The month of November starts with the celebration of All Saints’ Day. Although nature is getting ready for winter sleep and we tend to think more about the passing of time, our God invites us to focus not on death but on life. He calls us to holiness. God says, “Be holy!” We encourage you to compete in a good competition – strive for holiness today! We have already started doing so.
We celebrated All Saints’ Day in a totally different way than we did in Poland. Here it is a regular day and native people go to work. Our Orthodox brothers in faith will go to a cemetery after Easter. For us it was a feast. After morning Eucharist we went out with our “Babuszka”, Wanda Janowska, to visit her son’s grave. During our prayer the crows came. This is nothing unusual here because, as Mickiewicz wrote in his poetic drama “Dziady”, people bring food to the cemetery including alcohol. This way the crows always have a banquet. When the crows saw us they thought that we brought them something to eat. As you can imagine, they were disappointed.
On the Memorial of All Souls Day we divided into two groups. Fr. John and Sr. Donata went to a cemetery in Елизеве and to a new cemetery in Pietropawlowsk. Fr. Christopher and Sr. Jana went to a cemetery in Сосновке and to an old cemetery in our city. God gave us beautiful weather and although there was a lot of snow, it was not windy. We celebrated the Eucharist at the site of some Catholic graves, namely Anatoli’s grandmother, Jelena’s parents, Oksana’s husband and, Karina’s grandmother. We were happy that after so many years it was possible to profess our faith and to pray at the tombs. The presence of God is slowly appearing here and the soil is blessed with prayers. May they rest in peace!
Our lives are finished with death but when death comes there is the beginning of something new…
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