IN THE SEARCH OF THE TRUTH WHICH FREES
Fr. IRENEUSZ SKUBIŚ
We are after great experiences: Triduum Sacrum and Sunday of Lord’s Resurrection. These Holy Days were leading us into the saving drama of Christ who was humiliated, beaten, finally killed on the cross and buried into a grave, but also into a mystery of the resurrection Light – a reality of an empty grave and the presence of Risen Christ. These great events were entering our consciousness very deeply and were pulsing with a kind of their inner voice, a voice of conscience. I want to draw attention to this voice. For, we remember what John Paul II said in Skoczów: that in Poland people of conscience are needed the most – today he would surely say that the whole world needs people of conscience. The human conscience is very readable in the brightness of Risen Christ, shining with his inner beauty and unusual love which is also merciful love. We must constantly ask about this conscience today, first of all, about the conscience of those who make great strategic decisions concerning other people who decide about such matters as human life, especially the life of the defenceless and the weakest. In the human conscience there is a fate of the human morality. If a man is to remain as a responsible human being, he must follow the right conscience. Risen Christ greets his disciples to whom he reveals himself, saying the words: ‘Peace with you!’ These words are just said to the deepest human conscience. For, somebody who says about inner peace is a man of conscience. Christ brought this peace to the world: the peace coming from what is called inner justice and righteousness. We are thinking about the human conscience today as well when we are experiencing the second anniversary of the crash of the Polish plane transporting the President of the Polish Republic and the representatives of the Polish political elite for the celebration in Katyń. Can it be peaceful in all of us? Will the words: ‘Peace with you!’ of Risen Christ introduce God’s peace in the hearts of all of us or will they cause a commotion and fear, cause a sense of guilt and the qualms of conscience? May God’s Peace live in the hearts of everybody who was so close to what was happening on the Smolensk plane? Were these hearts friendly, which were following this special flight? ....For, the President of the Polish Republic and people assisting him wanted to pay a tribute to those who had been murdered on an inhuman land, commemorate them, unite in a common prayer for them – in Katyń there was to supposed be an Eucharist celebrated with the participation of the bishop of the Polish Army. There were only these, deeply human intentions of the great pilgrimage to the graves of Katyń martyrs, to a place of a slaughter of Polish officers murdered by Soviet killers. ‘Peace with you!’ – they wanted to say it to those who were killed in 1940, greet them with the words of Risen Christ who had surely led them into the flats prepared for them in Heaven. Today, two years after this tragedy we are standing with dramatic questions about conscience, love to God and our neighbour, which has also suffered harm. If there was no hatred, some bad associations, then also this visit-pilgrimage would have been prepared in a better way. There was a clash between the forces of love to homeland and the nation with the forces of evil.
We are standing towards the mystery of this unbelievable tragedy still with a great pain but also with great expectance for learning the truth – the truth about ourselves, our conscience; for, conscience cannot be subordinated to a political party or be subjected to the orders of the authorities of this world. Conscience is the farthest-reaching objectivism.
A man is destined to the truth; he needs it and has a right to it; for trustfulness towards each other and unity are built only on the truth. Therefore, it is astonishing that there are people who say: leave it alone, it will not return the life to the dead, let’s leave it like that. We all have a duty to aim at uncovering the truth, especially when there are premises saying that it is possible to reach the truth, when there appear scientists, people of the objective world who offer us their help in learning the truth. Today remaining in the brightness of the Lord’s Resurrection, we also know that God who knows everything will explain it anyway. Let’s not expect that it will be different. And the truth will always have a redeeming power. ‘The truth will redeem you’ (J 8, 32) – said Christ. The truth about each of us, revealed by God will have this redeeming power, as much as the truth about Christ frees us from the power of a sin. Somebody said at a grave one day: It is not your grave, it is your cradle. And today we can also say so at the graves of those who were killed at Smolensk: Your death will become a cradle – a cradle of the rebirth of Poland, a real Resurrection of our homeland...
(AA)
"Niedziela" 17/2012