This life was compiled by the nuns of Petru Vodă Monastery, founded by Archimandrite Justin (Pârvu) and headed by Abbess Iustina (Bujor).
A difficult childhood and a thirst for knowledge
You’ll never heave peace and spiritual calm if you don’t
love and forgive like Christ. We don’t know how to forgive.
“To know is one thing, but to do what you know is something else entirely. Knowledge is the first step towards salvation, and deeds are the entire path.”
Hieromartyr Constantin Sârbu “Every temptation, every sorrow, every attack of the devil can greatly benefit us if we’re attentive and patient. With what fury the unseen enemy attacked Job. But what harm did he ultimately inflict upon him? None. On the contrary, he brought him even greater holiness and the most magnificent glory. For transitory sufferings we inherit eternal life. God’s love determines the measure and intensity of sufferings, not only their duration,” St. John Chrysostom, Patriarch of Constantinople, taught with fervor many centuries ago.
The life of Fr. Constantin Sârbu was an endless crucifixion of his love for Christ on the cross of suffering, and as was the case with Righteous Job, the sufferings he endured became the measure of his unfeigned faith and love for God.
“I’m the son of a poor, landless peasant. I don’t know my mother—she died when I was a year old. In the hospital, upon hearing of her death, my father collapsed to the floor as if cut down. He suffered a nervous shock, and from that time on he wasn’t quite himself. I was taken in and raised by his parents, who were simple working folk,” Fr. Constantin recalled.
Thus he began his autobiography in a handwritten petition in September 1962 in Viișoara—the place of his forced settlement in the Bărăgan Plain—addressed to Patriarch Justinian, but “temporarily” intercepted by the Securitate (state security service).
The child of George and Maria Sârbu was born on January 10, 1905, in the village of Cavadinești, Covurlui County. He was destined to drink from the cup of suffering from the very first years of his life. His sole consolation was his faith in the warm intercession of the Mother of God. His pious grandmother entrusted him to the Queen of Heaven and earth, tearfully whispering to him before an icon:
“This is your true Mother! Pray to her to take care of you!”
The Peasant Life Museum in the village of Cavadinești. Photo: viata-libera.ro
Father’s childhood years were spent in bitter weeping. Extreme poverty forced him to work hard from an early age to earn his daily bread:
My grandparents, who raised me, had no other source of sustenance save their own hands, and they worked as laborers for wealthy peasants for a quarter of the harvest. Once I was able to hold a hoe in my hands, they started taking me to the field to help them. Our food consisted of mamaliga and soup with orach.1 And that’s no literary invention, but harsh reality.
My father also worked for the more wealthy. But he didn’t know how to bargain and defend his rights, so everyone exploited him and he labored only for a plate of food. And when there was no work, he relied on the orach soup or potatoes of his elderly and impoverished parents, which caused endless scandals in our house. That’s the atmosphere I grew up in.
Despite the material difficulties and tense atmosphere in the house, Constantin was the top student at his school in Galați. Then his parents were forced to move in with their other son in the village of Smârdan near the city of Galați and took Constantin with them. And when his grandfather suddenly died, they were left without a roof over their heads, because their daughter-in-law drove them out of the house in the middle of the night, showering them with a hailstorm of ruthless words. The two hunted souls then took shelter in an abandoned little room attached to the village church. There, the grandmother spun wool while the boy Constantin worked as a farmhand for strangers in exchange for a plate of food, which kept him out of school for four years. When the room was too cold, his grandmother would ask him to sing psalms and prayers with her, so that the fire in their hearts might warm their numb bodies.
The seminary Golgotha
Become a priest, because a priest will never starve to death!
“No words can suffice to speak of love as it deserves, for it’s not from earth, but from Heaven,” St. John Chrysostom taught in his homilies, exhorting us “to value nothing above love and not try to acquire anything without it.” Many years later, Fr. Constantin spoke about the sacrificial love of his caretaker:
My grandmother, a simple woman who couldn’t read, out of pity for me sold her only property—a heifer that was supposed to feed her in her old age—and sent me to study in Galați, since I’d missed four years. Then she told me to take the entrance exam to the Galați Seminary, saying:
“If you get in and study hard, perhaps the teachers will take a liking to you and they’ll help you finish your education, and you’ll become a priest. Become a priest, because a priest will never starve to death!”
Such was a grandmother’s will for her grandson, as she had struggled with poverty and hunger all her life. And that’s not a figure of speech, but a very real, bitter life.
St. Andrew’s Seminary in Galați, 1937. Photo: fototecaortodoxiei.ro
In 1919, young Constantin passed the entrance exam to St. Andrew’s Theological Seminary in Galați, earning the third highest grade out of 500 applicants. This was the first class enrollment after the First World War. Every school year, he received a bonus based on academic performance, but since he had tuition fees, he still had to work nights at a sawmill and afternoons in shops or giving lessons to priests’ and teachers’ sons in exchange for a book, pen, or pencil.
Despite the difficult living conditions, he managed to get a higher education within two years, doubling up on exams every year. He finished the last class in the seminary in Roman, which he reached by riding ticketless on the buffer of the last train car, since he had no money. And when rare free minutes presented themselves, he worked to feed his father, whom his grandmother could no longer support with her wool spinning.
His insatiable thirst for knowledge prompted him to enter the Theological Faculty and the Bucharest Conservatory in 1925. He still had to struggle with hunger, cold, and absolute poverty, but these deprivations had wondrously polished the soul of the future priest. As a student, he couldn’t enjoy a restful night’s sleep because he had to spend the night in the waiting area of Bucharest’s Northern Railway Station after he was kicked out of the attic of the house on Amzei Square where he had been sleeping on the floor for two years. His best option was to “illegally enter the student dormitory after 11 PM, when the administrator had gone to bed, and curl up on the bed of the guys who had some money and had gone out to the cabaret or a variety show for the night.” He also suffered from hunger every day, eating in the dining hall after 2:30 PM on whatever was left over from the students who had meal cards.
Zlătari Church, Bucharest. Photo: orasulluibucur.blogspt.com
In 1927, he was accepted as a music teacher at the Bucharest Tramway Company school and wholeheartedly threw himself into missionary work at the Zlătari Church under the guidance of Fr. Toma Kirikuță. There, he was the choir director, and administrator, and a contributor to two parish journals—Orthodoxy and The Wellspring of Gifts.
The yoke of the priesthood: In the service of others. Huși
How beautiful is the soul that has reached a high place with Christ,
whence everything is visible, bright, and perfect!
Huși Cathedral. Photo: rowikipedia.org
Fr. Constantin later recalled:
After graduating in 1929, I began to struggle to get a parish and a spouse, for a persistent struggle awaited me for both. For nearly five years after graduating from the Faculty, I couldn’t get a parish in the Bucharest Archdiocese because I had no connections at all. It was with great difficulty that I eventually obtained a position as a priest at the episcopal cathedral in the city of Huși thanks to Bishop Nifon, who knew me.
Before his appointment as a priest in Huși in 1934, he was a chanter at the Lucaci Church in the capital.
As for the choice of a future wife, Fr. Constantin shares with his characteristic nobility and sincerity:
I didn’t have a chance to get a parish, although I had the chance to win the heart of a higher being—a graduate of the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy, a writer named Maria Constantinescu, sister of the university professor D. Constantinescu, who, penetrating into my struggles and sufferings with her noble soul, agreed to become my wife. But the trouble was that she belonged to the upper social class—her brothers were state councilors, university professors, doctors, lawyers, and so on, while I was... a proletarian!
The family’s resistance, which lasted four years, was decisive and irrevocable. It ended with the victory of my future wife, but it cost her her health. Because until she fell gravely ill with a liver disease, so much so that they already thought she was dying, they wouldn’t accept me into their family. Thus, I gained a wonderful but ailing wife and a church 185 miles from Bucharest.
Metropolitan Nifon (Criveanu; 1889–1980). Photo: fototecaortodoxiei.ro On the feast of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos in 1934, Fr. Constantin was ordained to the diaconate, and the next day, August 16, on the commemoration of the Brâncoveanu Martyrs, he received the Sacrament of ordination to the priesthood. He recalls those unforgettable moments of renewal through the grace of the Holy Spirit as follows:
Kneeling and tearfully praying before the icon of the Most Holy Virgin Theotokos, entreating her protection and intercession, I, who until that moment had been timid and fearful, lacking any boldness, rose from my knees full of strength, light, and the singular desire to serve the supreme Truth, laying my whole being at the feet of Jesus Christ and thenceforth fearing no one.
He was gifted by God with a very melodious voice, and Metropolitan Nifon (Criveanu) appointed him director of the Huși School of Singing and a teacher of sectology, catechetics, and vocal music, and administratively a member of the Fălciu Deanery Council. During his time as director, he reorganized the school according to the seminary model, with a dorm for 45 of the 105 enrolled students, a dining hall, library, rehearsal hall, and pharmacy for the students. At the same time, he replenished the school’s funds and began gathering wood and bricks for the construction of a modern building. And before its construction, for the younger four grades that had been meeting in two unadapted cells in the episcopal residence, he would rent a two-story house called the Vasiuta House.
Sensitive to the sufferings of the destitute, Fr. Constantin spent two years building a twenty-two-room shelter in Huși for the elderly and orphans. Impressed by the zeal and sacrifice with which the thirty-year-old man devoted himself to the service of others, the bishop offered him to become his advisor and an archpriest in Fălciu County—“high positions that, however, were not to my liking,” recalls Fr. Constantin. “I was drawn to the honest and warm hearts of ordinary people—the kind I came from and whom I wanted to help, comfort, and inspire, along Church lines, of course, because I knew no other way.”
