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.
Yet even shallow glimpses at history remind us that this is simply
untrue. Sure OUR world began when
we were born, but THE world didn’t, and it (likely) won’t end when we die. Whatever and whoever we are has been
brought up and out from the ages upon ages that have come before us. We might have blue eyes because someone
in our ancestry had blue eyes. Or
we may have the Irish ‘temper’ or the inability to do a tongue-roll, not
because we decided at age 3 it would be so, but rather because they came to us at
conception - because there were people before us who possessed these traits,
and people before them, and people before them - and God orchestrating the
whole thing. Caryl Houselander put
it beautifully in her book Reed of God when she said,
“…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.”
And it’s not just our physical traits. Our spiritual
life and faith has been passed on to us from ages and generations as well. The good bishop during his homily
wondered about what life must have been like for those early Catholics one
hundred years ago. What was it
within the people that made them not only ask for, but also build this church
of St. Hedwig’s and keep it alive?
It was the desire for the Lord God burning within them, he said, and our
Heavenly Father’s burning desire for them as well. It was also the
Lord God’s desire for us, right now, a whole century later, and for everyone in
between. There is no time in heaven. The Holy Trinity sees all things in one
eternal now and so God thirsts eternally for all people of all time. The actions of that handful of rough
settlers one hundred years ago, and of the subsequent generations that have
come and gone, has paved the way for those within this parish (ie. Me) to receive
Jesus in the holy sacraments - in confession, communion, confirmation and
matrimony, in this place right now, in 2014. Their faith has, figuratively and literally, become our
faith. It’s staggering to
contemplate. 
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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