By Eugen Oniscu

It was night. I was walking home, a little tired and sad, reflecting on the troubles in my family—my mother had remarried and was going through a very difficult time—on the film I had just seen, on my friends, and on life itself. In truth, my mind could not settle on any one thing. My thoughts wandered in every direction without coming to rest.

Suddenly, all the streetlights and the lights in the surrounding neighbourhood went out, plunging everything into complete darkness. I lifted my head and looked at the stars, at the whole vault of heaven, and something strange happened to me. An immense strength filled my mind and heart. I felt as though it were descending from somewhere above, from beyond that vast expanse of stars. The terrible emptiness I had felt only moments before gave way to peace, and I found myself possessed by a noble and uplifting emotion.

After a while, the lights came back on. As I looked at the houses, I noticed the contrast between the large, comfortable homes with their sturdy fences and the small houses surrounded by broken-down ones. The neighbourhood seemed to present a picture of the struggle for survival, ending for some in failure and for others in triumph.

My thoughts drifted away from that sublime feeling and returned to life’s great battle—the desperate struggle to find work and, above all, to accomplish something. I remembered the words of a friend who believed that a person was justified in doing many terrible things to make money and escape anonymity.

His philosophy of life, which appealed to me at the time, went something like this:

“Who am I? A young man lost in the vast, faceless multitude of people who have achieved nothing that might make them famous. Strangely enough, they are content to remain that way, receiving no applause from the equally anonymous crowd. We must do everything in our power to rise as high as we can in every area of life, crushing whatever stands in our way.”

It would have been difficult to imagine a more destructive way of thinking.

When I reached home, I found my mother sitting on a chair, crying. Ștefan, the man she had married, was sitting in an armchair. Through the cigarette smoke and the heavy smell of brandy, I heard him shouting and saw him waving his arms.

“You’re good for nothing, you miserable woman…”

A torrent of curses and obscenities followed, directed first at my mother and then at me. His voice thundered through the room; in the pauses between his outbursts, I could hear my mother sighing.

He was not a large man. In fact, he was rather thin and of average height, but he was agile and quick in his movements. What struck you most was his face: brown hair threaded with silver, a deeply furrowed brow, and green eyes that gave off a cruel, savage light. I believe the alcohol was responsible for that look. His cheeks were pale, and his mouth was always open as he shouted.

At such moments, there was something grotesque in his expression, as though the ugliness of his character had risen to the surface of his face. He was not an unattractive man, but the inner deformity reflected in his features made him ugly. Drink distorted his face as well as his behaviour.

I felt anger rising inside me—a desire to strike him, to finish him, even to kill him. I told myself that perhaps I would be doing humanity a service by ridding it of such a man.

After delivering a long tirade in the language characteristic of him and the world to which he belonged, he stretched out on the bed and fell asleep. That was one of the better outcomes. Usually, he struck my mother, and when I was younger, he struck me as well. Since I had turned eighteen, however, his physical violence had become much less frequent. He still shouted and waved his arms, but I had begun to notice fear in his eyes.

Anyone reading these words might imagine that this man was some kind of beast or demon. He was not. He was intelligent and highly skilled at his trade, and in public he often behaved impeccably. His weakness was alcohol and the transformation that took place in him whenever he drank.

There were times when one could sit down and talk with him. From what he told me about his past, I came to understand that his terrible faults had been shaped in part by the environment into which he had been born and in which he had spent his life.

Sometimes the struggle against one’s environment resembles the plight of a person trying to climb a staircase while a crowd is coming down. Unless you are firmly determined to keep climbing, the descending multitude may sweep you away and carry you down with it.

After talking with my mother for a while, I left her and went out into the yard. A tall apricot tree stood in front of the house. I looked up at it, then out over the neighbourhood, at the many houses and the apartment blocks visible on the horizon.

Everything was submerged in darkness. It was a cold November night.

I do not know whether it was the cold air against my cheeks, the coldness inside the house, where the sacred warmth of a loving and united family was missing, or simply the anger and coldness within me that made me see so clearly one of life’s cruelest realities: the ruin and disfigurement of lives that might otherwise have been beautiful.

My mother’s life was one of them. It had begun with such promise in her youth, when she enrolled in nursing school. Unfavourable circumstances, however, forced her to abandon her studies. She then spent more than twenty-five years working in a restaurant—or, more precisely, in the food-service trade—and over time, her companions and surroundings gradually shaped her.

I do not mean to suggest that people are incapable of choosing freely or resisting harmful influences. Sometimes, however, the struggle is terribly difficult.

Never before had I felt my whole being so filled with coldness, with a kind of morally poisonous ice. I went back inside, took my coat and set out once more into the night.

There were few people in the streets. As they passed me, I wondered whether each of them carried a night of darkness and ice within them, a night from which they struggled in vain to escape. The light did not come. Deliverance never arrived. Tomorrow would be the same.

I looked up at the sky. Not a single star was visible. Black clouds concealed them all. Then, somewhere high above me, the clouds parted slightly and a small, shining star appeared. Another opening formed, and another star emerged. The miracle repeated itself several times before the clouds closed again and the sky became utterly dark.

I felt terribly alone, wrapped in darkness and cold. Disheartened and inconsolable, I decided to return home, thinking that tomorrow would bring more of the same. Yet somewhere deep inside me, I carried the glimmer of those stars that had shone through the clouds. It was as though they had left something behind in my soul.

But now I remember another night when I was also walking home. I remember clearly what occupied my thoughts. I was carrying a Book—and how well I remember that Book.

Two years had passed. I had been discharged from the army several months earlier. As I walked, I thought about how rich I had become in spirit, and the thought filled me with happiness. I saw people not only as they were, but as they might become through grace. With all the fervour of youth, I believed that if the Gospel had transformed me, it could transform anyone—provided, of course, that they desired it.

I longed to preach the Gospel. I had discovered abundant life in the present and the promise of eternal life to come. That is how it feels to come to know Christ at the age of twenty. The good Lord allows sinful human beings to experience such deep inner joy when they bow before the majesty of the One who was crucified for our sins.

But let me return to that night.

I walked briskly. I was young, strong and full of life. I had trained my body so that one day I could punish Ștefan, but Christ had changed everything—absolutely everything.

When I entered the house, I found the same scene I had witnessed on the earlier night. I approached Ștefan and began to speak to him about the Gospel. As I spoke, I felt waves of warm and loving power, born of grace within me, flowing towards him, touching him and casting light upon his conscience. He began to feel its reproach.

I could see that he was still afraid of me. Perhaps he thought I was merely pretending and that I really intended to beat him. Eventually, however, he understood that what he was witnessing was genuine.

The love of Christ astonished him, yet he could not bring himself to seek deliverance from his own night of ice. He struggled but remained as he was, even though he could see the right path and knew that he ought to follow it.

After everything had grown quiet, I went out for a walk. It was a summer night. I felt the flame of life and youth burning fiercely within me—the fervour of youth joined with the strength and fullness of Christ.

I thought:

“Whatever was evil in my past, He has forgiven and erased. What will the future bring? I do not know. But I am certain of one thing: if I walk with Christ today and live for others, I can discover the true greatness of life. The future does not trouble me, because I have a place in His wonderful providence. With the help of His power, I can pass through life’s great battles, spreading everywhere the fragrance of life that leads to life.”

As I come to the end of these memories, I must add a few words of explanation.

No one should remain in a place where they are subjected to verbal or physical violence. Yet hatred and revenge can never solve the problem of violence. We must always seek to follow the Gospel principle of repaying evil with good. This Christian response does not, however, prevent a believer from seeking the protection of the law when faced with violence.

Most important of all, we must strive towards the highest Christian ideal: loving our enemies.

The events I have described were a prelude to what would follow throughout my life. I have repeatedly been tested in this regard, among religious and nonreligious people alike. The test has always been the same: not to seek revenge, to understand that vengeance belongs to God, and to recognize that my part is to endure, to forgive and to speak the truth in love.

My understanding of life was influenced by people such as Abraham Lincoln, Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. I once read that after Lincoln became president, his friends told him it was time to destroy his enemies. He replied:

“But if I love them and repay their evil with good, will I not have destroyed them by making them my enemies no longer?”

It is not easy always to live up to this demand of the Gospel—I know that from experience—but it is possible if we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus.

“But I tell you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who mistreat you and persecute you.”