The Christian honor

Stanisław Barszczak, The Christian honor

In this essay I was going to show you a postcard from Lesbos. This is a Greek island in the Northeast Aegean Sea off the coast of Turkey. Together with nearby uninhabited islets, it forms the regional unit of Lesbos and the municipality of Lesbos. In 2011, it had 86,436 inhabitants. Pope Francis had been on Lesbos first time in 2016. It is separated from Asia Minor by the Muzelim straits in the north and Mitilini in the east. It is characterized by a well-developed coastline. The Kaloni Bay cuts across the southwest coast, and the Jeras Bay cuts across the southeast coast. The surface of the island is mountainous (up to 968 m high). The capital and largest city of the island is Mytilene. The so-called geological and tourist peculiarity is Petrified Las, part of the global and European geoparks network. During his visit to Greece, on Sunday (December 5, 2021), the Pope will meet the migrants. Francis is to fly from Athens to the island of Lesbos, where there are currently about 2.5 thousand refugees. The Pope’s several-day journey to Cyprus and Greece is taking place. The 35th pilgrimage of Francis is marked by the ecumenical dialogue of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches and the migration crisis. Topics such as the Turkish occupation of Cyprus were also not avoided. During the pilgrimage, which lasts from Thursday to Monday (02-06.12.2021), the Pope will go to, among others once again to the religiously and culturally divided Cyprus or the Greek island of Lesbos, which has already become a symbol of the migration crisis in Europe. The island of Cyprus was divided during the Turkish invasion in 1974 into the northern part controlled and inhabited by the followers of Islam and the southern part inhabited by Orthodox Greeks. Catholics there are only about 38,000. The Vatican had previously announced that the issue of division would be raised during the papal visit because – as emphasized – it is an „open wound”. The Pope recently said: „Today the Mediterranean has become a ‚great cemetery’ for migrants who lost their lives in it.” I will come to Lesvos again, convinced that the sources of common life will only flourish in brotherhood and integration. Together. There is no other way and and I will come to you with this desire,” he said. Francis will be in Athens on December 4-5, 2021… The French Bishops’ Conference announced on Thursday (December 2, 2021) that Pope Francis had accepted the resignation of the Archbishop of Paris, Michel Aupetit. This is sad news: the Clergyman last week proposed his resignation after French media reports of his relationship with the woman. I will give a happier one: who or what can separate us from the love of Christ? And the field of Christian love knows no bounds. This was already confirmed by Alfred Nobel with his immortal will to donate his legacy to mankind. „The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: – – one part to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction …” (Excerpt from the will of Alfred Nobel). The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2021 is awarded to the novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.” Ernest Miller Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize „for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style.” This latter is writing as follows: They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason. There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it. Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another. All thinking men are atheists, said the author of „Who Beats the Ring”. The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it. Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth. And sometimes we still run away into cowardice. Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination. Learning to suspend your imagination and live completely in the very second of the present with no before and no after is the greatest gift a soldier can acquire… Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter’s honor, noted Ernest Hemingway. All stories, if continued far enough, end in death. Especially us Poles in the modern times of that time, listening to the brilliant media as if we were stroking our amethyst stones and waiting for death. But let us thank God for this one too the time when we have to give something of ourselves, when we do not hide our emotions and enjoy small gestures full of kindness. Aufully sorry, a real storyteller is hiding something, I ponder. Is the hell like a beautiful vacuum filled with wealthy monogamists, all powerful and members of the best families all drinking themselves to death? I cannot say that. Dying is a very simple thing. I’ve looked at death and really I know. If I should have died it would have been very easy for me. Quite the easiest thing I ever did. But the people at home do not realize that. They suffer a thousand times more, like I said. We do not live for each other at that moment, what a pity … We die, it is a big grace for reflection living, I hope. Since we are home for good, we probably suffer more. Personally, I went to Athens this time. Because we live in Europe for God. And that’s good, because God has made something new. On a short day, this December nights of 2021, we welcome in Athens, the homeland of cultures in Europe, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, the Pope of Christian believers. We do not live for ourselves, but we are the temple of the Lord in the East in the meantime, and we look towards Athens. Hence, God has allowed us to look westward to admonish him on gaining eternal salvation. „Jerusalem, put away the garment of your sorrow and affliction, and put on the glorious garments of glory forever given to you by the Lord … Lift up, Jerusalem! Stand high, look to the east, see your children gathered from the east at the word of the Holy One. until sunset, overjoyed that God remembered them. They departed from you on foot, driven by enemies, and God brought them glorified, as if on a royal throne … ” It is late autumn, so it is probably the most mature one. At the command of the Lord, forests and trees, which no longer smell this fall, are now judging Israel, judging us Christians of the beginning of the third millennium. God leads Israel and us with joy, he leads us to the light of his glory with his righteousness and mercy. That’s the Bible. Tomorrow, i.e. Saturday, the meeting of Pope Francis with bishops, priests in the Cathedral of St. Dionysius at 5:15 pm. In Sunday I will be at Polish Catholic Mission to celebrate the holly Mass. I haven’t managed to get a ticket, but maybe there would be some possibility of getting a ticket for Late Afternoon Sunday Mass with Francis. But I will still leave Athens very grateful for the precious time donated to me by Divine Providence. And I pray with my readers constantly for the people of the modern world that they may be clean and flawless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that we bring through Jesus Christ, for the glory and honor of God.