By Archbishop Thomas Wenski - The Archdiocese of Miami
Archbishop Thomas Wenski preached this homily during a Mass Nov. 11, 2018, at Sacred Heart Cathedral Basilica in Newark, New Jersey, celebrating the 100th anniversary of Polish independence.
Today, a century after the restoration of the Polish state we gather to thank God for those Polish patriots who, like the legions of Dabrowski, sang Jeszcze Polska nie zniela, kiedy my zyjemy and thus kept the dream of free Poland alive despite oppression, poverty, persecution, expulsions during the 123 years of partition. Today, November 11, is observed in the United States as Veterans’ Day; today, November 11, is commemorated also as Armistice Day marking the end of the Great War; and today, November 11, is celebrated in Poland and throughout Polonia asNaradowe Swieto Niepodleglosci, Poland’s Independence Day.
100 years since Poland’s Independence but Poland’s Independence Day has not been celebrated for 100 years. First, it was not made an official holiday until 1938. Poles were too busy trying to unite regions that for more than a century had lived under different occupiers; they were too busy fighting off the threat of the Red Terror coming from the East. In 1920, it looked as if the Soviets would overrun Warsaw and spread their Marxist revolution into the rest of Europe, when at the Miracle of the Vistula, Cud Wisla, the Polish Army repelled the invading Bolsheviks, saving both Poland’s Independence and Europe’s.
Then, of course, came 1939 when Poland’s freedom was eclipsed once again when the homeland was invaded by Nazi and Soviet forces. But, Poland did not die. Poland lived – but while World War II ended in the mind of the Allies in 1945, it did not really end for Poland until 1989. And so, it was only in 1989 that Poles could once again “celebrate” November 11 as Polish Independence Day.
The years of partition, the years of occupation, the years of oppression have proven one thing: Poland’s enemies may try to chew and swallow up Poland; but they cannot digest her. As in the years before independence, the Poles defiantly sang:
We
won't forsake the land we came from,
We won't let our speech be buried.
We are the Polish nation, the Polish people,
From the royal line of Piast.
We won't let the enemy oppress us.
So
help us God!
So help us God!
I don’t sing well – and my Polish is not that good – but you sing it!
Nie
rzucim ziemi, skąd nasz ród.
Nie damy pogrześć mowy.
Polski my naród, polski lud,
Królewski szczep piastowy.
Nie damy, by nas gnębił wróg.
Tak nam dopomóż Bóg!
Tak nam dopomóż Bóg!
Poles may have had to flee the homeland because of economic misery or political oppression; but we never fled from our “Polishness”, nasz Polskosc. To protect those roots of Polishness, Poles in America built new institutions: fraternal societies, newspapers, insurance cooperatives, schools, seminaries – and our own national parishes. These institutions were not designed to isolate us Poles from the new society in which we found ourselves. On the contrary, in the face of hostile forces that would marginalize us unless we would deny our Slavic identity and our Roman Catholic religion, these institutions were designed to give us the position of strength that would allow us not to assimilate but to integrate. If we had to leave behind Poland, we would not leave behind our Polishness. Whenever we are, whether we are the descendants of Polish mill workers in New England, or the grandsons of Polish deportees in Siberia, there is Polonia!
When Karol Wojtyla became the great John Paul II, he spoke often of the relation between faith and culture. Just as the Word of God took on flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and became truly man, faith must also become part of the culture of any people in which the Gospel is planted – otherwise, it risks remaining just a veneer, a foreign presence. Enculturation – the process in which faith becomes a culture – a way of life, a way of understanding one’s existence, one’s identity, and a way one makes sense of the world around him – is the way that the mystery of the Incarnation continues in the life of the Mystical Body of Christ.
Our identity as Poles and as Catholics was forged in Poland’s baptism in 966. Thanks to our 1,000-year history, the Catholic faith has become “enfleshed” in Poland’s identity as a nation and as a people. Even third or fourth generations of Polish Americans have preserved a way of living out their Catholic faith in distinctively Polish ways. Deep faith in the Blessed Sacrament, frequent recourse to the sacrament of Penance, devotion to the Blessed Mother and faithfulness to the Holy Father continue to be well known characteristics of the way Polish Catholics live out their faith. Practices of popular piety with Polish flourishes also help Polish Americans and their children to continue to grow in their Catholic faith and still be Polish even when, like myself, we don’t speak the Polish language that well.
I would ask you to remember the moving homily Pope John Paul II preached on the eve of Pentecost Sunday on June 2, 1979 in Warsaw’s Victory Square. There he spoke of the theme of his first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis, but with a Polish application. In Redemptor Hominis, the Pope reminds us that Jesus, as true God and true Man, reveals to us not only who God is but who we are. Because of this, he said in Warsaw, we cannot understand who man is without Christ, and we cannot understand what Poland is and why it survived so much over the centuries, without Christ.
Człowieka bowiem nie można do końca zrozumieć bez Chrystusa. A raczej: człowiek nie może siebie sam do końca zrozumieć bez Chrystusa. Nie może zrozumieć, ani kim jest, ani jaka jest jego właściwa godność, ani jakie jest jego powołanie i ostateczne przeznaczenie. Nie może tego wszystkiego zrozumieć bez Chrystusa.Nie można też bez Chrystusa zrozumieć dziejów Polski — przede wszystkim jako dziejów ludzi, którzy przeszli i przechodzą przez tę ziemię. Dzieje ludzi! Dzieje narodu są przede wszystkim dziejami ludzi. ….
Could Poland have survived the years of Partition without its Catholic faith? Without faith in Christ, could Poland have survived the years of communist tyranny? Only Christ can explain our attachment to our “Polishness”. If Poles preserved the faith, the faith also preserved us as Poles, the faith has kept alive our dignity and our identity as Poles. It’s precisely because of our faith, that no matter wherever we are, we can still be Polish. In Warsaw, on that Pentecost vigil, the Holy Father called down the Holy Spirit: “Niech zstąpi Duch Twój! Niech zstąpi Duch Twój! I odnowi oblicze ziemi. Tej Ziemi!” - to renew the land, this Polish land. That prayer did not go unanswered.
Today, as we celebrate the centenary of Polish Independence, we must remember that Poland could resurrect itself after 123 years of partition because of the Catholic faith that kept our Polish culture and our Polish language alive in our hearts and in our homes.
Today, of course, in many circles such celebrations are criticized as representing a destructive kind of nationalism. And, it is true that in other circles, celebrations designed to be patriotic are exploited by those who promote a nationalistic xenophobia. We would do well to remind ourselves of the difference between a constructive patriotism and a destructive nationalism.
As St. John Paul II wrote, in his last book before died, Memory and Identity: “Patriotism is love for everything to do with our native land: its history, its traditions, its language, its natural features. It is a love which extends also to the works of our compatriots and the fruits of their genius. Whereas nationalism involves recognizing and pursuing the good of one’s own nation alone, without regard for the rights of others, patriotism…is a love for one’s native land that accords rights to all other nations equal to those claimed for one’s own. Patriotism, in other words, leads to a properly ordered social love.”
That social love – that solidarity – can build a prosperous and more just world in which the community of nations can live in peace. And solidarity is still the vocation of Poles today. Today, 100 years after the Polish state was resurrected, with patriotic pride we thank God for Poland’s Independence and pray that God will continue to watch over the Polish nation. Bog, Honor, Ojczyzna.
Like the poor widow of today’s Gospel reading, who gave more than everybody else, because she gave everything she had, we remember those Polish heroes who gave everything by shedding their blood on Polish and on foreign soil fighting so that Poland might yet live. Za wolnosc, wasza i nasza.
Tak nam dopomoz Bog!
