To be with you

During my endless wanderings through the corridors of the Butyrka Prison in Moscow, I suddenly met Father Valentin Sventitsky. Rather foolishly I asked him, “Where are you going?” His face lit up with a kind of inner warmth as he answered, “To be with you!” He was always such a reserved man, severe, exclusive, but that day I felt a ray of kindly, all-seeing saintliness shining at me. He approached my soul, which was in need of his help. He was like a “staréts” [an elder]. This is what prison life can make you see

— Sergei Fudel, Light in the Darkness, p. 108