Monday, June 7, 2010
1:10 AM
'Chodźcie z nami!' It was the same cry that the valiant members of Poland's Solidarity movement would send out to their countrymen that, fearing Communist retaliation, would stand on the sidelines of the freedom marches. Now it rose up from a triumphant procession bearing one of their champion's relics. 'Come with us!' they cried. One could imagine Father Jerzy's voice still amongst them.
'Shall we join them?' Dorota suggested, standing beside me on the bridge in Wilanów. She, her husband, my friend Michał, and I had skipped nine of the fourteen kilometres of the march from Plac Piłsudskiego to the Basilica of God's Providence by taking the metro. Andrzej, being a photographer, wished to capture the crowd as it approached beneath the bridge (alas, I lost all of my photos due to an act of complete absent-mindedness). Dorota was twelve weeks pregnant, while I was wearing shoes appropriate for Mass, but not for trekking (we had not even known about the procession). Michał had braved the blazing sun for a better view of the Mass and was a little spent (more than a little pink) from those hours standing in the open. We did not feel too guilty for the shortcut and quite happily accepted the invitation to rejoin the procession.
Watching the crowd pass by--hundreds of thousands, a sea of humanity--I recognized many groups I had seen during Mass. Even in the square, I had not had a proper grasp of their numbers, though the three thousand priests serving the faithful had been administering Holy Communion long after the Mass's dismissal and some time after the bishops had left with Blessed Jerzy Popiełuszko's (Yer-zeh Pop-ee-eh-wushko) relics. I wondered then how we would even find our way to a ciborium, until I looked up and saw the tall, circular signs, painted with the chalice and the Host, the grapes and the wheat. They resembled Hosts themselves--hovering over the heads of the people, and so we found our way the the side of a priest and dropped to our knees on the pavement to receive Our Lord.
I hadn't minded waiting. The longer one has before receiving the Host, the more time one has to prepare himself. Of course, I am never ready to receive the most wondrous Mystery in Creation Immemorial, but Blessed Jerzy had helped me to prepare myself at his own Mass, the Mass celebrating his elevation to the altar and to the ranks of the holy martyrs of the Church's veneration.
One does not have the Beatific Vision on this Earth. We are also not yet fit for it, though we do hunger to behold Sum Qui Sum forever. To make ourselves fit, we have to learn to enjoy gazing on Him here and now, but how can we do that if we do not deign to look into the mirrors His glory here on Earth?
Suppose I had seen a beautiful woman and wished to describe her to someone. Would I give them an impression of her loveliness by articulating her features directly? No, I would say, 'She looked like Olivia Hussey.' If I wanted to describe a man's regality of manner? 'He was even more polished than Paul Henreid.' A remarkable beer? 'Do you remember that Trappist ale we had at the Flying Saucer in Nashville? Well, this one was even better!'
Yesterday, I felt goosebumps all up and down my limbs as the Creed concluded and the Liturgy of the Eucharist began. I had read the Scriptures for the Mass via the Internet--all of them about widows losing sons, so poignant for anyone beholding the face of Bl. Jerzy's mother. I had caught only a few words here and there of the homily, and I knew the Liturgy of the Saints said at the beginning of Mass well enough, but the words of Transubstantiation were carved on my heart. In spite of that, the miraculous moment usually still caught me off guard. Today, however, I had a special assistant.
As I imagined Christ at the Last Supper, I tried to also picture His arrest and torture. Suddenly, I could see the face of Bl. Jerzy now, his poor flesh being subjected to the most animalistic of beatings, to abuses that would take his life. His agony, so clear and present to me, knitted me closer to that of Our Lord's. His bloodied, blackened visage was one with the Face of the Shroud.
...whereof I Paul am made a minister. Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for His Body, which is the Church. (Colossians I:23-24)
Christ's Divine Passion is complete, but the Body of Christ, composed of so many fallible, imperfect members, still has much to accomplish. One sees it too clearly on this Earth through which 'Russia has spread her errors.' The poison of secularism, anti-familial sentiment, anti-patriotism, and anti-Christ ideology have contaminated every First World nation at least on this planet.
Even members of the only, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church shrug their shoulders at the reign of secularism and sneer at the social kingship of Jesus Christ. As St. Paul said, we have much to strive for.
Work, especially hard work, shapes love and social justice. It happens only when work is ruled by the proper moral order. If there is no moral order at work, in place of justice creeps hurt, and in place of love - hate. That is why those who in recent decades have destroyed and are still destroying the moral order do such harm to the working people and the whole society. When they want to replace Christian morality, rooted in a thousand years of tradition, against the will of all with so-called secular morality, in a Christian country there will always be a purulent wound. (Blessed Jerzy Popiełuszko, Homily of 4 December, 1983)
Poland is still bleeding from this wound, and the other nations of the world do not even know how injured they are. The Faithful who do see the errors of Mammon and Moloch do not find in themselves either the courage to flout conventions or the vision to see the Natural Law beyond the present customs of man.
We swallow modernist 'history' and bend to the 'official' interpretation. We stand in awe of empirical science, as if it were even sure of its own principles, and concede its right to pronounce moral dictums on us. We cringe in the shadows of sacred cows and say 'aye' to Leftists for fear of being branded 'sexist' (for saying men and women are different), 'racist' (for saying that people of all races are capable of providing for themselves), or 'homophobic' (no 'fear' actually being required, you need only think the reproductive organs are primarily for reproduction). We may not love this world, but we also do not seek to change it.
Blessed Jerzy died a victim of Communism and all the secular evils it had propogated. The hubris of this system's fathers has brought its gavel of judgement crashing down again and again, but never on the greedy heads whom it claims to despise, but those of the innocents it promised to liberate. Poland and many other nations of the world have suffered as the modernist judge's sound block for nearly a century, and in 1984, Father Jerzy's pummelled body provided us with a vivid, unquestionable image of his nation's travail.
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About Me
- Jacobitess
- Warsaw, Poland
- Domine, spero quia mundum vicisti. Lord, I trust that Thou hast overcome the world. Panie, ufam, żeś pokonał świat.
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