Prompted by Miłoszean thoughts—and by interminable winter to
get out of my house—I went to Mass this morning, the Eighth Sunday
in Ordinary Time, the previous Seven of which I had remained warmly abed. (So it was an Extraordinary Sunday to me.) To
the Cathedral of St. Paul. I do miss my Polish church-going, its regularity,
its solemnity and gilded Otherness, its language, both fleetingly familiar and
yet largely incomprehensible—the strangeness of the tongue, thus seeming holier
than English, more magical. Polish is not liturgical Latin, of course, but foreign-sounding
at least, suggestively sacred. The second reading was from 1 Corinthians 4:1-5,
passages which coincidentally recalled my previous lesson from Katyń: “It is the Lord who judges me….who will bring
to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of
the heart. Then every man will receive his commendation from God.” Or
condemnation, as the case may be. Thus the powerful, the tyrannical, the
brutal, and the murderous ought to be reminded, warned and forewarned.
Behind the altar at St. Paul’s are shrines to the Saints of
the Nations, including one to the Slavs, with statues of St. Cyril and
Methodius (translators of the Gospels to what became known as Old Church
Slavonic) and with windows depicting Stanislaus (Patron Saint of the Poles) and
Wenceslaus (Patron Saint of the Czechs). I offered Polish prayers for Ukrayna,
peace to the sons and daughters of the formidable Cossacks, whose recent
courage, resistance, resilience, and restraint in the streets and in the Maidan
in Kiev impress and inspire us distant and mongrel Slavs.
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| Shrine to Saint Cyril and Methodius Cathedral Church in St. Paul |
