24.01.2011. Before the Holy Mass during prayers, I saw an unusual, ploughed field and felt the smell of fresh soil. The atmosphere was foggy. I wanted to find a way out of this field but the fog was dense and almost impenetrable. I started to pray and suddenly, in front of me, I saw a deep, non-crossable ditch. On the other side of this ditch, I saw a silhouette of Jesus dressed in flowing white robes followed by some people. I yearned to be with them. But how could I get there? Then I heard in my heart: build the bridge out of your prayer. If the prayer is sincere, trustful, you will cross this ditch without fear.
Then I understood how precious and potent our prayer of trust is. A prayer-bridge which is built with feeble spiritual base does not give us enough courage to cross this "ditch". We must try to form such a prayer to enable us to cross over this “abyss” that separates us from Jesus. It’s a difficult prayer of absolute trust in Him; when we do not yield to our fears and uncertainties. Jesus said: 'I desire” .. Just this.
May this phrase, 'I desire' of our prayers give us His Power and inspiration.
The next day during the Holy Mass, I suddenly feel contrition in my heart. I participate in the 'feast' and Jesus comes to us through the Holy Communion... We come up to Him 'straight with our own life', often unprepared to receive this beautiful gift; Still, He comes up to everyone whenever we request for this gift which He gives bountifully. No matter how undeserving we might be. He, the slave of His own Love toward each of us.
Oh, my prayer
Sometimes our prayer flows with words
They slide like a river current, gentle and sleepy
Their essence gets lost somewhere in routine
This prayer does not stir the soul
When suffering touches our life
Prayer becomes a call of a painful heart
Every word is like a stone thrown into the river current
Like a drowning man’s shout that lifts up to the Creator
Oh my prayer, don't be a stream of words
Become the rock where I meet the Lord
Be a conversation with Him, suffering in Gethsemane
Patiently waiting for my love, for my 'I desire'
Oh, my prayer, it's better for you to be like silence
Adoring and harkening to the voice of the Lord
And don’t be just numerous words drifting outside the heart
That is busy with its own matters
Oh, Lord, teach me the difficult prayer
A conversation with the living Savior
May the words of my prayer be a bridge of trust in You
That runs over my fears and false whispers
Oh, my prayer, become my desire to converse with the Lord
With the Divine Listener, waiting for love
Don't be a litany of a deaf and blind heart
That does not hear His answers.
A dream about a mountain
I had a dream about an awesome world
There was a beautiful mountain, stuck among the forest and dunes
On its top, was a castle that was shining with such pure light
That its walls were like transparent glass
People in white robes were mounting easily
Their steps were more dancelike than the hardship of climb
Joy filled these strange pilgrims
Smile of love ecstasy was on their faces
Oh, joyous world of my dream so serene
Where no false tones break the harmony
Were you my soul's hidden dream ?
Do you exist somewhere in the Heavenly space?
When dawn woke me up from these dreamy memories
And daily life opened my eyes widely
I saw my own mountain that is so hard to conquer
I felt the distress of painful downfalls, the joy of rising
I saw a desert scorching in the day, fearful at night
It absorbed travelers, famished of drink of prayers or holy water
On the slope of this mountain, there were rocks with the Ten Commandments
When you stop by them, they become a grace for the pilgrim
On the human mountain of destiny, there are no luminous castles
But the Salvation Cross of Christ is stuck on the very top
Yet man – godly traveler can not reach It
Unless he overcomes the hardship of will, tears, sweat and bleeding wounds.
22.02.2011 Plock. 80-th anniversary of St. Faustina’s Revelation of Merciful Jesus.
The Anniversary
There was a moment of mystic ecstasy
When Heaven leaned toward The Earth
And sent a vision of Merciful Jesus’ image down to Faustina
Paint this image, she heard, for souls’ Salvation
You, Holy Nun, are still contemplating the beauty of the Master
From the world, worthy of angelic painters
And yet You are worried how to paint the revelation image
With a human paint-brush
The essence of the image is in signs, You hear, not in paint colors
You carry the image of Jesus in Your heart, like the dearest icon
And reflect with love on the holy signs, written into the image
And direct the hand of the painter with Your prayer
And the painting is born, filled with grace everlasting
A luminous vessel, full of Divine Mercy
Bringing hope and forgiveness, not for our deeds
But for the trust in Divine Mercy
Resurrected Jesus appears and blesses
Out of the dark background of human fears, pride and lack of faith
The pain of crucifiction comes from His eyes
The wounds on His feet and hands are still open
He enters our life’s Last Supper
And penetrates darkness with the rays of light from His pierced heart
He stops by each of us, whether we are saints or not
And He asks: what do you know about My Mercy?
His eyes see what our hearts want to hide deeply
He asks each man by name: why do you escape from Me?
Do your pain and suffering separate you from Me suddenly?
Or maybe sin made your conscience frozen, throwing you into darkness?
Look at this painting, created for you
Look at My hand with a wound, lifted up, with a gesture of blessing
Look at My wounded heart, where the gifts of God’s Sacraments flow from
Trust Me only, I will never let you down
Kneel before Me, before My Mercy
Not like a servant, forced to pay homage to the Lord
But become a little child waiting for gifts
Not because of your merits, but for your great trust
Maybe this image looks silent to you
But you must know that Jesus held His breath for a moment
So that nothing could deafen the words of your prayer
Especially when you say with love: Jesus, I trust in You.
18.03.2011 It is Friday and I was at the Holy Mass and I participated in the Way of the Cross. In the afternoon, I am going out for a walk and shopping. I have a strange desire to come back to church for the Chaplet at 3 pm, but I wander around the streets without any definite purpose or maybe I will come home soon. A street clock strikes 2:30 pm and then I am heading to the church, being a little undecided … But I do come in … for the Adoration of the Most Holy Sacrament. During the Adoration, I hear: at last you came to Me, although it was the roundabout way … I feel that these words reflect some friendly allusion and lack of criticism.
As a “reward”, I receive a strange vision: Jesus is in Getsemani, lonely, imprisoned in a grotto. I can see that “something” is throwing His body against the stony walls. It is a painful scene. Jesus is suffering from pain. He is moving away from the wall and is being struck again … I think that He is suffering because of the sins that He sees and is offended and because of the sins that will be committed in future.
A thought occurs to me: I love this church of mine. And then I hear: if you love this place, so imagine how great Love I have for it!
Each person who enters here is granted with gifts, and often he doesn’t recognize them. Even a person who accidentally comes here, is “granted a gift”. The gift that he received will make him come back after a few days, even months and years. Thank You, Jesus, for this “roundabout way”. I understood how much You want to have us with You, in church.
Home for the soul
We build houses for the bodies that are fragile and mortal
Rich palaces or a few walls of concrete or bricks
We bring man’s hope into these flats
That love, as a guest, will settle inside
There are such houses, made of God’s grace and family prayers
Love has been living there for generations, as the guest of honor
Even a cross of misfortune does not kill it
The dwellers carry the cross with respect, their love sanctifies it
There are houses where love was hurt with anger and walked away
Leaving rich interior, full fridge and a beautiful garden sometimes
Only the hearts of the dwellers, without love, homeless
Crash against the walls, furniture - painfully
What can we build with our weak hands, that is lasting?
Just a few walls, not durable, easily destructible
Can we, with our hands, force love to stay?
When the heart is empty, and the soul is without the Lord?
Before we build a house out of credits and bricks
We must look for the Home for the soul that is thirsty for love
For a Holy Place where we can submit it to God’s Providence
So that it didn’t experience any fear of homelessness and lack of hope
When we find such a place, the Family Home for the soul
We will feel protection of the Holy Mother and Her Merciful Son
Then, with Their blessing, we will build the house on the rock, not on sand
Its durability is not in the walls but in the hearts, strengthened with God’s Love.
God’s Grace
God’s grace penetrates with a mysterious spark
It feeds a dying flame of hope
And touches unexpectedly
The mind isn’t able to explain Its works
Nor is the wisest theological treatise
It is like a breath of God’s Love …
On our way we encounter doubts and hurting events
When we have no strength to rise from a fall
Then we see the face of Christ …
His eyes beside ours, on a dusty road of Calvary
The noise of indifferently running-by feet is getting silent
We look at each other …
Amazement overwhelms us over the power that His Love has
Darkness disappears from our loneliness, courage arrives
God holds out His hand …
God’s grace doesn’t flow with words of consolation
It builds up the Act of Mercy in unusual silence
For the beloved sons of men
We feel enchanted over the transition of our hearts
And take the dust of doubts and despair off our clothes
Peace flows down on us …
Overwhelmed with God’s grace, we become witnesses of His Mercy
And follow Jesus toward the cross where the Good Villain hangs
And like him, we feel redeemed …
God’s grace is not like human justice
It is the Holy Gift for a sinner, from Father who forgives
And waits patiently for us to reciprocate this Love.
Talk to me
I come to You, Jesus, with a prayer and requests
Like a child who still needs tender care
Trusting that You will listen to me in every minute
I entrust myself to Your Love
And You even listen to my silence
And feed me with the thoughts from angelic wings
They flow down on me, making my heart more merciful
For the people and life around me
You pour in faith that eternal Love exists
The Love that is suffering and resurrecting
There are days when my childlike requests get silent
The soul is filled with awesome maturity
Then I ask: You talk to me, Lord, now
Lift me up to Your eyes, show me Your requests
What is that I hurt You with? What is that I don’t want to remember?
The conversation with the Beloved One is so painful
Although You Are so gentle as a judge
I can see Your tears and Love that is hurt with sin
And in my human wish to reward, I bend down for the cross
I borrow Veronica’s veil and I beseech: talk to me, Jesus!
Too much time …
We devote so much time to things
That are passing and superficial
We make money, our great idol
And strive for money more than for people
We yield to the fashion of worldly truths
And are seduced by commercials and neon signs
In this rush for success, we forget somewhere
About the end of life - the Station of the Old Age …
We put God and prayers on the bottom of a trunk
And lock it tightly, so that our mood wasn’t spoiled
We trust that money will bring us happiness for sure
And gold will provide us with respect and love
But the clock is incorruptible and will not stop the time
And our mirror won’t be deceived by our make-up
The morning will come when you look at the mirror
And will hear a chuckle of the time that passed
We boarded the train with inscriptions: success, power and money
And we hoped for victory
But the train rushes to the final destination so fast
That we have no time to encounter our own life …
The time will come when the young make us leave
When we are too old for the world of success
Then a painful thought will strike us: the world played unfair with us
And we believed in its swindling truths
Let us pray then, for a grace of Lord, for help of His merciful hands
To make us open the trunk where deeply hidden on the bottom
We can find an old, yellowish Bible and our parents’ wooden cross
There we can look for the words that don’t cheat
If you were indifferent to the Stations of the Cross of suffering Jesus
And you don’t remember His painful face any more
Come to the cross where the crucified Truth is stuck
The Truth that you forgot about but this Truth did not forget about you.
Angelic joy
When I wake up in the morning
I ask my angel, please smile to me
You are my Guardian from the world of brightness
You know the colors that we haven’t on earth
Please share your world with me
So that I didn’t dress my day in gray
Paint the joy of child’s faith
On the faces of indifferent people
Give my priests the words that transform hearts
Wash the faces of sad people
With the elixir of enlivening hope
Talk with the angels of my friends
About love which forgives and cures
Help me see those who need help
Even if they are as silent as a stone
Change the wooden sticks of old people
Into the angelic wings
Let them run lightly to their daily Mass
Stand by those who are tired of carrying the cross
Of daily worries
And whisper about hope to them
Silence came after my requests
The angel eagerly wrote them on paper
Then touched his robe with a common human gesture
And put the paper with requests into my hands
I noticed a spark of joke in his angelic smile
Your requests, he said gently
Are for people, not for angels
And singing a joyous song, he flew away.
28.03.2011 Second day of Lent’s Recollections
The subject is my getting closer to Jesus. I saw an image of Jesus standing at the cross. He was supporting it with His back. I had an impression that He can’t get away from it. He must support the cross … I thought that I must keep “approaching” Him with my life. There was quite a large, empty space. Please come closer - I whispered … Jesus held out His hands - the space between us got shorter. I also held out my hands … What does this image mean? I thought. The held-out hands of Jesus and mine … Then the Communion time came … The Body and Blood of Christ - the empty space was filled with The Most Holy Sacrament - the union of Jesus at the cross and mine with Him. Our hands were connected.
The Tabernacle of the heart
In the Tabernacle, locked with a golden key
You are the guest here, Jesus, You, the Prisoner of Merciful Love
And you are so delicate in this white Holy Wafer
Like a petal of innocent, beautiful rose
Being thirsty for Your sight, in a common, human form
I can’t see You with my eyes
But my soul, being in love with You
Intertwines my love with Yours and changes You into a person
During this Holy Feast, when a priest gives the Host
My heart loses its rhythm for a moment, my breathing stops
And the white flake of the Host of Your mouth
Gets nearer and nearer, in our close encounter of the Communion
I would like to hold You, Jesus, so much
Imprison You in my heart for my whole life
Create a Tabernacle in my heart
And lock It with a key of non-sinfulness
But I am a weak, mortal person
I learned what light is, but also a dark night of sin
When You are a prisoner in my heart and my mouth
Not only do I hear beautiful songs, but also Your painful groan
And it is not a groan of human disillusion
You are God, of course, and You know human faults
So it is rather a loud signal of an emergency ambulance
Of a conscience that hurts Your Mercy
Then I look for signs in the Communion, the proof of Your Love
I even catch a cross that stands on my way
I look for Your presence, to be near You again
And I find It in the confessional and tell my conscience to kneel in confession.
Pilgrim’s baggage
We are born being naked and we die, naked
We hear these words during the days of penance
And even if we were dressed beautifully, on our last way
We will stand before God, but not in this robe
We will stand before God with peculiar baggage
With a sack and a pilgrim’s stick from our human way
And there will be nothing that earthy scales can weigh
Precious stones, medals, diplomas
There may a coin shine at the bottom of this baggage
The coin that we, being poor, may have given to a hungry
Or a bunch of smiles, or words of gratitude for help
Daily hardship, painstaking - just to live with dignity
Faith that evil didn’t deprive us of
Hope that hangs on the cross of Jesus
Love that we served with humility, though it was hard
And prayer, like a pilgrim’s stick that we got supported with
We received this peculiar baggage with the Baptism
Filled with the grace of God’s Holy Breath
Given for our pilgrim’s way, to enrich the world with love
And not to gather stones of egotism and conceit
Help us, Lord, for the sake of remembrance of Your Holy Breath
So that we could gather treasures that You have sown
The treasures of the hearts, which weigh nothing in the hands
Only Your scales will measure them justly some day.
Forgive them
I would never carry my sinfulness
When falling down like a bird, with an injured wing by evil
If it weren’t for the merciful hand of God
That gave me the Salvation Cross
And then I don’t fall, hurting myself deadly
Nor do I blossom like weeds that don’t yield any crop
I just catch the cross - my last chance
And among the shouts of executioners and clatter of hammers
I hear the voice of the Lord: forgive them because they don’t know what they do
You will not hear such words from another man
In the world that loved sin so much and tempts even more
There are so many men-birds around us, hurt with a spear of evil
And evil walks triumphantly over them, like over the mine-field
These are the people who didn’t hold out their hands toward Mercy
Trusting that freedom of a bird of space will last forever
We should pray and hope for those who neglected God’s Mercy
That a drop of blood from the Cross of Christ will shake their conscience.
Faces and words
You have given us, Lord, faces and words
And we read from them like from an open book
About emotions, feelings that are hidden in man
About beauty or ugliness of his interior
There are words and faces so beautiful
And I don’t think about physical good-looks
When we look at them and listen to their words
Then we feel the power of the Holy Spirit flowing down on us
These are the artists of God’s words and eternal truths
We read from their faces about the strength of their faith
And they don’t have to express them loudly and pathetically
They testify the truth of their words with their lives
They seem to be messengers not from this world
We want to call them saints but they feel like sinners
Loneliness isn’t uncommon for them, among hostile faces
And their body suffers when touched with pain
Where do they take power from, to win the fight
With people with faces full of conceit and words of contempt?
Are their hearts and bodies built out of better stuff?
Or maybe they discovered an open window in Heaven?
Let their life be a mystery of God’s grace
They proclaim that the time of evil has a deadly dimension
Their words lead to an encounter with the Good of eternity
And their life, full of love, is the proof of revealed truths.
There is time …
You are stubborn, human time
When suffering and pain touch us
You stretch, turning minutes into hours
And you don’t allow to forget about suffering
Even when your time passed already
You are like a light breeze
Like a hardly felt breath
And when man flourishes with joy
You are gone soon
Turning hours into minutes
And if we wanted human time
To subdue to the logics of mechanical passing
Then the feeling of suffering and pain
Is like a guest in the coming time
Like an evergreen plant
Oh, human time, the unfair clock
You strike the hour of suffering much more
Than the hour of joy
Please stop for a while …
So that we could give sense to our feelings
Oh, human time, the clock of life
Allow to transform the memory of suffering into the offering
The sacrifice of the incense of love, and not the moan of the unhappy
There is time of suffering, time of the cross
And there is time for resurrecting to life.
A conversation at the cross
Once a non-believer asked me
About my God and the strength of my faith
I knelt at the cross, staring at the Lord
In prayer I asked for God’s inspiration
My brain and words are so poor, Lord
To show Your all-might to the doubting
Tell me what this man should do
And what I should do, to make him encounter You
Let your hands do good to people, I heard
And lead your legs where good waits
And don’t go with conceit in your heart, like a battle banner
Just to win wars and receive rewards
Be on your knees when you fight evil
As if you were an extension of My Son’s cross
Be a nurse of His wounds with your prayers and deeds
Share with your fellow being the graces that you were granted
God has no regard to a powerful man’s strength
The little ones’ prayer is what He helps to win
He grants grace and David’s sling
That defeated Goliath with a small stone
Those who rely on the mind will not understand God’s Love
So tell this man that your God is all Love
And He makes miracles out of the depth of His Mercy
Indeed, He made so many saints out of … non-believers.
Easter hope
The world didn’t give man’s heart
The rhythm that beats only with a breath of joy
The wind from over the desert brings a blow of evil
Sowing death, blood and wars
Man’s heart, frightened, tries to be protected
And looks for safe places when it loses courage
Its rhythm slowly gets weaker with lack of hope
Salty tears deprive of sense of life
And the heart, threatened with infirmity, is slowly dying
Locking itself in a coffin of despair …
Evil throws a bunch of soil at this coffin
As if it wanted to bury the last breath of hope
And defeat man’s heart
But there is medicine for the heart
It cures and lifts from the grave of despair
It is the cross of Christ, driven into the Golgotha rock
It catches the wind of evil in its wings like in a net
It feeds a dying heart with drops of blood of its Passion
Giving him a new hope
And man rises from despair
Staring in trust at the One who defeated death
He shakes off the bunch of soil that evil threw at him
And holds on to the cross, stuck into the grave of hopelessness
And the holy breath of grace fills the body with courage
And with new power, man starts his journey of life
Not alone any more and defenseless, but with Resurrected Christ.
12.04.2011 After the morning prayer I was looking at the picture of the Holy Trinity. The picture is a vision of a painter. God Father is there as the Holy Old Man, the Dove nearby is the Holy Spirit, and Jesus Christ. Jesus - bleeding, tormented, with a driven-in lance, is supported by His God-Father at His heart. Three persons in Oneness. A thought about this Holy Oneness occurred to me. God “gave birth” to the Son out of His Heart and giving Him the human shape, He sent Him down to Earth. Jesus is the Heart of God and He became man in His shape so that man could recognize God in Christ … through His holy deeds on earth.
The next day I had an reflection that I preceded with a prayer: I pray to You, Lord and thank You for the faith that allows to “touch” Heaven …
We are physical beings and we learn about the world with our senses. We don’t know Heaven, the World of Eternity. God gave us His Son and the Holy Scripture - this is the rope that we climb up to Heaven. We are not only the “species” that live according to their senses or physics. We follow them but … being gifted with spiritual abilities, we tend to head toward the higher world of eternity. Different philosophies try to deprive man of faith and reduce him to senses. The stronger, the more skillful, the younger - these are the ones who win in this world. If we look at other people in this way, we will become the living “species” that gets adapted only for survival, for making use of love and other feelings so that we could survive better and more comfortably in this physical world. Even faith is “tolerated” as a peculiar ritual for a better psychic well-being. God and Christ’s Passion on the cross don’t give us such teachings.
Dedication, fidelity, noble feelings - are not appreciated. I wonder why there are so many mockers of faith in this world. I think that it’s easier to rule a “faithless” society, just giving simple, mechanical truths to follow … and how to live to feel more comfortable. To dedicate our lives to the laws of the Decalogue - this is our Christian courage of opposing a vision of a man who must only “survive”. Like a thing? Only here and now? Then what sense would a human life make, the life that was redeemed by the Passion of God Himself? But it is up to the man himself, up to his choice to survive only or to be Somebody, created out of Love and for Love, to stare at Heaven or earth …
Thank You, Jesus
Thank You, Jesus, that I met You
On my pilgrimage around the world
Thank You, Jesus, that I recognized You
Because I could have passed by You, on my way
For my eyes and ears, I thank You cordially
That they recognized Your words, Lord
In the humming of pictures and voices
Thank You, Jesus, for the place of encounter at the cross
And for the moment when You covered the world so much
That it didn’t make sense for me to keep running
Since that moment I’ve been circling around Your cross
Drawing love and hope out of it
Thank You, Jesus, for Your tears that I hear
Like striking raindrops against the window pane
May this sound move my heart
Every day, whenever I sin
Thank You, Jesus, that You caught my hands
So that I could dance the holy dance
Adoring Your life and Passion
Thank You, Jesus, for the time of my life
So that I could devote it to prayers
Thanks for my cross that I carry
And for the church where I can prop it up against the Altar
And I do thank You, Lord, for Your Love
When You, through the hands of a priest, give me Your Body and Blood.
Flowers
People want flowers to adorn their lives with
The scent and the color attract so much
We are ever amazed with their beauty
Though they are not food, they feed our eyes
Our desires are like these flowers
We wish to attain something, to possess the beauty
We are ready to enter the gardens of the world
And pick handfuls of something that deludes our eyes
Fixing our eyes on having something
We strive so much to reach the goal
That in the gardens of the world, we choose the flowers
That are made of artificial, dead matter
They lured us with color and temporary joy
We thought that they would enliven our dull moments
But they are stuck in the vase of life
Indifferent, dead, artificial flowers
And as long as we rummage across the gardens of the world
With our hearts and eyes, staring at the ground
It will be hard to spot the flowers of great desires
And you won’t pick them unless you raise your head
These flowers are like our spiritual desires
God sowed them out of the seeds of His Love
You will not find these flowers in the gardens of the world
They are inside you, and God is waiting until you know it.
A Soul and an Angel
When my heart is short of words of love
When I get stuck on a shoal of daily routine
Then listen to the silence of my soul, Jesus
She calls to You with her silence
She is woven out of sighs of an awesome longing
I can’t feed her with words
She weeps, calling her Lord with the tears of repentance
She is happy when she feels the touch of her Creator
She hears Your footsteps, Jesus
Although their echo doesn’t reach my ears
She sees You in the darkest gloom
While I don’t see You even in bright light
My soul, Lord, never falls asleep
As if she waited for Somebody
And when I try to make her sleep with prayer
My Guardian Angel comes and talks with her
Sometimes I hear their whispers in the dark
They are like friends’ hearty encounters
I eavesdrop and sometimes I recall some words
But with dawn, oblivion often comes
And though sleep breaks the vigil of the mind and the body
The trace of these encounters is deep within me
I accept it as a gift of love of the Father for a child
The gift of the ever vigilant soul with the sleepless Angel.
17.06.2011 One night in June I woke up after a very strange dream. This dream seemed so real that I wasn’t sure myself whether my soul received some “message” or not. In June I participated in a highly spiritual pilgrimage in Lithuania, along the footsteps of St. Faustina. We also visited the church in Vilnus where the image of Merciful Jesus is exposed. A few days after the pilgrimage, in my dream, I was kneeling before the image of Merciful Jesus and the church was empty. I had an impression that I was lost in prayer and my companions already left. The image of Merciful Jesus was getting bigger and bigger and it seemed to fill up the interior of the church. It was so close that I recognized the painting texture. The image was getting closer and I bowed my head lower and lower. I only saw Jesus’ feet. I felt happy seeing His bare feet. They were so close and so alive. I was aware of the shapes and colors in this church, I even felt the smell. The dream was mixed up with reality. And suddenly I heard a beautiful voice, a little severe: I didn’t come to this world to put up new crosses but I came to fill the crosses that you put up - with Love and Mercy.
The holy pain
There is such pain in our life
It comes without any cause
It is spiritual, bloodless and it hurts
It shakes our soul, covered with daily routine
Wishing to recover the lost truth
This pain is like a never-ending longing for perfection
We run toward the light but it moves away
We treat this pain with dainties from the world’s supermarket
We sing popular lullabies
But the pain lasts … like an incurable wound
And even if we deafened it with the noise of the world’s discotheques
Or used the incense of pleasures
And cheated with drugs of comfort and timely joys
Or gave away to the laws that make morality sleep
Still, the pain lasts silently and waits
This is the “holy pain” of our soul in searching for the Truth
The wound that reminds us of the essence of our humanity
Thank You, Lord, for this “holy pain”, this perpetual longing
It leads us to the cross where human conceit dies
It is the hurting pain … for man’s salvation.
The Mountain of Crosses
I visited a place on the Lithuanian soil
There is no place like that anywhere on earth
It is a hill with thousands of crosses
A little mountain rises in the empty space of fields
There are no flowers or grass but crosses of wood or metal
They flow from the hill like a rapid stream
Spreading with crosses at its foot
The Pope’s cross opens the way upward
Our Pope was kneeling there
Mary’s statue is heightened on the hill
It surrounds all the crosses with its praying sigh
The crosses look like a crowd of people from a distance
Raising their hands to the Lord in a beseeching gesture
There is a conjured memory in every cross
About human harm, injustice
Of those who fought for the dignity of life
And those who put their crosses as an offering today
At Mary’s statue, someone left a picture of Jesus
Who raises His arms high
As if the Lord wanted to bring Heaven to this earth
And Heaven lifted the hill of crosses in the holy offering
Pilgrims go among the crosses along the well-treaded paths
There is so much history of human life in this place
So many tears that were often dropped in vain
The wind goes round these crosses
And knows each of them stuck in the ground
The crosses, joined by their arms
Resemble people united in a solidarity gesture
Against violence in the world
And it is not a mountain that thunders like a volcano
That demands revenge, blood and war
This is the mountain of hope that God listens to people
The mountain of the offering
Where Abraham wanted to sacrifice his son
This is the Mountain of Faith in God’s Mercy
Where we can put our crosses
This is the faith of man in the loving gesture of God’s hands
Who sent His Son to this Earth
So that He filled human crosses with love and mercy.
The Heart of Jesus
Among the ways of your life
You move ahead, man, pushed with the wind of history
And world’s fashion
You feel like an abandoned seed
By an indifferent sower
You want to shout but the world doesn’t hear you
As if you were mute for others
Like a silent number in a computer
You are pushed by a crowd rushing nowhere
Along the ways of success that you’ve already passed
You’ve collected the fruits and feel their sour taste now
And your heart is still uneasy …
There is such a place where you find peace
A wide-open house with no doors and windows
This is the Heart of Jesus that looks for you
It calls you night and day with your own name
This Heart wants to talk with you
And calm down your earthy worries with silence
And bestow grace of inner peace upon you
And teach how to love yourself and others
So when you kneel down being tired of running
You will feel love poured into your heart
Then you won’t be an indifferent number for this world
But … a beloved child of God.
22.07.2011 In July I was in a small town with a sanatorium. There was a beautiful, modern church with a spacious Altar. The Mass was often celebrated by several priests. I felt as if it were a great grace - so many priests … During one of these Masses, when the priest was raising the Cup, I saw in my heart a large drop of blood over the Cup. It was a simple Cup, without any adornments. The blood was pouring down onto the Altar. Jesus, I thought, the Cup is too little … Then I heard in my heart: there is no such a Cup in the world or on any Altar, which could accommodate the immensity of graces which are flowing down during the Mass … I trembled when I heard these words. Then I understood the sense of kissing the Altar by the priests. Their mouths “gather” the graces that are poured out over the Altar … It is not a symbolic gesture … it is a real touching of the miracle of the Altar. The miracle of the Transubstantiation. Near the sanatorium park was a chapel that was being redecorated and a small tent with the Most Holy Sacrament. Every day, a group of people prayed there. A big poster with the Heart of Jesus was hanging over the Altar. Poor-looking place … But just in this chapel, so modest, I felt Jesus so close. As if I met Him face-to-face, as if He were next to me. I - the imperfect human being, and Jesus, who is far from luxury and the beauty of the interior that He stays in. He is the Lord waiting for a prayer-conversation in any circumstances, on any of our ways of life, ready to stop by and listen to us. With the eyes of imagination, while praying, I recall in my heart that chapel, the mysterious smile of Jesus from the picture and the love that I felt in my heart. The love that “obliges” me to be reciprocal.
Peculiar bread of love
I have seen a picture over the Altar
Jesus was in the middle, the saints and the blessed - along the sides
The Angels were leading them
Brother Albert was holding bread in his hand
He didn’t let go of it in his pilgrimage to Heaven
As if the bread that he nourished the poor on earth
Was the symbol of the Living Bread
The sign showing that in the Heavenly Kingdom
He will fight for the souls’ eternal salvation
And a thought occurred to me, along with a bird’s singing outside
That our life is worth
As much as how many slices of bread of love we pass to others
Jesus feeds us with the bread of the Holy Eucharist
He pours the ferment of the holy bread into the soul
With faith that out of His Love
We will bake our own loafs eagerly
And will share our love with others
Like He did once, multiplying bread in the desert
You can’t divide a pearl, it will lose its value
Gold will not satisfy your hunger
Money will not appease your suffering
You can only crumble the bread of love, it won’t lose its taste
God has given man the heart that is hungry for love
The world’s riches will never satisfy such a heart
And even if a man has a stony face
And his hands are full of worldly goods
His heart is still waiting … for a crumb of love of his fellow man.
The Station of the Cross
I was going to the Mass to see You, Jesus
On a day that was weeping with rain
It was painful to see gray, daily life around
And no beauty at all
The world seemed withered with sadness
I ran out of words of a fervent prayer
Silence was all that I could offer You, Jesus
I asked the Angel to surround me with His light
Like with a protective coat
In this silence, I suddenly saw the Station of Your Passion
The executioners were bent, on their knees
Driving nails into your Holy Hands
And You were stretched out on the cross
Your eyes were close to theirs
Sadness was in them, no hatred whatsoever
It was a strange picture … the hangmen on their knees
You were just a convict for them
And suddenly a painful thought touched my heart
While kneeling with a prayer in our mouths
Don’t we hurt You the same way
Although You are the beloved Lord for us?
How many times do we hurt Your hands with our sins
Looking away from Your eyes, Lord?
Time has lost those nails somewhere
But the sins of Your present believers
Are still lacerating those wounds.
Trustful joy
When a man receives a gift
Of a peculiar, trustful joy
He stands before the Altar, surprised
Like a child being gifted
With an unexpected fulfillment of his dream
Then the trustful joy fills up the whole heart and body
And spreads out with bright light
That is unlimited
Like the fire that doesn’t burn out
But warms and gets further around
Wishing to bestow others with the miracle of this experience
It sweeps past and future worries out of the heart
Leaving a sign of an awesome power
The memory that never forgets
When a man receives such a gift
He feels the Hand of God that leads him into the world
Where the roads are lit up with unknown light
He feels the beauty though his eyes don’t see it
This is the feeling of the unusual Love
That raises man high up
Above the poor experiences of a suffering body
And there is only this common, human fear
That is still stuck in our human body
Will I keep this gift for ever?
The soul gives a sign to the words blessing this joy
And a prayer flows out of the heart with a bright flame
May God grant such joy on all people.
15.08.2011 Feast of the Assumption of Holy Mary. During Adoration of Lord Jesus after the Communion, a peculiar thought came to me. God was born of the holy woman, chosen by Him. The Holy Mother was also a human being, She felt like we did, and experienced daily hardship. God in His mysterious decision for His Son to be born of an earthly woman, had in His plans the maternal care and tenderness over the baby. Jesus, although He is God, being born of a woman, He needed human tenderness and care. He needed the touch of love. His childhood and maturity were shaped by the maternal love of His Mother and fatherly love of Joseph. God the Father has “given away” His Son into the loving arms of the Holy Family. Although Jesus is God, His “human” nature took power from the tender love of His earthly parents. This is a very special sign that we often forget about, while attributing to Jesus only the “divine dimension”. How is it considered in our contemporary times? We adore Jesus in the Eucharist. We think of Him as a Holy Symbol of God. But when we want to get closer to Him spiritually and personally, we must remember that the very fact that He was born in a human family is a God’s sign for us to love Him the way Mary loved Her Son. She loved Him like we love our children and make sacrifices for them. Jesus’ birth to the Holy Family and His desire for family love is also an example for parents to remind them of this fact, despite their own imperfection. By “giving away” His Son to a family, God stresses its great significance in His plans concerning children’s birth and upbringing.
Prayer to The Holy Mother
You look at us, Holy Mother, from the pictures and statues
Artists’ imagination creates different visions of Your face
And only the heart that is hungry for love, is able to know
How many graces flow down on us, in prayer before You
The swords of sorrow injured Your heart, Simeon predicted it
You know the pain of mothers whose children got lost
You are a woman who suffers also today, at the crosses of sons
It is You who take our dead body in Your arms
When I kneel before Your Holy Picture today
When I touch Your hands on the statue
I close my eyes and see You, Mother, alive
An ordinary Mother, with an Infant in the arms
I see Joachim and Ann when they hug You
I see a Virgin, beautiful, carrying a jug of water
And a woman on a donkey, heading to Elisabeth
I see Your sorrow and a joyous smile
You are so alive, so present in our life
When You hear people’s complaints that God is silent
Under Your protection we keep our dying hope
You make our faith alive with Your Heavenly Apparitions
For the orphans, You are like a motherly touch
For the lonely - great support and the nurse for the sick
Like way back You were a tender Mother for Your Son
Today You are - the Perpetual Help for us
When we fall on earth’s dust, being injured with sin
You, Veronica of contemporary times, stand by
And wipe our faces with a veil, like she did
So that we could see the reflection of suffering Jesus
I say this prayer before You, Mary
And I beseech The Lord, in His Mercy
To give me the grace to see You further than the picture’s frames
The grace to see with my heart, Your Love toward people.
20.08.2011 During Adoration, sometimes after prayers during the day or in the evening, I “invited” God to talk with me. To my surprise, I realized that I “heard” in my heart some poetic verses, where God was speaking to me personally. He was teaching, consoling me. He showed me the right direction of my meditations. There are some poems which reflect this phenomenon in my poetry.
The exchange of gifts
When you fall down
I give you a sweet-cherry-wood cane
When you bow your tired head against the bench
I put Veronica’s veil beneath
When you stand lonely and sad
I surround you with a bouquet of flowers
When you, being afflicted, kneel down to pray
I move a comfortable kneeler toward you
When you take the cross of suffering on your shoulders
I help you carry it
When you feel the pain of life, I heal your sore
When awkwardness presses like the thorny crown
I soothe your thorn infested irritation
When you don’t understand anything anymore
I send you the wise Angel
And you, what do you do?
When I fall down
When they hurt Me
When I carry the cross …
Hunger
I don’t come to a soul
Accompanied by a flourish of trumpets
Resounding drums, even the singing of the violin
I don’t come to a soul that chatters like a box
And deafens the silence of the encounter with words
The soul is too busy …
I come to a soul that is hungry
She is not fed with the world of sounds, colors, words
Not even with human presence
The thirsty soul waits in silence
She stands vigilant
She waits for the Feast of Eucharist
And then I come in a light breeze of a touch
I stroke the soul lightly, and she recognizes M
Then she opens her portal
Recognizing the Heavenly key
I come …
Sometimes when you are in deep sorrow
Sometimes I open your clenched fists
Sometimes I fill up your loneliness
Sometimes I touch you suddenly in a sun-hot meadow
Sometimes with the hands of a priest, a man, who, like an angel
Opens the soul on hearing My voice
And then …
Let the violin chant, let the drums rumble
Let the people say how Merciful God is.
Mercy keeps waiting
I come to you among the storms of your life
I am not a thunder that roars and hurts
But a light breeze that gathers storms
I am not a judge, man, I am Mercy
I come to you, bearing My own cross and yours
Please, put all your woes on it
Give Me your hand, relax your clenched fist
May My Mercy lead you on
Although you pass by far from My House, The Holy Church
You are afraid to stumble over its steps
It was Me who fell before you, at the Stations of the Cross
They kicked My Mercy in dust and shout
At night, My House has the gates locked
Like a people’s house, with a key for protection
I don’t lay My head on a pillow at night
My Mercy is sleepless all the time
What can I offer you, the unfaithful man
Who prizes your own will, above all?
I have surrendered My life already, the hangmen have taken It
But they haven’t slain Mercy n Me
The day will come when you lament over your free will
It forced you not to give Me your hand
Remember, in your despair - I will always be with you
Come and let Me embrace you with My Mercy.
The Conductor
I have given you a worthy heart out of The Holy Spirit
And not a mechanism that ticks indifferently
I have given you the heart filled with God's rhythm
Built out of Hope that it will play a beautiful concert
And inspire your life like a virtuoso composing hymns of Love
Of God toward man, and man toward man
Just hear this holy concert in your heart
Written only for you
Don't allow the rhythms of the worldly drums to deafen you
Your heart is not a clock that strikes the hours, passing inevitably
Your heart is shaped out of the Holy Spirit, out of Hope
To exist in the time of eternity
Which has no seconds, minutes, years
Let your life play this God's concert, written for you
Master the keys of this God's solemn adoration
Of the plaintive complaint of suffering in your heart
Of the loud beating of Hope
Wait for the silence
When God, the conductor of your concert
Commands silence to the musicians of your heart
So that He could speak to you
And then you will beautifully play this concert of your heart.
When you look at Me
When you look at Me
Humiliated, with a cross on My back
I don’t need any laments from you
I haven’t come to this world for pity
Oblivion … is mother of pity
When I pass by, being injured
I don’t want any tears from you
You should recognize your sins in silence
And crucify them with nails of repentance and humility
Then My pain will surround you with mercy
My Passion was not for the despair of onlookers
But for your salvation
I did not fall down because My body was weak
I fell, being humiliated with the sins of your immortal soul
The complaints of souls were My painful downfalls
When you look at Me, being crucified
As if I were a carved, dead symbol
My wounds reopen again
And the blood pouring out of them, beseeches:
Don’t give away your soul for perdition
Being whipped and crucified by the hangmen
I wait patiently without tears, in silence
For your examination of conscience
For the seriousness of prayer, sincere and repentant
Your confession brings relief in My Passion
I carried the cross and pains of human body
I saw the weakness of your nature
And I got to know the short moments of earthly joy
I came to this world to give you eternal joy
And I did suffer for this joy
When God gives you a cross in your life
Then look at My Passion with love
You will see the light of your cross in My wounds
And just trust that the Eyes of God see this light
Not as a momentary flash but as an eternal gift for the soul.
When you hug the cross
When life brings pain to your heart
You seek love at the cross
You hug My cross like the rescue’s last resort
On the ocean of your own wounds and disappointments
At these moments, you should know that you don’t touch
Just a wooden and dead statue
I am not a talisman, protecting from doubts
I need your faith and complete trust
When you hug My cross, I become alive
I offer you the pain of My head, bruised with thorns
Stuck in My heart, there is still a piece of a lance
The nails, covered with blood, didn’t get rusty
When you once hug the cross, this holy relict
You must know that My Love serves you with faith
Do you have enough courage to accept such Love
Which is the Offering of My life, for your salvation?
If you say: yes, although your heart shakes
I don’t promise you relief from crying and suffering
You will follow My way for people’s salvation
And will discover Love that you never find on earth
I am not only a cure for all injuries
I am Love that calls for your trust
Give away your life, your will, and thoughts to Me
Become an apostle of My Mercy
Then Heaven will open up for your trust in Me
The cross of hard wood will turn into My body
You will feel a flame of spiritual joy
And your suffering and tears will burn out on My cross.
The oasis
When the vehicle of life, called your fate
Leaves you on the desert of the world
The world where the law of pleasure reigns
And virtues are mocked
When the sand of this desert covers your eyes
And deafens your ears
Until you lose your hearing
And your legs must keep dancing madly
Instead, listen to your heart
It knows the holy language
Different from human speech
Shake down the sand of this desert
And don’t take its books in your hands
Scattered lavishly for those astray
And tempting with golden titles
Listen to your heart and to My Holy Speech
It will give you power for your lonely journey
Toward the oasis where the Living Water calls
For those thirsty for the Truth
Just keep going, don’t stop over
Don’t be afraid of fatigue
And of the voices calling from this desert
Sand will be their grave
And My Holy Speech will survive for ages
Submerged in the oasis of the Living Water
And in your heart …
Prayer of love
When your eyes are blind and your mouth, mute
For the criticism of your fellow men
When you pass the understanding of the world over to your heart
Then you gain the prayer of love
It will open the eyes that are blind, not seeing Me
And will fill their mute lips with beseeching words
When you fill your heart with love
The armor of this love will help you in this fight
For your and your fellow men’s salvation
I Am the Lord of all human weaknesses
I transform them like a crystal of ice
Into a rapid, warm stream of graces
I Am awaiting your loving prayer
To melt the sin-frozen hearts
I wait for your penance and fasting
Give away your blind eyes and mute lips to Me
When they don’t criticize your fellow men
Then I will bless your merciful prayer
And will give you new eyes which can see the light
And new ears which can hear the voices of the saints.
Growing up toward Love
Our Love does not get mature
Through songs and beautiful words
Our Love is a difficult struggle
And no beauty of the world will attract it
Our Love is united with the cross so painful
You, underneath, with your body, so sinful
And I, stretched on it, with the blood pouring down
To wash you off your sins
Our Love was pierced by the nails of the hangmen
And My body was stripped off the garments
So that you could see my wounds still alive
And My Heart, still open for you
With no robes that cover it
Our Love is getting mature in pain
Without hymns or loud fanfares
She shouts but you can hardly hear a whisper.
Our Love is getting mature in pain
When you fight with your own weakness
When you want to lean against the world
And the world gives you the sword of pride and anger
On the way of our Love, the Way of Passion
Even a bird gets silent in his chirping, voices get down
And trees stop humming
On the way of our Love, silence spreads all over.
Silence like emptiness, with no sounds
Then your heart can hear the beating of My Heart
And your eyes, looking at My gaze from Golgotha cross
Can be pierced with the ray of the Holy Spirit
And get stuck in your soul
And when you give away your desire of Love to My Heart
Then our Love will get ripe like a fruit
And I will take the green of this fruit in My bleeding hands
And will change it into the red of a ripe fruit.
Time of our common way
How to persist in faith
When the world shows other values?
How to believe in eternity
When the experience of mortality penetrates?
How to offer love to people
When they answer with indifference?
We bring so many questions under Your cross, Jesus
It gets so heavy that You fall down
But You rise to give the answer through Your Passion
Stand by Me, You say, with your cross
Come with Me, along this Way of the Cross
It will be the time of our spiritual conversation
Maybe you won’t notice My Cross in the beginning
Maybe yours will seem to be too heavy for you?
You shout loud walking by My side
You ask about sense of suffering, sense of life
Time passes, even the birds get silent
Being so much surprised with your crying
We are going side by side, through the next stations
Your voice gets lower and you become silent
This silence is the time of My gift
The gift of answers to your questions
Your pain also gets silent
You even want to help Me, like Simon did
And look for power for yourself, in My eyes
We go together, I invited you to go along this way
As far as the Station of Crucifixion
I see, you want to defend Me from My executioners
Merciful love evokes in you
The love that doesn’t demand any answers
And doesn’t ask questions
There are still a few stations ahead
You look at My death on the cross
You kneel and weep like the Jerusalem women
I see you, My companion of our common way
I must die and defeat death
For your salvation
For our encounter in eternity
And now you can come back to your life …
23.08.11. Banneux - Sanctuary of the Holy Mother of the Poor. It is the tenth time that I’ve been on a pilgrimage at this beautiful site. I devoted this pilgrimage for the intentions of the Holy Mother. During this pilgrimage I was particularly touched by a testimony of faith of a priest who accompanied us, especially his wonderful humility and ardent prayers. When I received the Holy Communion from him, I heard in my heart: the hands of this priest are like caress for My wounds. During the Mass in Chevremont, when I was adoring Jesus after the Communion, I heard wonderful words: yield to everyone who wants to run ahead of you, let them run forward, following their ambition. At the end of the running-toward-Heaven pilgrimage, there is Holy Mary and it is She who closes every “procession” toward God. Joy and peace are always with Her.
Prayer for sinners
So many crosses that today’s world throws down
Empty temples, demolished with crowbars
Your cross, Jesus, stirs indignation among many
Satiety becomes god and comfort is a virtue
The world wants to have fun, prayer is a stranger
I embrace You, Jesus, with all my heart
And thank You for the crosses at the roadsides
They still stand there, stuck fast in the ground
Thank You for every cross in Your churches of glory
Thanks for Your Holy Presence and Your Love, betrayed
I pray for those whom the world convinced
That without a cross is easier to lead a quiet life
And I pray for those who, with a smile, indulgently
Pass by the crosses, that are old-time symbols
Like historic monuments, standing for ages
In my prayer, I ask You, Living Jesus
To cleanse their faces with Your Mercy
To make them remove the masks that the world sold them
Giving illusion that all can be bought
So that they learned the lies of the world which doesn’t want God
You are so close to me, in Your Passion on the cross
I see how much Your Mercy bleeds today
And I beseech You, Good Jesus, in my prayer
To make the crosses that still stand fast in my world
And move indifferent hearts with Your Grace
Give us, oh, Lord, the pilgrims who love You
The words of a beseeching prayer for stubborn sinners
To bring them grace with the Hour of Your Divine Mercy
So that they weren’t punished with the hand of Your Justice
When at last they want to kneel but they do not find Your cross.
I am looking for Your Countenance, Jesus
Staring at Your face, Jesus
Adorned with painters’ artistic visions on the canvas
I learn their thoughts and feelings
Contained in the lines of their drawings
How could they have painted You but with their own vision
If they hadn’t seen Your Living Countenance?
They painted You with their love and talent
It took years to create icons with prayer
They were above human imperfection
Looking for the beauty of Your Divine Countenance
Today I stare at Your face, Jesus
And look for Your Countenance in other human faces
I look for love in them, for faith and hope
For knowing the mystery of human life
And I try to find You in facial features of fellow men
I pass by sad faces, deep in thoughts
And I respect the sadness of their eyes
I pass by the crippled people, sick
And I respect the pain of their daily existence
I pass by the lonely old age and I bow with respect
I recognize Your sorrowful Countenance in other people
Your hope - in children’s faces
Your smile - in joyous, wise priests
Your meditation - in people fighting for goodness
You are like a walking stick in merciful hands
I see Your sadness when we don’t call You
I see Your Countenance in the mystery of human hearts
You know it, though it’s deeply hidden from the eyes
Please Lord, make my heart in its mercy
Be filled with enchantment of Your presence in every man.
The Book of Truth
So many words wreathe around us
So many books, filled with words
Hundreds of words cheated us
Many books lured us with illusions
With human zeal, we look for the words of truth
And reach for new books on the shelves
The truth that we find, becomes illusive
The words that seemed wise, sound empty today
We feel that there is the Truth, written down somewhere
But life still looks for the truth of this world
As if it wanted to know the instruction for life’s mystery
How to become happy here and now, on earth
The time of disappointment will come, or maybe, Lord’s grace
When we, hurt with the words from the shelves of this world
Will reach for the Book of Truth, The Holy Scripture of The Lord
And the Truth will speak, with the words of eternal life
And the heart, like a gate, will open up for the life of Jesus
Then we send a beseeching request to Heaven:
Give us, Good Lord, such a length of life
That we wouldn’t pass away, with the Book of Truth, half - opened.
A sign of immortality
Mortal is my body, like withering flowers
And transitory is the world that I live in
Original sin is my feature
And You, Lord, are unknown eternity for me
I came out of darkness of the human womb
And my spirit is dressed in poor garment
My joys are just dying-away flashes
And You, Lord, are the Eternal Light
Despite the darkness that touches me
And poverty of spirit, overweighed with senses
Despite fears of my human nature
I look for the kingdom of light, Your Kingdom, Lord
I keep strange memory inside, adorned with hope
Of a mysterious, loving kiss of the Father
Who, saying good-bye to a child that sets off on a hard way
Doesn’t abandon him, with oblivion of the heart
Feeling unable to cross the border of eternity
And entangled in earthly matters strongly
I lift up my mortal prayer to You, Lord
With faith that our love will meet under the cross
You joined my mortality and Your eternity, Lord
With the Cross, the sign of Your Son
My world built the Cross out of dry wood
And You put the promise of eternity on it
The Love, poured out of eternity, pierced with the human cross
Flowed over the earth as the food of the Eucharist, the redeeming manna
It answered with Mercy against the cruel violence
Pointing to the way that joins mortality with eternity.
Confession of the conscience
I apologize to You, Jesus, for my love
That is sometimes clumsy, fearful and shy
Still asking for gifts impatiently
The love that forgets about graces, granted free
I apologize for love that is naive with desire
Looking for comfort more than for the offering
While You want me to have Veronica’s courage
And to stand by You, carrying the salvation cross
I apologize for the days adorned with egotism
Hungry for their own, daily joys
And I apologize for the words: give me this, Lord
As if I didn’t see Your hands, nailed to the cross
I apologize to You, Jesus, for the years spiritually empty
And for my life’s garden, sowed with sorrow
And for my blind eyes when You show a bouquet of holy roses
The Rosary of Your Mother, the prayer for fellow men’s salvation
I apologize for my prayers, scattered like birds sometimes
Words flew up but the soul was out of focus
And You looked for silence, for the heart in adoration
When You wanted to talk to me about Your Love
Today I want to thank You for Your patient Love
It flowed down with grace, with a rapid flame
And though there is more weakness in me than strength in a giant
I trust in Your Love which lifts me up like an eagle.
Feast of the Dead
Cemetery
It seems to be a large garden
Covered with colorful flowers
A town of mysterious people, fast asleep
With little houses, without kitchens and living rooms
On every one, there is the owner’s name
Strange houses without doors and windows
The doors, once shut with concrete
Never open again
Their mute dwellers rest in peace
Only the trees play the same tunes
With humming leaves and boughs
The dwellers of other concrete houses
Pay visits to them
Those who can still open their doors and windows
They light up lamps, put flowers
Talk to them but don’t sing
How can you sing when your eyes are full of tears?
Water flows down from the cleaned tombs
It gets mixed up with human feelings, with prayer
A hand gesture on a marble slab, a sigh
Silence
The dwellers of this cemetery town
Protect their secret, even from the close ones
Eternal rest for them, our last look
And we leave the colorful town of those asleep
The town of our future.
16.10.2011. During the Holy Mass, in my heart, I saw Jesus on the cross. He was surrounded with light. Suddenly the light almost went out, only marking some fragments of Jesus’ body with metallic reflections. Jesus’ silhouette became dark, it got melted with the blackness of the cross. Then, in this image, there appeared golden, brilliant rays coming out of His wounds on the head, hands, feet and heart. They looked like bright, golden arrows on the dark cross. I would like so much to see such a painting somewhere in a temple …
The Congregation
Staring at Your heart, Jesus
In the Eucharist, raised high
I should cry out loud: I love You
But my mouth just whispers silently
As if I didn’t want to disturb
The space of Love, filled with Your Person
I desire this moment to last
And to be determined with the holy time of eternity
With the blessed time of the Miracle of Transfiguration
When the Angels sing: Alleluia
And the saints bow with adoration
During these holy, earthly moments
I am filled with joy, seeing the faithful beside me
And it is they that I want to give the leading voice
In the choir, singing: I love You, Lord
Oh, Jesus, how great the grace of pilgrimage is
When we experience the unity of the faithful
I raise my thanksgiving prayer to You, Jesus
For the gift of loving people who stand beside me
For the faces whose feelings and life I don’t know
But who are so close to me in spirit
For the hands held out, as a sign of peace
Although they are not the hands of earthly relation
But we are united as a congregation that You bless, Lord
With Your own Body and Blood in the Holy Offering
Making us one family in the Spirit of Yours.
A doubt
When we stand by the bank in doubt
Staring into the river current with fear
We look for a boat that will take us
To the other bank where hope awaits
We can’t avoid such banks
Only empty hearts aren’t afraid to drown
Our nature is woven with earthly values
So we often choose the wrong boat
And though we want to reach the bank of hope
We flow down the current of doubts
The boat that we trusted so much
Turned out to be a paper boat
There is one boat that sails toward the light of hope
To the bank where doubts are gone
And it is not a vessel in full splendor
But just a boat with Jesus, asleep
When you entrust your life then
You won’t avoid threatening storms, or rapid waves
And not once, you will cry, like the Lord’s disciples:
Jesus, wake up, the boat is sinking!
And even if you had Peter’s courage for a moment
Running over the water toward Jesus, in trust
You will choke with fear, like he did
But Jesus’ hand will pull you out of depth
Fear and doubt are frequent guests of human nature
But the real grace is faith and trust in God
So when in doubt, just cry: Jesus, I am drowning!
And wait, for He will run over to you with love.
Gifts and presents
We adorn our life with mutual offerings
Of unexpected gifts and anniversary presents
Flowers and decorative boxes come from hand to hand
Sometimes a present seems too expensive, sometimes poor
A humble man appreciates every little sign of memory
A conceited one feels disappointed when a present is cheap
And so it usually happens with human gratitude
Little heart wants a lot, for a big one, a human, friendly gesture is enough
There are gifts invisible for man’s eyes
They are packed somewhere in Heavenly space
God Himself sends them down to His ungrateful children
He expects them to recognize from WHOM they come
Isn’t good health or happy home a gift from God?
And the faith that we experience, grace of the Eucharist
No war and hunger in the country where you live
Prayer for you, when you carry your cross?
Use your heart when you read your book of life
Look for the pages where God put His seal
And though your eyes don’t see it, your conscience reminds you
Did your hands receive this gift with gratitude
Or maybe it looked to you like a poor present?
Consider in your heart the wasted gifts and those multiplied
And beseech God that you could, in your life
Recognize His holy gifts from common earthly presents.
Speak, my heart
I kneel before the Most Holy Sacrament
The merciful confessor of a soul
I can’t find proper words, oh, just a few sighs, sometimes
I listen for the voice of my heart, let it speak to the Lord
Let the deeply hidden sighs
Make the words out of the heart’s desire
Silence comes upon me, the tunes of the world die down
The heart, staring at the Lord, speaks with its own words
Father, I desire a prayer, so trustful as if it were the last one
Let a beseeching tear be a full-stop of each sentence
I ask for such love that it will never stop flowing
To people whom I can’t understand
And that I will not make accusations against them
I want to stare into Your eyes, Lord, so much
That I could spot Your smile and sorrow in them
And enjoy Your happiness, and pay back Your sadness
I want to look at Your picture, hanging in church or in my home
Like at the living person, and not a painted image
I want to talk to You, Lord, with a childlike enchantment
And I want to hear Your words, when You ask me for something
I know that human life is like a kaleidoscope of darkness and light
The time of soul’s sleep and the time when she wakes up
When You touch me, Lord, with the night of darkness
And I look for Your Son’s cross with my blind eyes
Then, Father, please send Angels to Your child
So that they could be my eye-sight
And could sing me a song about Your Mercy.
27.11.2011. During prayer, after the Mass, a beautiful vision went through my thoughts. People who were stepping aside from the confessional, after their confession, had light, shining garments on. Those who were coming up to the confessional, wore spotted, dirty garments. If we “resist” too long, against cleansing from sins in a good confession and avoid the Holy Sacraments, then our spiritual clothes are simply dirty. We can feel it ourselves inside. Months are passing and we still “wander” in these unclean clothes. Satan watches such people and offers them his beautiful, colorful, shining garments. These garments of his take form of our “excuses”, our looking for other ways of life, different from Sacramental life. These Satan’s “clothes” can seem to be very attractive like the clothes of career, fortune-telling that seemingly “comes true” or looking for our own freedom and comfort. Satan has lots of attractive clothes for us in his store. But nevertheless, he has no access to a man dressed in white robes.
Come into your little chamber
There is such a place within us, a peculiar, little chamber
With no windows, but the light is in
No fireplace, but it’s warm
We look for a shelter in there, disappointed with the world
To listen to the voice of God
It is where the deeply hidden feelings become alive
Those about love, as pure as the angels’ wings
And the prayer full of heat is flowing
We hear the words that we desire so much:
Child, I Am here, don’t doubt My Love
Then we get filled with power, with courage for life
And though we are so weak in our human nature
We want holiness and submission to the Will of God
God Himself has carved this little chamber for us
In the grotto of the body that gets weak easily
Mercy is on vigil there, not justice
And the holy gifts of the Spirit
Once we discover the beauty of this little chamber
We feel like a rich man with diamonds in his hand
We want to share their brilliance with others
When filled with love toward the world and people
Jesus holds the key to this chamber in His hand
He puts it into the lock of our free will
It is our will that opens the door to this lonely shelter
Where God is waiting for the encounter with you.
Love Provider
You tell me - I don’t have the grace of faith
I am like a tree, planted in the field
Waiting for wind, a sign of God’s power
It will bend me down and pull my roots out of shallow faith
Will you get filled with faith when the roots are dry?
A tree blooms, when raised toward the sun
Although it doesn’t reach the clouds and the sun
Nature nourishes it with rain and warmth
Man’s conceit wants to touch the sun
You tell me - I give love to my close ones
I don’t see your love with my eyes but I believe you
The sign of your love is devotion
Isn’t the Offering of Jesus’ Passion a devotion?
The priceless Gift of God’s Merciful Love?
There are people who climb the tops of the mountains
Looking for the experience of a mystery
What does a man feel when he kneels at the foot of the mountain
In a humble weakness and admires its beauty?
And though he didn’t reach its top
He feels joy and fascination over the work of the Creator
He sees His signs, the heart feels the taste of Love
When you feel hungry, do you dream about the whole loaf of bread?
Won’t a small slice fill your hunger?
You keep in memory your mother’s hand, passing it to you
And still feel its taste of this loving gesture, with years gone by
God also wants to feed you with His loving touch
Don’t look for God on top of your mind
In the world that pays homage to lazy satiety
Look for Him in the beauty of His signs of the surrounding nature
In the works of even the greatest artist
Who isn’t able to reflect it with a word or picture
Look for Him in human generosity
In the Offering of the Eucharist, in prayer that provides the grace of faith
If your heart can share love
How could we not believe in the Love Provider?
My King
My King doesn’t sit in the golden throne
The cross stuck in the rock is His throne
His scepter - the nails stuck in His body
The crown - the intertwined thorns that hurt His head
My King doesn’t have garments of royal purple
He is naked, torn off from earthly adornments
He, with His suffering, with humility of a servant
Attains power, with His glance of Love
My King doesn’t rule with the hosts of the army
That enslave nations with weapons and orders
He gives free choice to human will, and asks
Whether we want to dwell with Him in His Kingdom
My King is the immortal ruler
And is reborn at every Mass, feeding with His Body
Those who believe in the miracle of Resurrection
And in His victory over death and evil of this world
Only one King touched the earth with His feet
Dressed in the garments and body of man
He threw away the hate of revenge with the power of Love
And poured Mercy out of His lance-pierced side
My King drank a cup of bitterness in His Gethsemane
He yielded to His Father’s Will to save people for Truth
Which is the Word of Eternal Kingdom
And calls people, lost in the world, with Love
My King knows my thoughts, sufferings and daily life
He doesn’t rest in royal chambers
He stands before every despaired child
And wipes the tears when He hears a beseeching prayer
I kneel before my King every day
Not like a slave before a powerful master
It is my love that bends my knees, great longing of my soul
For the King who showed me the way of salvation with His Passion.
The unfinished picture
I saw a strange picture before my eyes
Gray-blue, unfinished
As if the painter walked away from the easel for a while
Looking for creative inspirations
On the picture - a stormy ocean, an empty beach
And just two people, the silhouettes without facial features
One of them had an anchor by his leg
The other dragged an iron ball, like a galley-slave
Both, daring, without hesitation, walked into the ocean
What did the painter want to convey, with this picture?
What was the stormy ocean for him?
Was it a life’s vision in the fight for survival?
Or a whirlpool that engulfs man?
Lonely, in thoughts, I stood before the picture
And tormenting fear was poured into my heart
Why did the man with an anchor plunge in the water bravely?
Why wasn’t the man with a heavy ball afraid to drown?
Suddenly an angel brought me an inspiration
The man with an anchor walked into the ocean in faith
That God will fix it against too dangerous waves
This anchor means our trust in God’s Commandments
They are our protection when the whirlpool of evil pulls us in
The man with an iron ball, believes in his own strength
And flows into the ocean of life, full of vain pride
For both of them … it is a fight for eternal survival
And suddenly … hope removed my anxiety:
When the painter comes back, with an inspiration from God
He will paint a boat, in addition, somewhere over the horizon
On the boat, the inscription will light up
With the words: Mercy keeps waiting.
Advent
I wait for You, Jesus
At this Advent time
So that You filled my longing with the joy of Nativity
I wait for light during dark nights
To leave my perdition, in the dark
During the holy confession
My waiting becomes my way
Where time disappears
It is the time of adoration of Your Mother’s life
The time to fly over to Bethlehem
My heart is filled with holy faith
In Your Second Coming, Jesus
And then You will wipe away all darkness with Your hand
And light will fill the earth
I wait for You, Jesus
And open the door of my soul widely
And though human fear turns into the memory
Of justice that judges our deeds
I wait for a miracle of the light of life
For the voice of Your Mercy
My soul runs out of me
As if she wanted to shorten the time of waiting
And raise up, all that is so weak and earthly in me
On the wings of mysterious power
Time is running short, hours strike in pains
My longing turns over the waiting for You, Lord
And becomes a great gift from You, Good Lord
So now my whole life is like this Advent time.
Glares of the world
Plenty of lights shine before people’s eyes
They lure like little fires and say: follow me
When we stare at the flowing water in the evening
In the waves, we can only see the reflected lights that stray
You think they are like signs
But when its source goes out, or a tree casts a shadow
They just become an illusion, a moment’s reflection
And you get engulfed by darkness again
Such seem to be the lights of this world
Careers in the flash-lights, illusion of the glare of wealth
Conceit, adorned with colorful lamps
These are the lights of this world’s theater and will go out some day
So easily does man mistake the lights reflected
For the source of light of Truth which never goes out
He confuses illusion, the lie of the lights reflected
With God, the Creator of the Eternal Light
May You, Lord grant that all people
Feel the Glare of Your ever-lasting Love
And let no will-o-the-wisp of this world
Lure people and lead them into darkness.
Heaven
Some believe in It, others are skeptics
These who believe, put trust in Jesus’ words
One day, a thought came to me unexpectedly
If God created Heaven, also for us, people
Then, in His design, He allows us to recognize
The beauty of His Heaven, also here on earth
What is Heaven, if not the love
That we share, saying: I love you
Isn’t It the hope in our solitude?
A helping hand, a smile, a friendly word
A strange beating of the heart, merciful tenderness
Even for all human weaknesses?
There is so much Heaven on this earth of ours
But we only need to enter It bravely
And look for beauty in nature, learn good words
Provide help for a sufferer, even a stranger
Experience joy out of love of giving away
Discard the misery of the heart that wants to overpower love
While musing over the thoughts of Heaven on earth
I thought, God, if I am ever worthy of Your Heaven
I will long for the goodness on earth
For daily Mass, for candles’ aroma and for the words of priests
For beloved people and ordinary, daily life
And I will ask God there for the grace for people to find Heaven on earth.
29.12.2011. Before the Mass, I was thinking how man, in his possibilities, can get closer to Jesus. Then I looked at the naked Jesus on the cross. We, people come to Him, “dressed” in our habits, minor sins that we don’t even try to get rid of. These “clothes” of ours don’t let our soul rise toward the Lord. Hence our dispersion, careless prayers, anxiety. Jesus is naked on the cross. He doesn’t hide. He gave away His life for our salvation. We always want to keep something for ourselves, to make excuses. So it is hard for our souls to free ourselves from these “clothes” and stand before the Lord, being naked and free from our life’s imperfections and give away our “clothes” to Him in order to be closer to Him and feel His presence. Our soul that Jesus can have contact with, is enveloped like a coco-nut. We must be determined to fight with our weaknesses, in the name of our love toward Him. Saints were the living testimony, when they abandoned sinfulness to demonstrate their love to Jesus, ready to annihilate their will, give away their “clothes” and stand before Him with naked soul that was sensitive enough to encounter Him. Jesus also touches the soul with many mystical experiences, she is defenseless against His Love. Saint Francis, dressed in his poor habit, is a good example of this. We may be far from sainthood, but there are, in our life, such habits, features of character, as criticism, egotism, that we should fight with. Every fight with ourselves gets us closer to Jesus, who is smiling although suffering. He sees and appreciates these “wars” against ourselves.
Colors of life
We weave our life like a rug on a loom
And choose colors out of the thread that time brought over
Our eyes enjoy the pattern and color on it
The gray that is intertwined there evokes reflection
We put the black of a sad mourning into the rug of our life
Out of a reel of black wool that fate lost somewhere
And when we look at the design, the image of past events
We enjoy the memory of color, joyous fun
But we wipe off tears, when touching the black softly
There is a place in the rug of life, solicitously woven
The place that you can’t forget about
It is woven out of signs that make life holy
They shine with the beauty of eternal life
These signs are the cross and Jesus’ manger
The Lights of Hope, lit up with the hand of God
Without them - our rug is like plain cloth
And even if it were woven out of precious thread
We will not see its colors when darkness of the night comes.
Answer
I still feel the taste of the Holy Communion in my mouth
And want to join my breath with the breath of my soul
While musing over the birth of the Lord in me
When a strange image touches me softly
This picture is not painted but covered with light and shadow
I see myself walking in a silent pilgrimage, no singing
Just the Adoration silence, solemn and serious
It surrounds the faithful like mysterious aura
A warm blow pulls me out of the people
And leads toward a narrow gate
Behind the gate, there is a garden full of soft greenery
Sprouts separate me from the pilgrims
They are arranged in crossbars
I feel like being in a big confessional
There is no time there, no hurry
A glaring but friendly light passes through the greenery
Creating a picture of light and shadow, painted with silence
In the soft greenery of the garden, that looks alive
I feel a presence of SOMEBODY, but I don’t see the person
A question breaks the silence …
It doesn’t reach my ears but gets deeply into the soul
The image vanishes …
And I, day and night, try to recall this question
I reach the depth of my soul but she asks for patience
I keep waiting for this day
For that light which poured peculiar trust into me
That I will recall His question, and give the answer some day.