Having overcome the initial awe, imagining the states of ecstasy described by Nicolae Steinhardt when he was imprisoned is quite instructive. After we stop questioning the plausibility of the accounts, or rather, after we accept them, we realize that it is precisely in the most extreme deprivation, in the most acute suffering, that supreme relief can be found. When life is reduced to its rudiments, we see clearly what is most important, we see how much of this life is superfluous, what justifies it and what must be preserved. But the grace, above all, is to see that the most extreme and suffocating misery is neither absolute nor the last word.