Catholics From Poland

"Kupićby cię mądrości za drogie pieniądze, Która (jeśli prawdziwie mienią) wszystkie żądze, Wszystkie ludzkie frasunki umiesz wykorzenić."

"A my rozumy swoje przedsię udać chcemy, Hardzi między prostaki, że nic nie umiemy."

"O mnie Moskwa i będą wiedzieć Tatarowie I, różnego mieszkańcy świata, Anglikowie."

"Zyskiem człowiek zwać musi, w czem nie popadł szkody."

"I write in the same fashion that I live: My rhymes are drunken, for I love to drink. I like a revel and I like a jest, Sometimes a woman: such things fill my verse. And why pretend? The priest who strives to teach Me moderation, hides a devil within."

"Gdzieśkolwiek jest, jeśliś jest, lituj mej żałości. A niemożeszli w onej dawnej swej całości, Pociesz mię, jako możesz, a staw się przedemną, Lubo snem, lubo cieniem, lub marą nikczemną."

"Czas doktór każdemu."

"My, nieposłuszne, Panie, dzieci Twoje, W szczęśliwe czasy swoje Rzadko Cię wspominamy, Tylko rozkoszy zwykłych używamy."

"Wy, którzy pospolitą rzeczą władacie, A ludzką sprawiedliwość w ręku trzymacie, Wy mówię, którym ludzi paść poruczono I zwierzchności nad stadem bożem zwierzono, Miejcie to przed oczyma zawżdy swojemi, Żeście miejsce zasiedli boże na ziemi, Z którego macie nie tak swe własne rzeczy, Jako wszytek ludzki mieć rodzaj na pieczy. A wam więc nad mniejszymi zwierzchność jest dana: Ale i sami macie nad sobą pana, Któremu kiedyżkolwiek z spraw swych uczynić Poczet macie, trudnoż tam krzywemu wynidź. Nie bierze ten pan darów, ani się pyta; Jeśli kto chłop, czyli się grofem poczyta? W siermiędzeli go widzi, w złotychli głowach: Jeśli namniej przewinił, bydź mu w okowach. Więc ja podobno z mniejszem niebezpieczeństwem Grzeszę, bo sam się tracę swem wszeteczeństwem; Przełożonych występy miasta zgubiły I szerokie do gruntu carstwa zniszczyły."

"Nieznajomy wróg jakiś miesza ludzkie rzeczy."

"Wielkieś mi uczyniła pustki w domu moim, Moja droga Orszulko, tym zniknienim swoim! Pełno nas, a jakoby nikogo nie było: Jedną maluczką duszą tak wiele ubyło."

"From something bad something good can be born and God can grow faith even in the desert of atheism, repression and persecution."

"His boundless devotion and self-sacrifice during the terrible outbreak of cholera will always be remembered; for the hero, having himself contracted the disease, died a victim of brotherly love."

"With all my human and spiritual strength, I invite everyone's consciences to reach a truce and allow a rapid return to national dialogue in order to find an appropriate solution together and therefore solve the crisis."

"From the pastoral point of view, the parish community plays a particular role and I think it should be clearly indicated as being the privileged place, where the Word of God proclaimed to the faithful, meditated on and confronted with the thousands of situations of daily life, initiates the ecclesial community."

"If my weaknesses, including incomplete understanding of specific circumstances, and sometimes even my ordinary human fatigue, became the cause of your anxiety, I am sorry."

"Sometimes it involves missionary work, sometimes it is diplomatic work in the literal sense of the word. First of all, my work is to represent the Holy Father. My second task is to observe what is going on and my third is to report."

"After I was ordained, I realized that sometimes I have to be a teacher, a lawyer, a plumber, an electrician and a janitor in the parish."

"When international solidarity weakens the needs will continue to exist."

"The future of the Catholic Church depends on the quality of the priests."

"We know that every priestly vocation is a call from the Lord, but the call comes through the Church, in the Church and for the Church. For that reason the Church has the right, indeed the duty, of determining the requisites necessary for being admitted to the priesthood."

"Let this be an opportunity to bear witness to Christ, a new form of evangelization that perhaps appeals more to young people. Certainly, this is the moment when the Church uses you to go out into the world."

"We want to give back memory, we want to give back dignity to the victims of the crimes in Chojnice."

"The working world is open to the work of the new evangelization, because it is open to the laws of man which are defended by the Church. We need witnesses of Christ - of lay apostles but also of priests: not as trade-unionists but as proclaimers of the gospel which would respect the autonomy and the independence of the State and of the Church in full co-operation for the good of mankind and society. Christ is the hope for the working world."

"To have a stable and consistent unity in a future Europe, we must define its anthropological foundations, ethical principles, hierarchy of spiritual values. There will be not unity without such a basis. For 2000 years, Christianity shaped the spiritual heritage of our continent, sharing its hopes and its dramas. It is our duty to continue this mission by looking for personalistic anthropology and preaching the same Gospel of hope in a radically new context of the new evangelisation."

"Russia wants to destroy Ukraine, to erase its existence as an independent national, cultural and state entity. Whoever does evil almost always tries to justify it with good. In this case, Russia claims that it is defending the Christian values that are being destroyed in Ukraine. It is not true that Russia is interested in defending Christian values. If they really wanted to defend Christian values, they would use Christian methods to do so."

"What matters is following your conscience as a Catholic. Everyone had this duty in Poland."

"Now looking at all these icons I myself can't believe that I did all of this with my own hands."

"The joy of these faithful to frequently receive the Eucharist, or to celebrate the Marian procession on the river, is priceless."

"What is impossible for a human person is possible for the Lord. The conditions we lived in the concentration camps were pitiless, worse than the German concentration camps. The Gospel kept us human, kept us Christian."

"Believe that God is with us, our Lady is with us, and pray for the conversion a conversion of those who started the war. As a missionary I learned in Africa one of the proverbs: "with one finger you you are not going to wash your face, you need the whole hand, you need two hands." It means that we have to be united, and we are united."

"He started what was at his hand, a very, very small beginning and this is what we are expected to do in our life, starting from a small size of grace, praying to God that he develops it into something really blessed and big."

"We really hope this great Pope – great in life, great in suffering, great in death – will, even after his death, live on in our hearts, because there is a new generation who only know him through books and through pictures, we have to give testimony to his life and suffering so that people can know the good that John Paul II did for sick people."

"Kerygma is a very important moment. If however kerygma is not followed by a true formation in listening to the Word in the bosom of the community of faith, there is a risk of falling into the various moralisms, or flowing into different types of fanaticism or other sorts of subjective interpretation."

"We need priests especially who have encountered Christ in a most personal and committed way both from within the experience of their own culture and from within their personal experience of the living Christian tradition which they have inherited. Only such persons can truly communicate Christ and his mystery to their own people. These are the type of future priests we need to build up the local Church and make the faith a culture that is fully accepted."

"Mercy prolongs love and makes it even more beautiful. Mercy cannot be taken lightly. God is ever Father, and every, even every prodigal son, is to love Him, trust in Him, and keep returning to Him. This teaching comes to us without interruption from the pages of the Bible. And not only the teaching - it is God Himself who comes to the people. He sent His Son down to help people come up to Him."

"We must not limit ourselves to words alone. To convince someone is to convert them, and to assist that conversion, we must not be afraid to share with another human being in his difficulties and sufferings. We have to be witnesses to God's mercy."

"I never betrayed Christ and his church in deeds, words or intentions. I never inflicted any harm on anyone."

"Historical reflection is always present, or at least should be, in every community. The truth about what happened here, behind the wires of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau built on the outskirts of Oświęcim, should not divide us in any way. The sacrifice of the lives of these people, preceded by cruel martyrdom, should become a unifying force for contemporary society, not only those living on the Vistula."

"Our parents brought us up in a deep Catholic faith. This faith is very important in my life. I think that everything happens according to God's plan. I pray before every competition."

"I think that every missionary has great satisfaction when he sees that the local community in which he serves is a living church, that it is growing, there are new members, there are conversions, that these people come, look for the Church and for contact with God. When they engage in the life of the parish community, seeing in the faith a sign of hope and a reference to a future life. Undoubtedly, the missionary's joy is the fact that the Gospel permeates the everyday life of the community."

"The death of our dear brother in Christ certainly saddens us. But it is also an encouragement for all of us to continue with humility and simplicity in faithful service to the Gospel, always being prepared for the Lord's call."

"It will evoke the terror of a war in which human dignity was scorned and lives destroyed in the name of a murderous ideology. From the attitude of those who protected others, however, we can also find a summons to our contemporary world, where refugees still face persecution and need us to show empathy within our possibilities"

"Christian democracy, in fact, has disappeared from European politics. It is therefore quite understandable that countries like Poland, which still has a strong Catholic culture and community, and resists the current moral revolution, are met with aggressive reactions from the EU, and this aggression will increase until or unless Poland capitulates. I hope it won't."

"Let no worries obscure the main one, so that we may always be on the way to Jesus! Become God's children, that is, people who unconditionally trust God! Celebrating Christmas means welcoming the Baby Jesus with your heart and trusting him completely. I wish you such a celebration, and I pray for it! I am asking you to send kind thoughts in the form of prayers to our homeland and the Church in Poland among the wishes made during this holiday season."

"One man can stop the suffering of thousands of people with one word — that man is the President of the Russian Federation. I ask you most humbly to call for the withdrawal of the Russian troops from the sovereign state that is Ukraine."

"During the 20th century, the Ukrainian Catholic Church, has experienced much pain and distress in the U.S. from these wounds of division, from both the Latin Church, often through misunderstanding, and from the Orthodox Churches, because of our fidelity to the See of Peter, which they view as a betrayal of our authentic spiritual patrimony. Despite numerous obstacles, through Divine Providence and the grace of the Holy Spirit, we have managed to survive."

"Good local and regional governance, is indeed the "conditio sine qua non" for local and regional authorities to faithfully keep to their mission of serving the common good of the communities."

"As a historian I refuse to recognize an epochal boundary before the fact."

"I have made it a habit not to speculate over the psychological state of our elected leaders."