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Albertyn
The Red Army is here. They’ve taken the town. The Soviets are here.” The news spread like panic through the small village of Albertyn, Poland, on October 17, 1939. I had just finished Mass and breakfast on that memorable morning, when bewildered parishionerscame to the mission to tell me the news. It was news we had feared ever since it had become clear that Germany and Russia were dividing up Poland. But now our fears were a reality. The Red Army was in Albertyn.
One by one the parishioners came crowding to the mission to ask my opinion, to seek my advice, looking for a word of hope or consolation. They were worried about their families. They were worried about their sons in the Polish Army, or their husbands inthe government. They were worried about their children and what would happen to them all. I tried to be reassuring, but what could I really say? I had no answers to their immediate questions of fact, and how could I reassure them about the future or comfortthem in the midst of the turmoil that had overtaken the town? What could I tell them except to pray and to trust in God?
Even in that I felt foolish. I had been with them a little more than a year; I had been ordained a little more than two years. How inexperienced and immature I felt at this sudden crisis of such proportions. Supported by the routines of a parish priest,I had ministered to these people in their daily problems, helped them, consoled them, said Mass and brought Communion to the sick, anointed the dying. I had made many friends among them, and they trusted me, young as I was—the young American in their midst.But the war changed everything. The crises they faced now were not family quarrels or sickness or the loss of a loved one. The advice they wanted now was not about things common to every parish and learned by every priest. Suddenly, our whole world, theirsand mine, had changed.
It is impossible to describe the feeling that comes over you at such a time. The feeling that somehow, in an instant of time, everything is changed and nothing again will ever be quite the same. That tomorrow will never again be like yesterday. That thevery trees, the grass, the air, the daylight are no longer the same, for the world has changed. It is a feeling impossible to describe, and yet one that every wife who has lost a husband knows well, one that every child who has tasted evil for the first timeor faced a sudden crisis has experienced. It is that feeling that leaves the heart saying, “Oh, if only I could turn back the clock to before it happened, if only it had never happened, if only I had it to do over again.”
My fears were vague that morning, though the feeling of inadequacy was very real. And the fears themselves quickly ceased to be vague and became quite real in turn. Arrests soon followed the arrival of the Red Army. Property was confiscated. There werecountless interrogations, threats, and intimidations, as the Communists endeavored to round up everyone they considered a threat to them or to their new order.
In all this, the Church itself became a special target for attack. The Oriental rite church at our mission was closed immediately; the Latin rite parish was allowed to function for a while for those few families who dared to attend. The rest of our missionbuildings were taken over by the Red Army and used to quarter troops. A propaganda campaign was mounted against the Church and against the priests; we labored under a campaign of constant harassment and incidents large and small. And it was effective. Eventhe most faithful became cautious about visiting the church or seeing a priest. Young people dropped away quickly. Workers soon learned they could lose their jobs if they insisted upon attending religious services. Our activity as priests was limited strictlyto the church; we could not go to the people unless they came to us. Few of them dared to do so. Soon our ministry consisted solely of saying Mass on Sunday for a few old people. The Jesuit mission, which had flourished for ten years in Albertyn, was destroyedin a matter of weeks.
Again and again, as I watched all this happen, I had to force myself not to think of the question that kept returning unbidden to mind: “Why has God allowed this evil to happen?” Why persecutions? If God must allow natural disasters, or even wars becauseof human failings, why can’t he at least allow his flock to be shepherded and comforted during such calamities? Surely he could defend and protect his flock instead of having it singled out for special attack such as this. The perplexity and pain grew withinme as I saw the visible Church, once strong and organized, dissolve under the attacks of these invaders and watched the people grow estranged, pressured ceaselessly into accepting this new order. And what of the young people who were literally torn away fromtheir parents and forced to join the Young Pioneers or Komsomol organizations, taught to report on any “deviations” of the old people at home? How frustrating it was to hear the Church and priests and religious openly slandered in Communist propaganda, andto know that the children had to learn and repeat atheist doctrines every day in school and in their classwork. How could God allow all this? And why?
I did not blame the people. I knew they had not lost their faith but were just afraid right now to practice it openly. They came to me at night to ask how they should conduct themselves, to ask whether it was wrong to cooperate with the new order, to askif they should let their children join the Komsomol organizations, or whether they themselves should join the labor unions. And finally, they came to ask whether, under the circumstances, it was wrong not to come to church on Sundays or feast days. And whatcould I tell them? How much heroism could I ask of them? How much did God, who had allowed all this to happen, expect of these simple, ordinary people of the backwoods of Albertyn?
It was agony for me as a priest to ask these questions, but it was impossible not to ask them. They crowded to mind in times of prayer, they came at Mass, they came all through the days and nights. And I’m sure they came not to me alone. It was not a crisisof faith, any more than it is for anyone who has ever suffered a great loss or faced a family tragedy and asked himself the same questions. It was rather a crisis of understanding, and no one need be ashamed to admit he has been troubled by it. Anyone who hasdone much reading in the Old Testament is familiar with those questions. “How long, O Lord, how long will you allow our enemies to triumph over us?” Most especially in the days after David, in the ages of captivity, when the glories of the golden age of Solomonwere but a memory by the rivers of Babylon and Israel had been broken and led away in shame, does the question recur again and again. To Israel, surely, it must have seemed the end of the world, the end of the covenant, the end of God’s special care for hischosen people.
Yet, from our vantage point in history, we know it was really quite the opposite. Israel’s troubles were in truth a manifestation of Yahweh’s special providence, his special love for his chosen people. Like a fond and loving father, he was trying to weanthem away from trust in kings or princes or in armies or the powers of this world. He was trying to teach them, again and again, that their faith must only be in him alone. He was leading them, through every trial and in every age, to the realization that Godalone is faithful in all tribulations, that he alone is constant in his love and must be clung to, even when it seems all else has been turned upside down. Yahweh is still the Lord behind the events and happenings of this world; he can be found there, and hemust be sought in them, so that his will may be done. It was he who had chosen them, not they him. It was he who had first made the covenant with them, who had led them and cared for them, shepherded and fed and guarded them in every tribulation. Their partin the covenant must be to trust in him alone, to remain always faithful, to look to him and not to other gods, to rely on him and not on rulers or on chariots or bowmen. He was ever faithful, and so in turn must they be, even when he led them where they wouldnot go, into a land they knew not, or into exile. For he had chosen them, they were his people, he would no more forget them than a mother could forget the child of her womb—yet neither, in their turn, must they ever forget him.
