Catholic Exchange

The Power of Baptism!

Written by

Mark Shea

in

2 Corinthians 10:4

For the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds.

Joseph Stalin once sneered, “How many divisions does the Pope have?”  He was a materialist and supremely confident that the only real things in the world were power, steel, and death.  He presided over an ideology that once held a third of the world’s population in its thrall.  He is now dust and the empire he dominated fell down in a heap less than 40 years after he went to face his Maker with the blood of tens of millions on his hands.  (“One death is a tragedy,” he had once said, “a million deaths is a statistic.”) As he breathed his last, a certain Polish priest a few hundred miles to the west of Stalin was engaged in a long, slow and stubborn process of refusing to regard himself or any human person as a statistic.  He was also refusing to adopt the Western European and American faith that the cure for communist materialism was hedonistic materialism, that the atheistic vacuum of the East could be filled by the spiritual emptiness of the West, or that the Soviet worship of centralized power could be healed by the American worship of individualistic selfishness.  In short, the priest (who became Pope John Paul II) held fast to the truth that we do not fight hell fire with hell fire but that we quench it — with the waters of baptism.  The devil always presents us with two bad options.  Reject them both and receive only what Jesus gives.

Comments

One response to “The Power of Baptism!”

  1. Catherine Avatar
    Catherine

    Just this morning I had the great luck of hearing a radio program dedicated to the history of the Church (I’m writing from Italy) and today the focus was on the Church in Poland under the Soviet regime–and essentially the program was about what Mr. Shea so succinctly stated in the above article, so I am really surprised for this conincidence. The program (conducted by Angela Pellicciari) today featured the hon. Rocco Buttiglione, professor, philosopher, member of the European Parliament, and exceptional eye-witness to events in Poland through the ’70’s and ’80’s up to the fall of the Soviet Union. He was a very close friend of John Paul II, as he is of Joseph Ratzinger. The story about Solidarnosc, Walesa, Jaruzeski, the Soviet tanks on the Polish border and the Polish Pope in Rome is fairly well known…but today, Buttiglione spoke for over an hour without interruptions telling a bigger story that is extraordinary but not so well known, if known at all. Anyway, it was a story that seemed suddenly revelant to me with regard to everything that is happening (or could likely happen) in our own country in America. I think I can fairly sum up the essence of Buttiglione’s story this way: that in those dire times for Poland, at one point the people came eye to eye with the truth about their reality, which was not about fighting for freedom or fighting against comunism. It boiled down to: “with Christ” (which meant freedom, and then everything else–faith, family, peace etc.) or “against Christ” (and so, against their very own country–and against themselves). And the Polish Pope made them understand that by choosing Christ, they must also choose Christ’s way of confronting the world–that is, not by using the swords of anger and hate against the perpetrators. Buttiglione spoke of the moment when this transpired–it was when the Polish people were greatly tempted to fight back with violence (in Dec. 1980 I believe it was) and Wojtyla, during an Angelus said something like: ‘Enough! Too much Polish blood has already been spilled over the centuries’. And with this his countrymen understood that they were to fight without fighting–by forgiving, by putting up with and by praying and keeping tightly united around the Madonna of Czestochowa (apparently Walesa wore a picture of the Madonna of Czestochowa on his chest) and going ahead anyway, moving forward peacefully but resolutely, without fear. Several months later the Pope would be shot in St. Peter’s square–a shot that certainly proved fatal for the Soviet Union if not for the Pope.
    Buttiglione told of a very interesting detail tied to the millenial celebration of the Baptism of Poland in 1966, a celebration that had been organized and officiated by Card. Wyszynski but something terrible happened around the time of the celebration and which seemed to foretell a different kind of baptism for Poland, and unfortunately I cannot remember what the event was, I just remember thinking, “a baptism by fire”.
    Buttiglione also told the story of a statue depicting a victorious Christ holding a Cross which miraculously survived the destruction of Warsaw during WWII. It was found buried deep under the rubble of a church. The statue, he said, had been like a light for the Poles in the post-war years of the Soviet comunist regime (and the words of our Lord come to mind: “In the world you shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” Doesn’t that sound just like something Pope John Paul II would have said?). So…with Christ, or against Christ.
    I think of the iron cross that was pulled from the rubble of the World Trade Center. Is it not the same sign that the Poles were given from out of the destruction of Warsaw? And isn’t it the same message? So I guess we really do have every reason for being cheerful despite all the disconcerting news.
    I apologize for the length of this.

Leave a Reply

More posts