Some people say it could be suicide.
I’m sure it was not.
That evening I talked with her.
She was worried but had good hope for the future.
She started making plans again.
Two days earlier I could have believed,
but now I was sure it was a mistake, no suicide.

I learned to know her just after I came to the parafia.
Her husband Stanisław invited me in their home.
They were my first and best non-franciscan friends in the parafia.
I was a lot with them.
Stanisław was very active in my Taize prayer group,
Marta was a very social woman.
She worked as a volunteer in a temporary house for abused women.
She did good work.
She only sometimes carried her problems with her to home.
She cared about the people.
When she heard one of the girls there had cancer and would die,
she invited her to live with them and die there.
That girl was Ania.
She became her best friend.

Marta cared a lot about her friends.
Sometimes to much.
She could not help it, but could not carry it.
And then the accident with her medicines happened.

Our thoughts are with her husband Stanisław,
also an active and inspired member of our parafia.
In a week he lost his daughter and his wife.
We pray, that he stays strong,
that the loss of his beloved ones does not take his inspiration away.
That he knows he is surrounded with love and compassion of his friends.

And you, surfer, if you read this.
Be silent for a while.
For all those women used and abused. Marta cared for them.
For young people suffering from illness and disease. Marta cared for them.
For the unborn and newborn babies. Marta cared for them.
Be silent for a while, and pray.

That friend commited a sin. A grave one.
He admitted and was very sorry for it,
so sorry it makes for him sleeping impossible.

But then something else happened:
Somebody knowing about his sin, started spreading bad rumours.
And I believed them. Once a sinner, always a sinner.
I rejected my friend. Not because the sin he confessed,
but because I thought he lied to me about more.

I feel bad about it.
I feel guilty about it.
I pray God and my friend for forgiveness.
And for peace of heart again.
‘Da pacem cordium‘
This beautiful song from Taize I listen for hours, but I can’t get it.

A good lesson for the future :
Never judge on people, because your judgement on them might return on you.

But life has many dark surprises.
their little daughter died the day she was born.
Unbaptised.
And today I did something they asked me too :
I burried their little kid, the first newborn I had to provide the funeral for.
The first newborn funeral, was that of the daughter of my best friends.

No words. Only pain.
And this time no examples how Saint Francis would speak or think about it.
Because here only silence is in place.

I think the love she felt for her friends was very deep.

Nowadays we ‘hunt for friends’.
Our social networks have to be filled with names.
But those friendships are shallow.
The quantity more important then the quality.
Did we ever really talk with them, did we really know what they feel ?
Ania did not have a ‘big network’, no ‘MySpace’, ‘Facebook’ or other pages.
Her pages were the pages of her writingblock. But her friends cried when she died.
Will your ‘MySpace’ friends too ?

When we look at the stories I do not think so.
For example the story of the Wolf of Gubbio.
It is not the story of a friend of nature,
but a story of a man who wants to teach us we are not afraid.

A good friend of mine many times said ‘Love is Heaven and Fear is Hell’
Many people would say ‘Hate is hell’ I think.
We combine ‘Love’ with ‘Hate’, not with ‘Fear’.
But I think he’s right.
We hate because we fear.

People feared the wolf, But Saint Francis showed you can overcome your fears with love.

Saint Francis was no ecologist trying to save animals
He was a deeply religious man trying to save us from fear.

He kissed the leper, he came close to the Wolf.
Today we could say : ‘He kissed somebody with Aids,
he came close to those we fear’.

I do not think Saint Francis ever cared for nature.
In his time nature was something all around, it did not need the care it needs now.
He however cared for human nature. Because human nature needed care always

Sometimes I was sad when I left her home.
That such a girl had to die.
Sometimes I was happy
That such a girl knew how to live
But every time I left her home as a wiser man.

People try to insure their lifes in many ways.
Make their future solid an stable.
We think we need to control our life,
but never know when it will end.

Sometimes when people know they die
They get angry and ask why
Some people however know
that it is time to enjoy every day of life.

I think this is what St. Francis meant
when he said
“Be praised, my Lord, through our Sister Bodily Death,
from whose embrace no living person can escape.
Woe to those who die in mortal sin!
Happy those she finds doing your most holy will.
The second death can do no harm to them.”

A second dead never will harm Ania, because she knew how to value life.
I thank God, I had the privilege to know her.

You cannot find God if you do not search for people,
You cannot find God if you do not want to be found by people.
God is a God of people, this is the first lesson Saint Francis learned.

I do not know if you know them, but they are beautiful
Short phrases on music, repeated time after time.
If you do not know them, you can listen to some of them here.
They are good to contemplate.
To easy your mind.
To find back the way to yourself and to God.

As an experiment I started with a group of young people in our church
with a ‘Taize prayer’. Some of them knew Taize,
most did not, and were curious
what that ‘strange young priest’ wanted to start now.
Today we had one for the third time and we decided we’ll continue.
Not on sunday, the day of Our Lord
But on Wednesday, in the middle of the week
To express we also need prayer in the middle of our activities.

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

It is called the prayer of Saint Francis, but it is not really his.
In the beginning of the previous century it was seen for the first time.
But still, it’s a beautiful prayer, saying everything important.
And every word of it could be his, even if it isn’t
I like to pray it.
To go to the chapel, bend my knees and meditate these words.
Try it too. let the words go into your heart and feel how they help you to be a better man.

Some people also made choices what is important.
For many people today it is their career.
Normally you already spend more time at work then at home
but those people spend even more.
Their kids do not see them often.
A tragedy of modern times.