EASTER DAWN

 

EASTER BLESSINGS

DAWN  LOOKING EAST ACROSS MONASTERY PASTURES

PHOTO BY OUR NEIGHBOR NED GRIFFIN

ONLY RESTING!

 

So they took His body down
The Man who said He was the Resurrection and the Life
Was lifeless on the ground now
The sky was red His blood, along the blade of night

And as the Sabbath fell, they shrouded Him in linen
They dressed Him like a wound
The rich man and the women, they laid Him in the tomb

Six days shall you labor, the seventh is the Lord’s
In six He made the earth, and all the heavens
But He rested on the the seventh, God rested
He said that it was finished and the seventh day
He blessed it, God rested

So they laid their hopes away
They buried all their dreams
About the Kingdom He proclaimed
And they sealed them in the grave
As a holy silence fell on all Jerusalem

And the Pharisees were restless, Pilate had no peace
Peter’s heart was reckless, Mary couldn’t sleep
But God rested

Six days shall you labor, the seventh is the Lord’s
In six Hhe made the earth, and all the heavens,
But He rested on the the seventh, God rested
He worked till it was finished
And the seventh day He blessed it
He said that it was good, and the seventh day
He blessed it, God rested

The sun went down, the Sabbath faded
The holy day was done, and all Creation waited.

              Song by Andrew Peterson.

GOOD FRIDAY

 

GEZA GYORKE  artist was born in 1991 in Uzhhorod, Ukraine. At the age of five he entered the Uzhhorod Children's Art School. His teacher was a famous artist Emma Levadska. He also studied at A. Hromovy's studio. In 1997, for the first time he took part in the fine arts competition in memory of Zoltan Bakonyi and became one of three winners. Later he was a multiple winner of the national and international children competitions and festivals. Since 2001, he has been a member of the children and youth art association ‘Minor Louvre’.

 In 2014, he graduated from the Lviv National Academy of Arts (teachers in specialty were I. Shuisky, Ya. Shymyn, O. Maksymenko, L. Medved, M. Andrushchenko) and stayed here to continue his postgraduate studies and work as a teacher at the Monumental Painting Department.

 At the age of 9 he held his first personal exhibition (together with H. Lazarashvili) in Uzhhorod. Two years later he had the next exhibition ‘Silhouettes of Acoustics’ (2002) with participation of the sculptor V. Roman and the artist F. Semaniv. In 2004 and 2006, the following personal exhibitions in Uzhhorod took place.

 Since then, he has been a permanent participant of all-Ukrainian and international art exhibitions and Plein Airs (Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Uzhhorod, Kyiv (Ukraine).The artist's canvases are kept in collections of the Museum of Modern Ukrainian Art (Kyiv), Transcarpathian Regional Art Museum named after Joseph Bokshay, as well as in private collections in Ukraine and abroad.

EXAMPLE OF LOVE

 

After Jesus had washed their feet, He put his outer garment back on and returned to the table. “Do you understand what I have just done to you?” He asked. “I, your Lord and Teacher, have just washed your feet. You, then, should wash one another’s feet. I have set an example for you, so that you will do just what I have done for you.”

Art by one of my favorite artists: Sadao Watanabe (d. 1996)  Japan

THE "UNRULY" MARTYR

 

BL. KAROL HERMAN STEPIEN was born in 1910 in Lódz, Poland to Józef and Marianna Puch, poor working class farmers. Karol as a child was considered extremely intelligent but an unruly child.

He early felt a call to the priesthood, and at age 13 began studying at the Franciscan seminary in Lviv (in modern Ukraine). He joined the Franciscan Friars Minor Conventual in 1928 at Lodz-Lagiewniki, taking the name Herman and making his solemn profession in 1932.

His superiors did not see a monastic future for him. He was having educational problems and was advised to leave the order. However, Karol was stubborn and persevered.

Brother Herman continued his studies at the Pontifical University of Saint Bonaventure in Rome, Italy, and was ordained a priest in Rome in 1936. Father Herman continued his studies at the Jan Kazimierz University in Lvov, earning a Master's degree in Theology. He served as priest in Franciscan Shrine of Our Lady of Sorrows in Radomsko, Poland, then the church and Franciscan monastery of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Vilnius, Lithuania.

 In 1940 he was assigned to Piaršai (modern Belarus), assisting Blessed Józef Puchala (one of the 108 martyrs of WWII). The two worked to care first for the people who were being transported to Siberian work camps by the Russians, and then to concentration camps by Germans. 

When the Nazis invaded in 1943, Stepien decided to stay with his people. He declared: "Pastors cannot leave the believers!".

On July 19, 1943, the Nazis took Fathers Stępień, Puchala and their parishioners to a barn in Borowikowszczyzna (Belarus). Both priests were shot in the head. The barn was then set on fire.

The remains were later retrieved by local Catholics and buried in the parish church in Pierszaje, Poland. 

He was beatified June 13 1999 by Pope ST. Johnn Paul II with the other 107 martyrs of WWII.

His feast is July 18.

BOY SCOUT MARTYR

 

 

BL. STEFAN WINCENTY FRELICHOWSKI was born in 1913 in Chełmża Poland, the third of seven children to the baker Ludwik Frelichowski and Marta Olszewska. 

In 1923 he began his high school studies at Pelpin where in 1927 he was admitted into the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin. He joined the scouts the same year, later serving as the troop leader. After he graduated from high school he began studies to become a priest, remaining active in the scouts.

 During his education for the priesthood in Pelpin he was active in the temperance movement and collaborated with Caritas.

 He was ordained in 1937 in the Pelpin Cathedral from Bishop Stanisław Wojciech Okoniewski. He first served the bishop as an aide and then served as a priest in Pelpin and in Toruń before continuing his studies at the Lwów college.

 In Toruń he was responsible for the parish press and vicar of the Assumption parish church. In 1938 he became the leader of the Old Scouts and the chaplain of the scout district of Pomerania. He was known for his devotion to the Sacred Heart.   

 The Gestapo arrested him on 11 September 1939 along with all parish priests in his area. Most of them were released on 12 September, but he was one of those kept back in jail.  Most prabably because of his influence on youth.

On 18 October 1939 and he was imprisoned in the Fort VII camp on a temporary basis before being sent on 8 January 1940 with around 200 prisoners to another camp. On 10 January 1940 he was sent to the concentration camp at Stutthof and then later on 6 April to Grenzdorf and Sachsenhausen before being sent to Dachau as his final destination on 13 December 1940.

Bl. Stefan contracted typhus while tending to prisoners who had the disease and he also contracted pneumonia. He died on 23 February 1945 and his remains were lined in a white sheet decorated with flowers before he was cremated. But before that the prisoner Stanisław Bieniek made a death mask and a cast of the late priest's right hand.

He was beatified in 1999 in Torun, Poland by Pope St. John Paul.  His feast is February 23. He is the patron of Polish scouts.

SECRET ORDINATION

 

Many Catholic priests and seminarians were imprisoned in the Nazi prison camps, and many died of the intentionally harsh treatment they received. One of these was BLESSED KARL LEISNER, born in 1915 in Rees on the Lower Rhine. As a youth he was active in the Christian youth movement. After he finished his education, Bishop August Graf von Galen (beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2005) assigned him responsibility for the care of young Catholics in the diocese of Münster.

In 1934, he entered the seminary in Munich. An apostolic young seminarian, he tried to organize the Catholic students into groups for discussion and recreation. He would take teenagers on "camping" hikes to Belgium and Holland so that they could talk freely about the contrast between what Hitler was teaching and what the Church teaches. However, when the Nazis began to demand complete control over all German youth, Karl's efforts became less effectual.

The government  made Bl. Karl serve for six months in agricultural work service. Despite the Nazi ban on religious activities among his fellow farmers, he arranged ways for them to attend Sunday Mass. On discovering this, the Gestapo declared him a dangerous person. Searching his home, they made off with all his diaries and papers, and most of his books. Fortunately, they preserved all these documents, thus preserving data for a history of this young man's heroic life.

Shortly after his ordination, during a medical examination, the doctor told the new deacon that he had contracted tuberculosis. In those days, the sole treatment available for the disease was good food and fresh air. These were to be found at a sanatorium in St. Blasien in the Black Forest, where he was sent and began to recover. It was during his recovery that a fellow patient heard him criticize Hitler. That very day, the Gestapo arrested him as a political prisoner.  

Having then recovered partially, he was put into jail. Then he was sent to the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen, and later transferred to Dachau. His tuberculosis worsening, he was lodged in the infamous Dachau infirmary, where the patients were often selected for medical experiments. Only the help of fellow prisoners prevented Karl from being included in the “invalids’ transport” to Hartheim extermination clinic.

In mid-December 1944, Karl fulfilled his long-held desire when he was secretly ordained as a priest by the Bishop of Clermont-Ferrand, Gabriel Piguet, who was also a prisoner in Dachau concentration camp, himself having been arrested for aiding Jewish children. (He was later declared Righteous Among the Nations for his charity). The ordination, carefully prepared by Catholic and Protestant clergymen, was a moving event.

The new priest was so ill afterwards, that he had to postpone his first Mass for a week. After that first Mass he never got to celebrate another. When the Allies liberated Dachau in April 1945, he was sent to a sanitarium, but he died a few weeks later of the rigors of disease and jail.

 When Pope St. John Paul II declared him a martyr, it was at a Mass celebrated in the vast stadium that Hitler had constructed for the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. In this arena, used so often for Nazi mega-spectacles, St. John Paul denounced the racism and the "absolute cruelty" that Nazism had so often demonstrated under the shadow of the swastika.  Bl. Karl's feast is August 12.

Statue: Kleve, N. Rhine-Westphalia, Germany