The nation needs the truth
Fr. Ireneusz Skubiś
Our thoughts are going back to the 80s, to the Polish Coast. Our rooting is important because it can tell us a lot; whereas, first of all, it tells us about the truth which has ontological and basic dimensions and which is constantly taking place in human life and is its essence. If somebody fails to learn the truth, in fact he fails to meet his life. It concerns both life of particular people and social life as well as the national one. And if nations failed to learn the truth – they lost. They lost their greatest values and they lost their prominent people and their roots.
Therefore, these years of fight for truth are so important. The Polish Church has always fought for it; especially in the person of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński who once said: ‘Non possumus!’ – We mustn’t! We mustn’t continue on tolerating anarchy and we mustn’t continue on tolerating a lie! And he preferred to go to prison than reject truth; because even when we must pay for the truth with our freedom, we must defend it. Today in our homeland there is a dispute over the truth. Everybody is asking about the truth and, first of all, they ask: Are you telling us the truth? What is more, they ask: Why aren’t you telling us the truth? And also: Why are you telling lies?...This all is very difficult to experience; for, it is a kind of suffocation with a falseness and a lie. We have taken up so many attempts to investigate the truth. Katyń is the symbol here. Since those times we have been registering a total lie which concerns our homeland and also Europe and the world. While waiting for the truth trustfully, we were listening to the statement about the Smolensk tragedy. However, this ‘truth’ is not able to defend itself. So, it is good that there are people who have stood on the guard of defending the truth. And a battle for the truth started again and it is still going on. And we must be still shaking off the falseness all the time and also this official falsification which forced many supposedly honest people to tell lies, tell and write about the untruth. But a thin string of the truth is still speaking because it concerns the very essence and life – this Jesus’ sentence: ‘And I tell you....’. And although it sometimes moans, it is still heard. And we mustn’t dispute with the truth because the dispute with the truth does not exist.
In the recent days something knocked at our doors and all of us stood at attention. A 6-month-old baby got lost. Searches and shouts: Where is she? What happened to the baby? And it is a real shout. But, unfortunately, the truth will not be convenient to everybody...And those who can shout for the baby, can they shout for unborn children who are killed by the world? After all these are human beings! It is harm to very many human beings. The loud shout should also be raised in the defence of those who are subjected euthanasia and die because of the lack of medicaments, hunger or cold.
‘You who have done harm...’ a poet said. We remember this poem which appeared on the Polish Coast. Today we repeat these words which are a kind of warning: ‘You who have done harm through a lie, through the fact that you do not want to tell the truth, that you take money for telling untruth, that you dress yourself with a beautiful Piar in order to gain higher privileges – ‘do not be safe’ because the truth will not allow for keeping it in check.
Following the teaching of our excellent compatriot Blessed John Paul II, we put our ear to Jasna Góra walls and we hear a clear tone of anxiety in them. What shall we do? How to save our Polish boat? What is the most important? Mary is still repeating it to us: ‘Whatever my Son tells you, you do it’ (see J2.5)
So, the rescue is the return to God: the return to Decalogue, to honesty and to those values which have always been decisive for us; the return to a good Polish school, to a good state university, to a high dignity of a teacher, especially an academic teacher; the return to the Polish land, to love of every square meter of our homeland; the return to ownership, to the national culture, to a good name of Poles which is so often humiliated....it is a loud call for the return...
We are defending ourselves against dangers which are coming one after another. This defence are, among the others, 305 thousands of signatures collected by our weekly in the defence of the cross in the Polish Seym – the basic value which is endangered by fighting atheists also on the forum of the Polish parliament. Where does it come from and whose purpose is it.... it is also a fight for the place of the Television ‘Trwam’ on the digital multiplex. The shout of over million Poles in this injustice is a great sign. It is also a call for a referendum in the matter of ACTA and a great sign that a man needs freedom and the truth. And there are a lot of such shouts. In this great care for the truth and for how we are supposed to live, we, Polish priests who are rooted in the great breath of freedom of the 80s, today we are calling to God’s Mother of Jasna Góra, together with the whole nation: ‘Under your protection we resort, Holy Mother of God...’.
(AA)
"Niedziela" 08/2012