Here's another Voice of the Martyrs email I found very encouraging! What a beautiful testimony for Christ, to write love poems to Him in prison, while enduring unimaginable sufferings. May God give us the strength to be faithful to the end like this faithful brother, and to overcome our trials in a way which transforms the soul into a perpetual feast of love for our great God and Savior.
Dumitru Bacu was a Christian prisoner during the 1950s and 1960s. Like so many others, his crime was simply being a Christian. Dumitru used his twenty years in prison to compose poetry of love to God. The poems were carefully written in small bars of soap or tapped through the walls in Morse code so that others could learn and pass them from cell to cell.
“The pains which weakened our bodies were not able to master our hearts,” Bacu said after his release. “Instead of hate, we cultivated love, understanding, and wisdom.” Here is one of his poems, composed in solitary confinement in a cell infested with rats, bedbugs, and lice: Jesus appeared in my cell last night; He was tall; he was sad, but oh he was light. The moonbeams I treasured grew suddenly dim As, startled and happy, I looked upon him. He came and he stood by the mat where I tossed And silently showed what his sufferings cost. The scars were all there, in his hands and his feet, And a wound in his side where his heart did beat. He smiled, and was gone. And I fell on the stone And cried out, “Dear Jesus, don’t leave me alone.” Clutching the bars, I was pierced through the palms: Blessed gift, blessed scars.
