the mouths of thousands of people that were down in the square: 'He is risen indeed!' Suddenly thousands of lights were kindled out of newspapers, briquettes or candles in that multitude of people at evening hour. Christmas had become an evening of Easter for Timisoara. The following days in the Parliament, at Television, in the newspapers, Ioan Alexandru was mocked by the old communists because he had said at Christmas 'Christ is risen!'. Then other scoffers (mockers) came, many insulted him and threatened him by phone and by mail from diverse anonymous people. I think that is it then when Ioan Alexandru understood the hate with which Saint Paul was followed when he shouted in that square 'is it for the resurrection of the dead that you persecute me!' They didn't know that for Ioan Alexandru Jesus Christ was alive day and night in his heart, they didn't know that for Ioan Alexandru Easter and Christmas are not boxes for Jesus Christ that would open according to the calendar, they didn't know that for Ioan Alexandru resurrection is the shining event through which all the other events are receiving interpretation. Not long time after this Ioan Alexandru wrote circa of pages dedicated to resurrection. Here are a few statements referring to this event: 'I have one only word to say to this nation, actually 2: Christ is risen! I am happy that God brought me to life after centuries from the Christian daco-romans from Transylvania and after about 2000 years the Holy Spirit keeps on preparing me to speak exactly in this Sunday in the greatest town of my life, Timisoara, these terrible words that have changed the destiny of the mankind: Christ is risen!'

I.A.
Fragment of Poem:

The victory was full and darkness came into light for eternity,
the angels stepped back when they arrived at the empty winding sheets,
with the swords, to spread away the oceans of darkness,
the sanctimonious women came to touch the wounds of His hands
and penetrate His feet with the dew of tears,
and the stifled ears of vipers in wilderness would catch the first shout of joy.

Narrator:
We are before the old building of the Romanian parliament when the miners invaded this beautiful room, full of anger, armed with picks (axes) and other types of instruments that they used in the mine, in order to molest the people. This is the cross that Ioan Alexandru used and it was fixed by a miner to the wall in this place using that instrument of violence, after they calmed down, at the request of Ioan Alexandru, as a symbol of the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ, it is the same cross that Ioan Alexandru used during the revolution before the soldiers of the Ceausescu regime, a cross that is rich in significations and that thanks to God I found it in a annex (room) of this building and I can assure you that it is authentic. Let's hear now Ioan amongst the miners that invaded Bucharest in 1991.

I.A.:
I am here between you holding the cross from the revolution, I fought for you, I am the poet Ioan Alexandru, with the hymn of Maramures and of Transilvania, I fought for you and your children that they would have the Bible in schools.

Narrator:
they took by assault all the important institutions of the state and with savageness the people that had no fault. They had done it one year before also with the students in University square, leaving behind many victims. Behold they are now in the Parliament of Romania filled with wrath.

Miners: Resignation!

Narrator:
Imagine what spiritual strength was necessary that the demons of hate that would control this mob of miners would be bound. In this spiritual unseen world, imagine what divine force has filled this room in order to remove the criminal desires of these poor manipulated miners.

I.A.:
I stand before you as a poet of Transylvania! Be quiet, be quiet because the country goes down!

Narrator:
In order to erase the shame that Ceausescu has brought to Romania by refusing to sleep in the room from the White House where next to the bed there was a Bible like this one, when he was invited by the American president, in 1993 when Ioan Alexandru was a parliamentarian he took with him to America the oldest Romanian Bible from the time of the prince Serban Cantacuzino, which came out under tha patronage of Constantin Brancoveanu. “the Bible from Bucharest”, as it is known, and he presented it as a gift to the American president. Ioan Alexandru was very enthusiastic to see a strong nation gathering its leaders and dedicating one day per year to prayer to Jesus Christ.

I.A.:
It is not by accident that America is on the top of nations, it is not by accident that America is today the eye that watches the reality of all the world, but God ordained it. And I asked myself why. Is it because there are great businessmen, or because there are merchants from all over the world? Please believe me that now I know America's secret: it is the most pious country on the face of the earth, regarding the people and the situation this country is in.

Narrator:
Immediately after he came from America, he told me: the Americans are pragmatic, they have applied the Gospel of Jesus Christ and it brought fruit in the life and house of simple people. We need to do something here also, we need to go with the power of the Gospel first in the institutions that the Communist left behind, where evil is in a great concentration.

I.A.:
Our institutions for the sick: prisons, hospitals, orphanages, they can't become healthy and they can't be managed unless the Church shares to these institutions and unless the Church of Jesus Christ becomes more efficient.

Narrator:
Inspired by the way that Christians are involved in America in the public life, he wrote this book, 'With the Bible in America”, as a hymn dedicated to the Christian America. In this trip Ioan Alexandru met diverse communities of Romanians, encouraging them to have solidarity of faith and nation.

I.A.
Fragment of Poem:

There is no fatherland there where is no hermitage,
without parents we have no dwelling place (abode)
without shirt of fire upon us works only the idolatry flesh,
the tribes become dry as exumation,
the painters are fading near the light,
there is no more cheek to blush the vine on the hill,
the ugliness (profane) works in the weaving loom (making carpets),
the lily doesn't call for suffering anymore
and is not moved on the road on holy days to sanctify the land in good willing.
Without mother land we are parentless,
without death watch there can't be work done,
just like the snake in suffering is first sacrifice and then elevation.

Narrator:
At the center in Bucharest, where there is the monument of the Prince Constantin Brancoveanu, at the church The New Saint Gheorghe, it is the place where Ioan Alexandru would pray for the unborn.

I.A.:
Romania is high on the list in the world regarding the killing of children. I have been in Poland and when I told them this, they said, “there is genocide in your country, still”, what happened? At the revolution died 1133 young people but since then we killed, we decapitated over one million ( unborn) children. Can you imagine what kind of revolution goes on now in Romania? Woe unto us, what bad condition we are in!

Narrator:
The thought of starting an organization Pro Vita came to him when he was invited to participate in elaborating the declaration of the rights of the unborn child in Oslo. Immediately after returning in the country, we met into his house where he told me in details what happened at that conference. At the university, in the amphitheater Odobescu, we founded the first organized structure of Pro Vita.

I.A.:
God knows how you escaped! How is it possible that you escaped from not being crushed by these scissors, that they didn't crush you and you are finally alive and you can listen this moment what I say unto you? It is a miracle, it is a miracle really what happens with you, that you escaped from the most terrible scissors, the best oiled scissors, the most sharpened ones, the most perfected ones, the scissors that kills.

Narrator:
Ioan Alexandru founded Pro Vita because of his passion for the unborn child but also because of his compassion for the women that were lied to regarding the life they were carrying in their womb. This dedication he had was taken on and materialized in centers for pregnancy crises, maternal houses and volunteers prepared to teach in schools the young generation about this delicate subject.

Naration:
Ioan had an artist's heart, he would put in the words those emotions that artists would put into colors, forms or sound. His great heart of a poet was in fact a heart of a child that was living in total dependence to his heavenly Father.

I.A.
Fragment of Poem:

Only heaven is left over us,
the spring that will follow,
and the wheat is hanging as an ingrafted plant
from the stubble field left with no roots.

Narrator:
I belive that Ioan Alexandru was received in the Kingdom of God as a prince of the unborn and of the innocent ones, for whose cause he fought with all his might assuming all risks, I believe also that his mission in eternity is more important than the one he had in this world, Ioan Alexandru continuing his hymns for the Lord, being part of that cloud of witnesses about which Saint Paul speaks, where all angels bring eternal praise in a doxology without body, all together with all creation that is witnessing with unspoken mournings.

I.A.:
when I was a little child, my mother, old, sick, in her bed, she would sing to me a song, “How narrow is the way to life”:
Narrow is the bridge of heaven,
but also is the gate of the sky,
he who walks carelessly falls down from the bridge.