Valeriu prayed intensely; he would weep with his face to the ground asking for mercy, forgiveness, help, and divine consolation; he would sing prayers and psalms. Following searches, he would pour out tears, repentance, and deep love on those around. He reached the experience of union with God through prayer. In a letter addressed to his family while he was in prison, Valeriu Gafencu writes movingly:
I battle with my sins, and the deeper I go within myself, I find new ones. With the help of the Lord, I overcome them. I tell you honestly, I am happy, I understand and forgive everything; anyone who hits me personally, I forgive. The Mother of God fulfills my prayers. I lie prostrate before Her icon, on my knees, imploring mercy, help, and love for myself and for all–parents, relatives, friends, those who help me, those who hate me.
All those around Valeriu thought that God gives you a [specific kind of] suffering in order to deliver you from another. Prison protected him from a life without Christ, irremediably drained by commodity and apparent abundance. The spiritual level reached by these tortured and isolated souls can only be understood by those who have lived through similar experiences. In the eyes of the torturers, unimaginable humiliation, torture, cold, hunger, and illness were part of the rehabilitation process. The prisoners, being tortured, had to sign what was demanded of them and declare that they dissociate from what they had been until then….
Valeriu always had a Christian conscience, maintaining that only God enacts justice, while the believer forgives, with the conviction that love is the only attitude that cannot be toppled. Through prayer, he attained peace, gentleness, reconciliation, and forgiveness. He comforted souls and oriented many prisoners to the spiritual life. His illness and physical suffering were terrible, his death in the prison was slow and advanced by relentless tortures.
The suffering of the saints is real and Valeriu was made worthy of it at the end of his life. Although he died constantly, he rose without ceasing, always in the spirit. Death had died in Valeriu, wrote Father Moses.
From: Sfintii Inchisorilor: Stalpi ai Ortodoxiei si Neamului Romanesc (Meteor Press: 2014), pp. 98-99.