A few days after her 77th birthday, Schema-nun Siluana Vlad reposed in the Lord on 8 June 2021. Shortly before her death, she left a message to her spiritual children: “My dear children, I ask you to call upon the name of the Lord, and know that if I pass into eternal life, I will take all of you with me in my prayers.”
Mother Siluana was a philosophy professor at the University of Galați before embracing monastic life. She first entered Buciumeni Monastery in Galați County as a novice and was later tonsured a nun at Christiana Monastery in Bucharest at the age of 49.
At Christiana Monastery, she became known for her charitable and social work, especially among children and young people.
With the blessing of Metropolitan Teofan, then Metropolitan of Oltenia, she founded the “Holy Archangels Michael and Gabriel” Training and Counselling Centre, which has operated in Iași since 2008.
“Know Yourself and You Will Find Him”
Deeply devoted to the spiritual life and concerned for the emotional well-being of those who sought her guidance, Mother Siluana always offered words of encouragement to people burdened by life’s struggles. She urged them to know themselves, believing that through self-knowledge they would come to know God.
“Be yourself, be as you are! Only by being who you are can you become who God calls you to be. If you try to build yourself according to a model foreign to the one planted in you by God from conception—His image in the depths of your being—you will lose your way and suffer greatly. Our task is to receive Him and make room for Him within us.”
Mother Siluana also taught young people that prayer brings about a new birth from above.
“We no longer live according to our own minds, nor according to bio-psycho-social impulses and laws, but with, in and through God. Then our bio-psycho-social life is sanctified and spiritualised.”
Among the many topics she addressed in conferences and lectures were relationships in youth, the stages of love, the family in contemporary society, the roots of modern depression, self-knowledge, spiritual life and many other themes.
Several books by Mother Siluana were published in English by St George Press.
Photo: Doxologia.ro / Fr. Silviu Cluci
