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School as Submission

Succeeding in School Can Be a Holy Order

Victoria Vioara

She never skips classes and she always completes her assignments. She is No. 7 on the school’s matriculation list. Andreea Zarafu, 26, obeys authority, but she is no snob or teacher’s pet. She’s a nun.

Andreea Zarafu in class

Journalism is her assignment, imposed by Bishop Ioan of Covasna and Harghita. “Everybody in the abbey has to do certain activities,” she said. “We call that submission. My submission is to study,” she said. So she does her best. Higher authority is watching, after all.

Zarafu took a roundabout way to the classroom. She originally began studies at the University of Bucharest School of Journalism and Mass Communication in 1999. She did well in her first year before going with friends to a monastery in Bistrita for a summer holiday camp. When the retreat was over, she decided to stay a while longer. “I was delighted with the silence at the monastery,” she said. “I spent my childhood in Bucharest, a big, crowded city, and was happy to find a place with a restful atmosphere.”
Then she decided to go to another secluded abbey.

“Within three days, I became a nun there,” she said. “At first it was hard for me to decide whether I should take the veil or not. The abbess brought a nun’s habit and suggested I try it on to see if it suited me. “After I put it on, I was just afraid to take it off,” she said. “I felt that is God was willing me to wear it forever.”

Leaving school

Taking holy orders in the summer of 2000 meant Zarafu had to leave school. The abbess persuaded her that there was no need to graduate, and that her duty was to serve God. A month later, Zarafu wrote to her mother and told her about the decision. Her mother and grandfather came immediately, intending to take her home.

They said they had nothing against the young woman’s choice, but they wanted her to finish college first.
“My parents couldn’t persuade me to come back to Bucharest. Later my mom got used to the situation and started to visit me, and even spent some of her holidays at the abbey,” Zarafu said. She started to participate at daily masses, to paint icons, to cook bread and do embroidery. Along with her new sisters, she carried stones from the forest to build a new sanctuary. The wooden one was too old and small. Zarafu said she loved her work at the abbey, but dreams of college persisted.

Back to class

“I don’t like to leave things unfinished,” she said. At the beginning of this school year, after five years of religious practice, the bishop gave her permission to resume studies. It was an offer she couldn’t refuse.
“I was very happy to come back to school, but I worried what my classmates’ reaction would be when they saw me,” she said. “A nun in their class! “But they were very friendly to me. I was pleasantly surprised that my old professors remembered me,” she said.

Her goal is to become a good journalist and to write for the patriarchate magazine. “At school I have the opportunity to study, to see things from different perspectives,” she said. “At the abbey, I learned to keep control every moment over my every thought and word.” Life in an abbey is a continuous exercise of making demands on yourself while tolerating others, she said. In a way, it’s not so different from life in a university.

Ultimul număr tipărit (mai 2007, format PDF):