Posted on 02/13/2010 3:19:21 PM PST by NYer
Karol Wojtyla as a seminarian in Poland.
Wanda Poltawska was 17 when the German army overran her country.
She was 18 when Nazi doctors used her as a guinea pig for experimental surgical techniques at the Ravensbrück concentration camp.
She studied medicine and psychiatry in the difficult years after the war, trying to understand how human beings could sink to such barbarism.
But when she was stricken with cancer at age 40, a still greater tragedy loomed for her and her young children.
Then two saints stepped in.
The young bishop Karol Wojtyla wrote personally to St. Pio of Pietrelcina to ask for his intercession. “This one we can’t say no to,” said Padre Pio on reading the letter. When the cure came, the doctors called it “inexplicable.” Wanda knew better.
Now 88, she published her memoirs Diary of a Friendship first in Polish (Beskidzkie rekolekcje) and then in Italian (Diario di un’amicizia) last year. On Feb. 9, reported Andrea Tornielli in the Italian newspaper Il Giornale, she visited Milan for the public presentation of the Italian edition.
“I felt so comforted by the fact that someone finally understood me!” was her remembrance of the experience of going to confession with a young priest she had never seen before. The priest was Karol Wojtyla.
Soon, he became her spiritual director. Then came the deep friendship with her husband Andrzej and their children.
And before long, their family was his family.
He encouraged her to found an institute for young mothers in difficult situations, and he lent her a room in his apartment for counseling couples in marital crisis.
“They were different, but they had so much in common,” Andrzej writes in the prologue to his wife’s book. “It was the encounter between a very masculine man, in the deepest sense of the word, with a very feminine woman, in the best sense of the word: sensitive, with deep sentiments, willing to work hard for others.”
The result?
“Even today,” Wanda reflected, “it’s possible to live a pure friendship between a man and a woman. We can and we ought to love all people as brothers and sisters, beyond the simple relationship between husband and wife.”
“I’ve met so many holy priests,” she continued, “not just him, who know how to cultivate pure friendships with women while remaining faithful to their celibacy.”
What does she remember most? The question struck her as odd.
“It’s not so much that I remember him. I’m still in contact with him, in a certain way. You can talk to the saints. I think that even right now he ‘s here right beside me.”
Ping!
It was JPII’s work with Wanda that formed the backbone of Humanae Vitae.
Thank you for posting this.
They just don’t have the faith they need.
The Orthodox do not, the Coptics do not and many Anglicans do not.
The small minority of Christians who do not accept the doctrine of the communion of saints are the victims of a defective school of Scriptural interpretation.
As Jesus said: "But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living."
Abraham and Isaac and Jacob have clearly not been resurrected yet - but Jesus asserts that they are alive.
I have never heard a denier of the communion of the saints come up with a convincing explanation as to why Abraham, Isaac and Joseph are alive but all the other saints are to be considered dead.
WOW!
Did you see this?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.