Our parish, St. Hedwig Catholic Church, just celebrated its 100th
anniversary last Sunday. It was a
big to-do. The bishop came for
mass, there were 10 priests, 30 altar servers, incense, bows and bells, special
crowns for the Icon of Our Lady of Czestohowa and several photographers weaving
their way in and out of the crowd of people. Some came in costumes originating from the “old country”
which were bursting with beautiful bright embroidery and old polish customs.
The bells were rung 100 times.
There were 100 candles, lit by parishioners, assembled round the
baptismal font – one for each year that brought new members into God’s family
by baptism.
And it hit me pretty hard.
We’re not our own little islands, you know. We’re so often tempted, in this ‘isolationist’ age, to think
that we stand alone within ourselves – that we came to be without anyone’s help
and will continue to be without anyone’s help. We’re constantly tempted to think that we are who we are not
because of who came before us, but because the world began with us. With me. And that when I die, the whole world will end.

“…very seldom do we think
about the mystery of all the years and all the people and all the gathered
memories, both of individuals and races, which have made us individually what
we are. Our life has been given to
us from generation to generation, existing in each age in the keeping of other
human beings, tended in the Creator’s hands, a little flame carried through
darkness and storm, burning palely in brilliant sunlight, shining out like a
star in darkness, life in the brave keeping of love given from age to age in a
kiss.”

There’s a film out recently called Monuments Men which is based on a
true story of a group of soldiers, men and women, who fought during World War
II to reclaim the art that had been stolen by Hitler and the Nazi’s, much of
which Hitler had planned to destroy. The film briefly tells the story of one soldier who
(spoiler alert) gives his life attempting to save one particular sculpture of
the Madonna and Child because it meant so much to him. At the end of the movie, another
soldier is briefing some ‘higher-ups’ on the successes and failures of the
mission and they ask him, “do you think that 30 years from now anyone will look
at that [sculpture] and remember the man who died for it?” The scene cuts out to that same (now elderly)
reporting soldier walking his grandchild past the Madonna and Child, and he
answers, “Yes. I do.”
I will remember too.
Seventy years ago, on June 6th, thousands of Canadian troops captured both
Normandy and Juno Beaches thus leading the allied advance in some defining
moments of World War II. So many people
fought and died so that we may live as we wish, and it is just a further
reminder to me that everything we have, whether it be the art or architecture
around us, the culture in which we’re absorbed, or, most importantly, the Faith
of our Fathers, is a gift from God which comes to us through the generations of
life that have come before us. We
are truly and richly blessed. We’d
do well to remember that, and think about what our own legacy will be when we
leave this earth.
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