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Christian Witness

Reflection for the 20th Ordinary Sunday 2025

Christian Witness

Reflection for the 20th Ordinary Sunday 2025

Christian Witness

Reflection for the 20th Ordinary Sunday 2025

Art, Current Events, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , ,

Return of Stolen Painting and Art for July 30th

Poland has recovered a treasured painting, stolen by Germany during World War II. I had posted Gierymski’s similar painting as my Art-for-the-Day on March 22nd.

From the Guardian: Polish painting returned to Warsaw after 67 years on missing list: Aleksander Gierymski’s Jewish Woman Selling Oranges retrieved after turning up at Hamburg auction house

A valuable 19th century Polish painting missing since the second world war has been returned to Poland after being removed from auction in Germany.

Aleksander Gierymski’s Jewish Woman Selling Oranges was unveiled in Poland on Wednesday by culture minister Bogdan Zdrojewski, who said the return came after many months of negotiations with lawyers representing a German who had possessed it for more than 30 years.

“During those long months, my main thought was to have this picture returned to Poland,” Zdrojewski said.

The work – sometimes referred to as the Orange Vendor – dates from 1880-1881 and is one of several Gierymski works showing Jewish life in poor parts of Warsaw.

The oil on canvas shows an old woman in a cap and with a thick shawl over her shoulders knitting as she holds two baskets, one filled with oranges. She has shrunken cheeks that give her an impoverished look, and is set against a foggy Warsaw skyline.

It has been returned to its original home in the National Museum in Warsaw, where it will undergo many months of renovation.

Museum director Agnieszka Morawinska described it as a “priceless masterpiece” that pleased the painter, rarely content with his own work.

Its return is a “very special day and a true gift for the museum”, she said.

The picture went missing from the museum in 1944, five years into Nazi Germany’s occupation of Poland.

It was among a huge numbers of cultural artefacts stolen by German and Soviet forces during their joint wartime occupation of Poland. The country’s government is making efforts to find and bring the works of art back.

The painting resurfaced last November among items offered for sale at a small auction house near Hamburg.

Poland’s chief insurer, PZU SA, paid an undisclosed sum in compensation to the German who had acquired the painting.

Of note, Gierymski painted two similar works: “Żydówka z cytrynami” and “Żydówka z pomarańczami” literally “Jewess with Lemons” and “Jewess with Oranges.”

Gazetta Wyborcza notes in Pomarańczarka w areszcie from November 2010, that Gierymski’s “Jewish woman with oranges” was looted from the National Museum in Warsaw during the war. His other, similar work, “Jewess with Lemons” is on display at the Upper Silesian Museum in Bytom. Both paintings have different details, but express the same emotions and situations: toil, the bitterness of existence, persistence in spite of lost illusions, a lonely, tragic, damaged figure pushed down but not broken, and ultimately beautiful.

An example of oranges and lemons together in today’s painting: “Pomarańcze i cytryny,” “Oranges and Lemons” by Edward Okuń.

Oranges and Lemons, Edward Okuń, 1928
Current Events, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , ,

Telling the story, supporting the story tellers

From KICKSTARTER: Wisia’s Story, A Documentary project in Warsaw, Poland by Karina Wielgosz & Paul Barry

In 1944, twenty-three year-old Jadwiga (known affectionately to her family as ‘Wisia’) had been living in her native Poland under the yoke of German-occupation for almost five years. Unbeknownst to the invaders, an underground force was mobilizing with the aim of reclaiming at least part of its homeland. The ‘Armia Krajowa’ (‘Home Army’) operated in secret, received its orders from the exiled Polish government and employed the skills of many young people like Wisia to aid them in the uprising.

A select group of youth, including Wisia and her brother, had been secretly selected and trained in running messages and administering medical aid. This group of young civilians supported and sometimes even fought alongside the Armia Krajowa. Their jobs were extremely dangerous but they carried out their missions with remarkable bravery. Our documentary will explore not only the historical details of Wisia’s experience but just as importantly, the composition of her courage, to be able to survive – and ultimately escape – when so many were imprisoned or perished at the hands of these violent intruders.

On the 1st of August 1944, led by the Armia Krajowa, the proud people of Poland united in an attempt to repel the invaders from the city of Warsaw. Through a series of operations and concerted attacks, the civilian-supported Armia Krajowa devastated the German occupiers in the short-term and formed the backbone of what history remembers as The Warsaw Uprising. The uprising’s subsequent failure, eventual slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Polish soldiers and citizens and Hitler’s vindictive destruction of 90% of the city, does nothing to bury the bravery of all who fought during this period for the basic privilege of a peaceful life.

Countless other stories of bravery by soldiers and civilians alike also remain untold, but the selfless actions of one particular twenty-three year-old woman remain a timeless demonstration of heroism in the face of tremendous adversity. This young woman, Wisia, is now a great-grandmother approaching her 90th birthday with a spring in her step and glint in her eye. She is our grandmother and we can no longer allow her sacrifices to remain simply a page on an historical website. For decades her full story has remained untold, but with your backing we will travel back in time with Wisia. She will acquaint us with the locations, walk us through salient events and introduce us to the survivors of such an unforgettable time in her life, in Warsaw, Poland…

Lend your support to the project. They are 65% of the way there. You can help tell this story before it is too late.

Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , , ,

For book lovers – new and interesting

The Polish American Encyclopedia, edited by James S. Pula, is now available.

At least nine million Americans trace their roots to Poland, and Polish Americans have contributed greatly to American history and society. During the largest period of immigration to the United States, between 1870 and 1920, more Poles came to the United States than any other national group except Italians. Additional large-scale Polish migration occurred in the wake of World War II and during the period of Solidarity’s rise to prominence.

The encyclopedia features three types of entries: thematic essays, topical entries, and biographical profiles. The essays synthesize existing work to provide interpretations of, and insight into, important aspects of the Polish American experience. The topical entries discuss in detail specific places, events or organizations such as the Polish National Alliance, Polish American Saturday Schools, and the Latimer Massacre, among others. The biographical entries identify Polish Americans who have made significant contributions at the regional or national level either to the history and culture of the United States, or to the development of American Polonia.

[AMAZONPRODUCT=0786433086]

From the Pittsburgh Post Gazette: The Next Page / Pittsburgh doctor, Polish warrior: The Jerzy Einhorn story

A proud old man died the other day and a window on history closed.

Jerzy Einhorn was 92 when he passed away at his Mt. Lebanon home on July 4.

A prominent doctor in his native Poland in the 1960s, he came to the U.S. in 1967 and became an endocrinologist at Montefiore Hospital, where he treated thousands of patients and directed the thyroid screening program. He also established health clinics in Hazelwood and Greenfield and taught at the University of Pittsburgh.

Dr. Einhorn leaves behind a wife and three children from two marriages. He also leaves behind a back story from his youth straight from the movies — a tale full of Nazis, narrow escapes and dangerous liaisons in occupied Poland during World War II.

A Polish cavalry officer, he fought the Germans in 1939 and then served with the Polish underground Home Army in the Warsaw Uprising, a battle that ended with the Nazi annihilation of the city in 1944.

He won military decorations, escaped captivity multiple times, twice crossed the Eastern Front, swam the Vistula River and ended up imprisoned and beaten by the Soviet secret police in 1945.

He lost his father — forced to dig his own grave before being shot — and a sister, sent to a concentration camp with her two children.

His story is one of millions from that time, but unlike many others, he wrote it all down in a memoir, “Recollections of the End of an Era,” published in Polish in 2000 and translated into English in 2005…

[AMAZONPRODUCT=1420803549]

From A Polish Son: Wesley Adamczyk Speaks the Truth about Katyń

Chicago Polish-American author Wesley Adamczyk invited me to his home on July 14, 2011, to see his exhibition. As I make my way in, he advises me to watch out for the electrical cords running to a strategically placed floor lamp in his living room. He has positioned several lamps to shine on his collection of memorabilia and publications related to the Katyń Massacre and the deportation of Poles to Siberia at the beginning of World War II.

“Some of my collection I have displayed on the walls and tables,” he says, “and some things I am going to display through multimedia. This is a display of a performance piece titled Two Christmas Eves,” he indicates, pointing to a poster, “one in Poland shortly before the war, one in Siberia in 1941, after my family and thousands of other Polish people were deported to Siberia in 1940.” The drawings contrast the cultured family life Adamczyk knew as a child with the brutality of the Soviets…

[AMAZONPRODUCT=B004HZAUF4]

From the Cosmopolitan Review: Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie, a Tale of Love and Fallout, a review by Margaret Butler

Lauren Redniss has written a very modern portrait of this celebrated couple that is a treat to read. From the custom type created by the author to the layout of the sparse text to the illustrations, the author presents a biography that captures not only the linear progression of the lives of these scientific giants, but connects their work to its effects in the world. “Radioactive” is a work of art.

One key to the success of this book is the incorporation of numerous quotes of Marie, Pierre, and others. Actual words help the reader relate to the Curies and to their time. In addition, the accounts and testimonies of other sources linked to the Curies’ work help the reader understand the magnitude of their discoveries. This is especially evident in chapter 5 “Instability of Matter” in which Marie’s thesis that radiation may inhibit malignant cell growth is followed by the 2001 testimony of a cancer patient being treated for Non-Hodgkins lymphoma with a thermoplastic radiation mask. The same chapter included the development of the atom bomb, the Manhattan Project, a copy of declassified FBI files, and the testimony of a Hiroshima survivor.

As the story of Pierre and Marie Curie progresses chronologically through the nine chapters of the book, the author mirrors the characters’ personal and professional lives with other seemingly random events…

One underlying theme of the book is the remarkable partnership of individuals who, working together, discover something new. At the turn of the century, an amazing confluence of scientific discoveries and ideas created an atmosphere where information was shared among scientists. Beginning with Pierre and Marie who never sought a patent for their discoveries, to Marie and Paul Langevin, then to Marie and her daughter Irene, then Irene and her husband Frederic Joliot, etc., these relationships clearly show the benefit of sharing ideas and how those ideas spread with a life of their own throughout the scientific community.

The book spotlights Marie’s great personal strength. As the reader follows Marie’s life, one begins to understand the tremendous challenges she overcame starting with her Polish childhood in Russian-occupied Poland. Her clandestine studies through the secret “Flying University” allowed her to acquire an education so thorough that she could ably compete as one of 23 women of 1800 students attending the Sorbonne. Conducting the physically exhausting work of proving the existence of polonium and radium, and later suffering through radium toxicity did not detract from Marie’s focus on scientific study and the raising of her two daughters…

[AMAZONPRODUCT=0061351326]

From Mary Akers: Radical Gratitude by Andrew Bienkowski and Mary Akers was recently translated into Polish and published as Radykalna Wdzięczność.

Radical Gratitude is both narrative and inspiring practical guidance, telling the story of one family’s survival in Stalinist Siberia. That experience develops into a guide to becoming a person who can give to others. Each chapter details the ways we can achieve radical gratitude (learning to be grateful even for the difficult experiences in life). Andrew Bienkowski has spent more than 40 years as a clinical therapist. At the age of six, he and his family were forced to leave their Polish homeland for Siberia where his grandfather deliberately starved to death so that the women and children might have enough to eat. The years that followed were harrowing and influenced his entire life. After Siberia, the family spent a year in an Iranian refugee camp where Andrew nearly died from dysentery, malaria and malnutrition. Three years in Palestine followed, a year in England, before he finally immigrated to America where he went on to earn a Masters in Clinical Psychology. Mary Akers’ work has appeared in a number of international literary journals, many related to health and healing.

[AMAZONPRODUCT=1741754224]

Homilies

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

First reading: 1 Kings 3:5,7-12
Psalm: Ps 119:57,72,76-77,127-130
Epistle: Romans 8:28-30
Gospel: Matthew 13:44-52

God said, “Ask something of me and I will give it to you.”

Treasure:

The overwhelming theme from today’s Gospel is that of treasure. Where is our treasure? What is it worth? Placing ourselves in God’s hands and following His Son Jesus results in attainment of the Kingdom, something none of us could afford to enter if it were not for Jesus.

This is a great theme for clergy. It’s one of the easier things to preach on, the value of God’s Kingdom, the requirement of laying aside everything to obtain this treasure.

So today, I’m going to talk about … stupidity.

Stupidity:

Our first reading, from the Third Chapter of First Kings, has God talking to Solomon. God lets Solomon make a request, anything he wants, and God will give it to him. What did Solomon ask for?

Yes, wisdom. Solomon said:

Give your servant, therefore, an understanding heart

to judge your people and to distinguish right from wrong.


Solomon certainly received that treasure. We are the richer for it. He left us psalms and proverbs, wisdom, insight. Under his reign the united kingdom of Israel reached its pinnacle and the temple was built. But for all the wisdom he was granted, Solomon turned out to be little more than a very clever idiot. He was a prime example of knowledge and wisdom gone to waste.

God’s plan:

God had a plan for Solomon and his father David. In Chapter 9 of First Kings, just after the completion of the temple, God appears to Solomon again. God tells him:

I have heard the prayer of petition which you offered in my presence. I have consecrated this temple which you have built; I confer my name upon it forever, and my eyes and my heart shall be there always. As for you, if you live in my presence as your father David lived, sincerely and uprightly, doing just as I have commanded you, keeping my statutes and decrees, I will establish your throne of sovereignty over Israel forever, as I promised your father David when I said, ‘You shall always have someone from your line on the throne of Israel.’ But if you and your descendants ever withdraw from me, fail to keep the commandments and statutes which I set before you, and proceed to venerate and worship strange gods, I will cut off Israel from the land I gave them and repudiate the temple I have consecrated to my honor. Israel shall become a proverb and a byword among all nations, and this temple shall become a heap of ruins.

God wanted more than just a man with wisdom. He wanted Solomon to live in His presence, to be sincere, just and upright, and to do as He had asked in His commandments.

God was asking Solomon to focus on real treasure, the treasure found only in the kind of relationships God wants us to have. A treasure found only in living with God and each other as God asks.

But Solomon… that wasn’t for him. He chose stupid.

Big mistakes:

Solomon decided that faithfulness to the treasure God offered wasn’t for him. He wasted that away. Not only, he treated the people in half of his kingdom as slaves. Doing that led to eventual rebellion and the fall of the unified kingdom of Israel. Solomon married over 1,000 wives, which directly contradicted God’s warning about rulers taking too many wives (Deuteronomy 17:17). While many of these marriages were diplomatic, some led Solomon to set God aside for the worship of false gods.

Solomon frittered away his loyalty to God and the promises of God are lost. Solomon chose the wrong treasure. He treasured his desires over God’s desires for Him.

Finding your treasure:

We have a lesson in Solomon, who chose wisdom and then walked away from it, choosing stupid instead.

When Jesus talks about finding true treasure He is talking about a treasure that redeems. That treasure is allegiance to God and the requirements of God’s kingdom. Certainly we see from Solomon that false treasure can corrupt, so it comes down to choice. It always does.

We are here, in church week after week. We choose to get up and go, to hear the lessons contained in Holy Scripture, and we walk away filled with the inspiration and the light of the Holy Spirit. As the week progresses we may make bad choices, we all do from time-to-time. But our allegiance is to the kingdom. We know where forgiveness is, and where our treasure is. We have decided that with God as our ruler, and the help of His grace, we can resist stupid.

Choosing the Kingdom:

Stupid continues, and as we reflect on the past week’s events, the terrible evil that befell our brothers and sisters in Norway, at the hand of a person claiming to be “Christian,” we think of the corrupted notions of God’s kingdom that are out there.

God’s kingdom is not a worldly kingdom, or a kingdom only for white folks, or rich folks, or the handsome or pretty, or those with a big house on the hill. It is not just for priests, bishops and deacons. It is for everyone. The kingdom is exactly this: How our lives are ruled by God. The kingdom is for those whose hearts are aligned with God’s heart, who give God their allegiance, who allow Him to rule their lives. It doesn’t matter what the members of the kingdom look like or have, their color or bank book are of no account. All that matters is that they have chosen the way Jesus has shown.

When we give ourselves over to God, and the Holy Spirit dwells within us, we are strengthened to resist the stupidity that is out there, and that awful urge to be stupid. We are given the motivation and the desire to chose right; to chose life, not death; good, not evil; peace, not war; justice, not degradation; humanity, not inhumanity.

Choosing how we live:

Living in the kingdom means choosing the treasure God offers over stupid. We are called to live a certain way, to deny every one-off urge, instead choosing what is right. We are called to say no to the prejudices, the big and little evils, to the creeping anger, the wandering eye. We are called to live rightly and justly.

God’s promises are still valid today. If we chose the kingdom, if we reject stupid, He remains with us, He blesses us, and He reassures us, He gives us everlasting life.

St. Paul reminds us that the world is filled with stupid choices. Those whose hope and trust is in God are receivers of this promise:

all things work for good for those who love God

Loving God means loyalty to His kingdom, living life His way, the way humanity was designed to live, to truly live. Jesus told us that we would have life and life to the fullest because of Him (John 10:10). That is the promise for those who follow Him, who choose the kingdom over stupid, who live rightly.

What is it worth, to live in the kingdom? It is worth our lives. It is worth giving up the stupid. The Kingdom is filled with those who have rejected and fight against stupid everyday, who have found their true treasure, and who accept God’s help in getting there. You who are here have chosen. Enjoy God’s promise and your treasure found in the Kingdom — enjoy it for all eternity. Amen.

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