11/07/2012

+ TO LOVE IS TO GIVE


Actually, there are not two but three Felician Sisters in Kamchatka, from the very beginning!  You already know us, and who is the third one?  The answer is very simple - our Foundress Blessed Mary Angela.  Going to Kamchatka, we took her relics with us and thus, without a passport and visa she is with us.  Her feast day will be on October 10, so we are slowly coming to an end of the preparatory novena with our parishioners.  We are preparing to celebrate.  We encourage and invite you to join us in praising God for the gift of the Blessed Mary Angela!  Without her, we – Felician Sisters – would not exist.

 
Blessed Maria Angela Truszkowska (1825-1899). Blessed Angela did not pursue admiration, fame, or greatness ... She simply served the most needy, seeing Christ in them.  Following in the footsteps of St. Francis, she wanted to make God known, loved and glorified.

Her greatest desire was to become a “sacrifice of love”.
She understood this love as a selfless gift of herself.

Mother wanted to give
Not merely a bite after a bite as you give out alms of bread
She wanted to give herself to the poorest
To be all for them
Because such was Mother Angela

Warsaw, misery of attics,
Rot of basements, paralytics,
The villages of Podlasie,
Children, Units.
Catechism for the people,
The shape of the first letter
Written by a hard hand of a peasant
-it was a mission of Mother Angela
Of the heart which loves in a concrete way.

The burden which the others did not want to touch,
did not shock her.
She took “it” for a piece entrusted to her by God
So that, through all, He is loved more,
So that everywhere He is known, praised and glorified.

To the works omitted by all
Did Felician sisters go
For they did not know the limits of sacrifice.
They went to prisons,
To villagers’ huts
To heal
To teach
To comfort
To feed, and—if need be—to die.
And die they did
Marking the pioneering trail with graves
"Because there is no greater love."

Christ had the face of the child of the gutter
And eyes of the aged dying alone in agony
And the face of the insurgent, from the wounds of whom
Almost all blood is gone
And the face of the Russian soldier in a field hospital.
This Christ was thirsty
Clothed in rags
Buried with debris in the soul of the baptized one.
But he is still Christ.

For mother Angela
To love meant to give
To give wastefully
everything requested by love
To serve tirelessly,
Watch ever alert
Constantly listen from where the cry for rescue comes
To watch in open door
With even wider open heart.

A person is not satisfied with a hunk of bread
Comfortable life
Clean shirt on his back
A person needs to have restored the dignity
Of the Child of God
To see the goal
To be aware from whence he came and where he is going.

And so they went out, the daughters of Mother Angela
Inconspicuous, grayish-brown
Standing at human crossroads
As signposts of happiness
Being for the people like sparks of fire
Lighted by the fire taken from the Eucharist
Broken as the host
As the Host for all.

Since the authority of the Church
Has put a seal on the work of Mother Angela
We, her daughters,
Write anew Felician poems with our lives
Together we open a new chapter
Of the book of heroism
Of the generosity of happiness.
We today decide the size of the epic
Giving out the fruit
To the measure of our dying.

Our heart for God
Help to the Homeland
Service to mankind
Bandage for the injured ones
Prayer for the persecutors
Forgiveness of enemies

And LOVE to all!!!

Fragments of the poem For Allby S.M. Imelda.

If you are in Krakow, you must visit the church of Felician Sisters on Smolensk Street.  Our Foundress is buried there.  It is also worth visiting the Museum and Archives of Bl. M. Angela at Mikolajska Street in Krakow.


 

Brak komentarzy:

Prześlij komentarz