A Theatre Curtain for a Door

‘I go to him as to a filling station of happiness.’ So said a Greek stranger in the Greek church in Utrecht, handing over a telephone number. That sentence gave a small book its title, a book about a simple mystery: that in a prosperous and busy country there are people who pray, and that God lets them be found by those who look for them.

A righteous man in this land

In 2022 Maria Vazheva left Ukraine with her family and found herself in the Netherlands. The country was prosperous and beautiful, and yet something was missing: prayer. Then she did what believers in a strange land have always done. She asked God to show her someone who prayed in this land, for no land is ever without a righteous man.

It is an old thought. Abraham knew how much depends on the righteous when he pleaded for Sodom and the Lord promised to spare the city for the sake of ten of them. There is an old saying that the world is kept in being by prayer. Whoever arrives in a strange country looks for a home, for work, for a school for the children. Maria Vazheva was looking for something else as well, and she was given a telephone number.

The stage and the cell

The answer was a meeting with Jozef van den Berg. Many in the Netherlands still remember the name. He was a celebrated actor and puppeteer, and at the height of his fame he left the stage, because Christ had touched him in his dressing room. For thirty-three years after that he lived as a hermit in a hut: a theatre curtain for a door, sheepskins for a bed, prayer for a stage.

A theatre curtain opens for the audience and closes after the applause. Here it hung before a cell with no audience, seen only by the Father, who sees in secret. On the Holy Mountain hermits still live like this, in a kalyva, a small hermit’s dwelling, with little more than an icon, a lamp and a prayer rope. That such a life was possible in the Netherlands too, in our own time, surprises those who do not know the Church. Those who do know her are less surprised.

Abba, give me a word

People came to Jozef van den Berg from all over Europe and went away comforted. That too is old. In Egypt people went out to the desert fathers with one request: ‘Abba, give me a word.’ Sometimes they took home a sentence they kept for the rest of their lives, sometimes a silence. It is told that three brothers used to visit St Antony every year. Two of them spoke with him about their thoughts and the salvation of their souls; the third never said anything. After a long time Antony said to him: ‘You often come here to see me, but you never ask me anything.’ He replied: ‘It is enough for me to see you, father.’

In Russia St Seraphim of Sarov lived alone for years in a hut in the forest. Later he received thousands of visitors, and he greeted each of them with ‘My joy, Christ is risen.’ His is the saying: ‘Acquire the spirit of peace, and thousands around you will be saved.’ Whoever lives at peace with God becomes a place where others can catch their breath. Such names are not mentioned in order to compare; they only show that this is an old way.

For the comfort people find with such a person does not come from him. In the morning prayers the Holy Spirit is called the Comforter: ‘O Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of truth.’ A hermit comforts no one of himself. He prays, and it is the Comforter who comforts. What someone is before God, God alone knows. But that people went home comforted, anyone could see.

A filling station

The Greek in Utrecht said it in the language of our time, and he said it well. A filling station is not a place to live. One arrives empty, one is filled, and one drives on: home, to work, to the people who are waiting. That is what men and women of prayer have always been for those who live in the world. One need not stay with them. One only has to stop now and then.

Not a biography

A Filling Station of Happiness is not a biography, nor does it set out to be the life of a saint. Maria Vazheva, who teaches theology and works in international business, writes of what she herself experienced: of meetings, of conversations and of the quiet of his garden. She knew Jozef van den Berg personally, and she writes about him without making him larger than he was.

Jozef van den Berg reposed in the Lord on 13 October 2023. He is buried on a mountain in Sochos, in Greece. The book can be read in an evening. Afterwards one knows something one perhaps knew already and had forgotten: that such a life is not far away, not in a desert or on a holy mountain, but a telephone number away.

About the book

A Filling Station of Happiness: My Meetings with Jozef van den Berg by Maria Vazheva is a small book of seventy-four pages, printed in colour. It is also published in Dutch, as Geluk tanken.