Fr. Arsenie Papacioc talks about humility as a precondition of salvation. He suffered while imprisoned for his Christian faith under the atheist (communist) regime in Romania. He is arrested in 1958 and sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment for “having plotted against the social order”. Thus, he passes through the prisons of Braşov, Aiud and Jilava and he is released in 1964.
Fr. Arsenie:
He asked me if I will be saved.
I answered immediately: “No, Father! It is easy to say I will be saved… but I will not be easily saved.”
Why? The condition for me to be saved is that the grace of God comes… And grace comes only if someone is humble… Am I humble?
Can I say that I am a humble person? Because one never knows that he or she is humble… if you see yourself humble than you are not… To stay always in your place… to never give up…
It is possible, it is possible… if we are in this continuous feeling of God’s presence…
Of course, Canon 113 of the Council of Carthage (A.D. 419) says: “the one who says that he can even without grace to fulfill the divine commandments, let him be anathema”.
You see, this is the first thing we have to do: to always be in a continuous relationship with God…