I’ve spoken before about my spiritual father, Fr. George Calciu, who reposed in 2006. He was a Romanian priest who was arrested and spent decades in Communist prison and was subjected to a lot of torture and also the brain-washing torture. So he’d been through a lot, and the really amazing thing about Fr. George was his smile. He was just always smiling every time I saw him. When I came into the church for confession on an afternoon, he would hold my hand, and we would stand there and I’d smile a lot, too. And I would think, “Here we are, just standing here smiling, and the devil hates it! The devil hates this!” [Laughter]

I lost my dear Fr. George on November 21, 2006, but recently somebody asked him if he’d ever said anything about how American Christians could resist if there was a form of totalitarianism, or any kind of persecution, arising. And, as a matter of fact, he did. A nun asked him about it in an interview, about what could Christians do if we were ever under persecution in America. And Fr. George said first that he didn’t think that could happen. He said the people are too deeply convinced that they are free and that they have the freedom of speech, of worship, assembly, of all these freedoms; they’re too profoundly convinced of that to allow it to happen.

He said that torture and mass murder are tools that could not be readily used in America as they might be in other countries. But then he said the thing that really protects America is the wide-spread faith in Christ that is held by “simple people.” So here’s a few lines from Fr. George, things he said to the nun who was interviewing him. He said:

Just today I was telling the fathers and some others that I visited France. I was completely disappointed, because I love the French people; I love French culture. I used to be a professor of the French language in Romania. The connection between my country, Romania, my people and the French people is very strong. We borrowed elements of the French culture, so the second language of my country was French.

When I went to France, I saw that it is a lost country. The French people are a lost people. You cannot find a religious book in a public library. You cannot find a religious book in a secular bookstore, only in the bookstores that specialize in religious literature. If the president of France dares to say, “God bless France,” the next day he has to resign: it is not allowed for officials to publicly pronounce the name of God in France. Since the French Revolution, the devil has been victorious in France.

When I returned to America in France, I took a cab from the airport to my house, and the driver started to talk to me about God, about the Bible. In shops, people often start talking to me about God, about the Bible. As long as simple people speak about God, as long as simple people read the Bible, America is saved. For despite all the mistakes America has made, despite the war against Yugoslavia, despite the killings of people, despite everything, America is blessed by God—not because Clinton or some other president says, “God bless America,” but because of these simple people who speak of God, worship God, read the Bible, and preserve America against every evil and every attack of the devil.

So that’s a quote, some things Fr. George said to a nun who was interviewing him, at some point before his repose in 2006. And the one thing I wanted to add to that is I did not know about the things he said here. He had never said anything like that to me personally, and I hadn’t read that quotation. When one night I was awakened in the middle of the night—now I should say that every night, I mean, maybe one night a year I don’t, but every night, pretty much, I am awakened at some point, after I’ve fallen asleep and before it’s time to get up in the morning. And I get up and say my prayers. I say some general trisagion prayers and then 200 Jesus prayers. It takes me about an hour. Then I go back to sleep. All right, so that’s a given; that’s what I do every night.

So one night I woke up on the early side; it was like one o’clock. But I got up; you know, I said my prayers. I went back to sleep. And then, around three o’clock, I felt like I was being woken up again. “Wake up! Wake up!” It was—I don’t know. You know, what is that? Was that my angel waking me up? But it was like a—it was reaching down into my dreams and waking me up, with urgency, with a command: “You must wake up. You must wake up now.”

And so I kind of swam up to consciousness, and I thought, “No, no, I already did my prayer time tonight,” and I drifted off again. And then I felt that—you know? In my heart, I felt like this voice was saying, “Wake up! Wake up! You need to get up.” And I did exactly the same thing. I woke up and I thought, “Is there something going on? Is there somebody I’m supposed to pray for?” And I tried to focus on that, and I drifted off to sleep again.

And then my alarm clock went off. It was like three in the morning. I had not set my alarm clock. It went off—just once, too; it went brraap! It didn’t keep making noise, like my alarm clock does until you turn it off. So that… I sat up right away. I sat on the side of the bed. My heart was pounding. I knew something was happening, because that had never happened before. That was clearly an intervention by perhaps my angel being put off with me just drifting off to sleep twice.

So I woke up and I sat on the side of the bed. As I said, it was thump, thump, thump—my heart was going, and I was like: What is it? What is it? What am I supposed to be praying for? What am I supposed to be focusing on?

And then I realized it was September 11. I mean, not September 11, 2001; it was a subsequent September 11. And I thought, “No. Oh no. Do I need to look at the computer or turn on the TV? Has something happened?” And I felt in my spirit, “No, no, no, it’s not that. Just pay attention.” And so I just sat there kind of saying the Jesus prayer and just waiting. And an image developed in my mind that was kind of like an old Polaroid picture, developing, you know. It was a very simple image, and I couldn’t understand what it meant. It was that I saw a wonderful meadow, just a wide, beautiful meadow, surrounded by trees, and it was covered with little flowers, little white and yellow flowers, very close to the ground, just really humble flowers, nothing fancy, and they just covered this entire meadow, these little white and yellow flowers.

And I thought, “Wow, that’s lovely, and it’s so humble and it’s so simple,” but I had no idea what it meant. Gradually, gradually, it began to develop in my mind: a thought, this time, that those little white and yellow flowers were representing the pious faith of simple American Christians, not educated people, not necessarily Orthodox people; it’s more like just the popular Christian faith of our country. And I felt like what I was being told in my heart was that this beautiful, simple love for Jesus Christ, whatever else American Christians get wrong theologically, they get this right. They love Jesus. They just really love Jesus, and that goes a long way with the Father, just loving his Son in this childlike, flower-like way.

I felt like what I was being told in my heart was: This is why God protects America, because of that blanketing faith, that very simple faith, that the wise and the educated may look down on, but it’s such a strong love of Jesus Christ. That’s the reason that God protects America.

So it’s so weird that I had that picture come to me and that… then I went back to sleep, and I didn’t get up again until the morning, and it remained with me, that image. I kept thinking about that and pondering about in my heart, as you say.

It was some time later—a couple of weeks, I guess—I was at church, and I was talking to a member of the church, who is also a spiritual child of Fr. George, who had reposed by this time. I was talking to them, and I said, “I had this weird experience when I was woken up in the night and had to pray, and I just saw these little white and yellow flowers and how much they love Jesus.” And my friend said, “Well, you know that’s what Fr. George said.” And I said, “What?” And he said, “Oh yeah, that’s exactly what Fr. George said. It’s because of that simple faith that covers the whole nation.” So I asked him where I could find this, and he sent me a link, and I was able to read it. Oh! Boy, yeah, I was just kind of amazed. It’s pretty much exactly what I heard in prayer that night.

So maybe Fr. George and I are both wrong. You really have to be very humble and very cautious about something like this. But I think the effect on me is a good one in that it makes me less prideful about being Orthodox. It makes it so clear to me how beautiful it is when simple Christians aren’t embarrassed to talk about Jesus, times when I might be embarrassed. It gives me a lot of respect for that, and a greater enjoyment of it. I just enjoy it when I see that kind of faith; I feel resonance with it.

So that’s what I wanted to talk about today, to tell you that story about what Fr. George said and how, really oddly, it was confirmed by something that—something very unusual that happened to me in prayer one night. God protects America, not just because we Orthodox Christians are so marvelous, but because of the simple faith that just blankets our country. I appreciate them. I appreciate that faith.