This issue of The Orthodox Word features the biography of a Christian hero who suffered in the prisons of Romania during that country’s more than forty years of Communist enslavement. Fr. Ilarion Felea, a married priest with two children, was a noted pastor, scholar, theologian, and author, whose works are highly valued and studied to the present day. In the words of the great Romanian theologian Fr. Dumitru Staniloe, “Fr. Ilarion has surpassed me.… I translated the Philokalia, but he actually lived it.” For his uncompromising stand for Christ he was arrested three times. During his final imprisonment in the notorious Aiud prison, he became the primary father confessor and spiritual counselor of the prisoners. His martyric death followed in 1961.

This issue also includes two chapters on the reception of Holy Communion from Fr. Ilarion’s book, An Interpretation of the Holy Liturgy, translated by Diana Suvak, the author of his biography.