ELDER ARSENIOS (Arsenie) Papacioc (1914 – 19th July 2011) was among those arrested in 1958 with Dumitru Staniloae, for resisting the spread of Communism in his native Romania.
He moved from monastery to monastery under the uncertain conditions of the government of the day, and as Abbot of the Slatina Monastery underwent repeated imprisonment and even torture. He is revered as one of the foremost spiritual fathers of the Romanian Orthodox Church.
In first video, he speaks of six kinds of temptation, and ends by telling us how both a cultured society and a true interpretation of Scripture rely on one thing: Harmony. In the second, he speaks of resisting temptations, and the crowns we are granted when we fight them.
He completed his spiritual formation in Moldova, at Sihăstria, Neamţ and Slatina Monasteries. During the difficult times of atheist communism, Rev. Arsenie continued the spiritual work of father Cleopa Ilie from Slatina Monastery, having been a living stone at the Spiritual Academy that operated for a time at the place of worship founded by prince Alexandru Lăpuşeanu of Moldova, together with Hieromonks Paisie Olaru, Antonie Plămădeală, Andrei Scrima, Petroniu Tănase, Daniil Sandu Tudor and others.
He lived for a time in the solitude of the Neamţ Mountains, accompanying Archimandrite Cleopa Ilie during the hard years of persecution of Romanian monasticism.
Father Arsenie suffered a hard life, and the trials of the communist prisons where he was humiliated and beaten for his faith in God. While suffering for his religious convictions, he turned his prison into a window to heaven, because faith and love cannot be ever imprisoned inside any walls. After his release from prison, Father Arsenie served as missionary priest in Transylvania and within the Archdiocese of Bucharest, at Cheia, Cernica and Căldăruşani, and from 1976 on at the Saint Mary Stravropegic Monastery Techirghiol.
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