THE
P RTAL
December 2018
Joanna Bogle gives us an example
R ecently I
Christmas
celebrations
Page 4
read about nurses in a busy hospital being upset
because they were told there must be no Christmas festivities
of any kind. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day must be treated as
ordinary working days. This hospital, they were told firmly, is funded
through the state system and any outward show of religion is banned.
Sounds
familiar?
This
report came from Poland in
the 1950s. The Communist
system was seeking to reinvent
the nation on the basis of an
enforced ideology.
The nurses had to attend
lectures on political themes in
tune with the government and
with what they were firmly
told was the normal modern
view of things.
But there is something else
to this story. One of the senior
nurses, a tutor, decorated the
tables in the refectory in their
nurses’ hostel on Christmas
Eve and made the room
festive.
na
wri tes
I don’t need to press the
point; there is no need to give
in to anti-Christian campaigns
and every reason not to.
The people in Communist-
dominated Poland kept the
faith and God gave them a
magnificent gift: the heroic
Archbishop Karol Wojtyla,
elected as Pope John Paul in
1978, one of the great figures
of modern times, under whom
Communism crumbled.
And we have something
the Poles didn’t have; we have
their example.
So where does that leave us
in Britain today?
She had saved up various
The lesson to be learned is
sweets and treats, and when
about courage, about holding
the young women arrived for
on to what is true, about
their evening meal they found
being faithful and loyal to the
her in her best dress, urging
Blessed Hanna Chrzanowska Church and to be cheerful
them to hurry and change and
and forward-looking. Even
be ready for the Christmas Wigilia, the traditional when we are told we can’t celebrate Christmas in some
Polish Christmas Eve. They all had a wonderful public facility.
celebration.
You are invited to join the
The young nurses never forgot this, and the story
Rosary Fellowship
became something of a legend, inspiring hope wherever
For full details and an application form
it was told. It became part of the whole adventure of
please contact Br Robert Augustine at:
Poland’s defiance of enforced ideology and the final
The Retreat of Our Lady and St Benedict,
triumph of Christian culture. And that nursing tutor –
63a Wells Road, Walsingham NR22 6DX
who went on to do heroic work organising a system of
[email protected]
01328 820130
voluntary home-nursing and care for the housebound
and elderly across Krakow – was beatified in 2018:
Please could clergy bring this initiative to the attention of any of
Blessed Hanna Chrzanowska.
your people who do not have access to this publication