New Confessor Julian: Preaching through Presence († Sep 30 1996)

“I pray in the evening, I fall asleep praying, and my heart continues to pray within me!”

Excerpt from a testimony titled “A Priest of Fire”

It is difficult to write about an elder like Father Julian, who is very silent, very careful and sober with his words. Elder Cleopa once spoke about preaching through presence. Father Julian’s very presence speaks for itself. Father Julian bears a halo of spiritual power around him that moves you, uplifts you. His gaze is not significant, but loaded with sentiment and understanding: there is mercy, compassion, sternness, wonder, and encouragement in it, and especially an infinite love. He lives each moment with extreme watchfulness. He utters each word of the services and any dialogue with such emotion and participation, such that it seems he is saying it for the first and last time. When he speaks about God or his parents, he often chokes back tears. True masculinity, in Orthodoxy, doesn’t mean holding back tears, but is the gift of tears. 

Father Julian is especially a priest of prayer. Whoever knocks on the door of the parish house always finds him with an Akathist and a large stack of commemoration lists in front of him. If you have a difficulty, a trial, you go to Father Julian or call him, and he calms you down; you know that you are no longer alone in your battle, you know that a man with boldness before God puts in a good word for you. Each step, each gesture, each breath of Father’s is a prayer. 

“I pray in the evening, I fall asleep praying, and my heart continues to pray within me!” 

Source:

Un Preot de Foc: Parintele Iulian, ed. Costion Niculescu (Editura Bizanitna: Bucuresti, 2000).