Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ!
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
lack of reconciliation and anger. Grief and resentment. Claims and fear. One side against another, brother against brother and tribe against tribe. On the one hand, feeling of the harm caused and the loss of something, which belonged to. On the other hand, at the same time fear, remorse, and the question which does not allow us to sleep: Will we ever forgive? Will our relations come back to their proper tracks? Can they still be good between us after the harm I have done?
We cannot change history. That is for sure. The way that we have done by our feet is always left behind us with everything that has met us there. Both beautiful and breathtaking views and breakdowns, tragedies, experiences. Two brothers, whose emotions and doubts I want to remind us, must have understood it well. Their history can be found at the beginning of the Bible.
Their past was difficult. There were Jacob’s fraud and Esau’s heartrending cry of anger. Hands reaching out for an undue blessing and the following live of a man tormented by remorse and fear of revenge that is coming back still. However, the brothers bring their story to one of the most beautiful and bracing parts of the Bible. To sincere and coming from a heart’s need for reconciliation and forgiveness.
Jacob looked up and there was Esau, coming with his four hundred men. (…) bowed down to the ground seven times as he approached his brother. But Esau ran to meet Jacob and embraced him; he threw his arms around his neck and kissed him. And they wept. (Genesis 33:1-4).
Two men estranged for years cry in the middle of a desert because they have understood how the great ballast was just thrown from their shoulders and how great, the valuable and needed gesture was the reconciliation. Old resentment cast a shadow for the whole of their lives, but now they can go further free from its burden.
Dear, with our peoples, with Polish and Germans, also spreads the trail of the complicated past. Nobody can obliterate it and we are all well aware of this. However, besides us spreads also a sea of tears shed just in the name of reconciliation, which was the first step of a common way. We threw ourselves into our shoulders for the sake of forgiveness. We were saying words important to us. October 1, 1965 – often ignored Eastern Memorandum of the Evangelical Church, November 18, 1965 – Proclamation by Polish bishops to German bishops, December 7, 1970 – kneeling of the Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt at the Ghetto Heroes monument – the gesture of historical importance, which we are slowly forgetting! And, finally, November 12, 1989 – the Mass of Reconciliation in Krzyzowa, or also anniversary reminder about this event, for example, on the 25th anniversary of the Mass of Reconciliation – ecumenical praying in this symbolical place – evangelical Church of Peace in Swidnica, with the Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz participating. No doubt, these are the elements of the common past, to which we must continually come back in our relations.
Looking for a contact, forgiving, reconciliation and collaboration treat diseases, which burst as epidemics still. We live in the world, in which there is more will to go back to lies, than to joy, and to better remember miseries than the moments of reconciliation. However, on this base, we cannot build, and Jakob and Esau could confirm it. In the common following of Christ, we want to learn humility, which will make us able to recognize big as big, and small as small. His Word has the power to change everything in a moment. There is a source of courage to reconciliation, building bridges and peace. This changing and renewing power is hidden in God's Word for so long until we hear it, accept it and turn it into action.
Saint Paul told in the second epistle to Corinthians: Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone, the new is here. (2 Corinthians 5:17), and if so, then as the apostle writes in the second part of the letter to Philippians: If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. (Philippians 2:1-2).
30 years after the Mass of Reconciliation, fall of the Berlin wall, partly free elections in Poland, thanks to which the ruining of the communist system in Europe has begun, we must ask ourselves, what we must build and which testimonies we bear to the world, which is still governed by fights, misunderstanding, isolation, and hatred. The world calls to us and gives us challenges. Sometimes it behaves like a child, which obstinately goes to the unknown, shouting that does not need any patronage already. And the more it swears, the more indeed it needs the patronage. The world needs the Church and first of all the world needs Christ. The threats are reals and we hear about them more and more often. Experienced two world wars, both in Poland and in Germany, nationalistic movements appear and develop. After spilling the blood for the sake of racial purity, they waken the supporters of the old and terrible ideologies. After the years of closed borders, we ourselves close the borders to divide ourselves with a wall from those whom we could help. There is a growing shadow of discord on God's earth.
Apostle Paul starts his statement very specific: If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ… It is clear, that there is encouragement in Christ. Not only! In Christ, there is an example left. Though, he is God which was born in the world to experience our fates. God, who looks with mercy and care at the smallest of this world, which the world often rejects. God, for whom there are no religious and denominational borders – He hugs everyone – no matter if someone is a Jew, a Samaritan, an ancient Greek or a modern European. God, who loves people so much, that He dies for them being crucified. He comes to heal souls, not to judge and reject. God, who is love, and teaches us love. If there is encouragement in Him, or, in other words, if today His love moves our united in an ecumenical community hearts, then we must act!
We are glad that the symbolical hug of reconciliation has brought and brings good fruits, and the example of it is the activity of the Krzyżowa Foundation for Mutual Understanding in Europe. So our sincere and coming from heart thanks for everyday work of making and building not only Polish-German relations but also looking at East, go to you, dear employees and volunteers, members of the bodies of the Krzyzowa Foundation. It is our duty and task.
Dear ladies and gentlemen! Everything has begun in Poland from "Solidarność", which had brought to many European countries liberation from the shackles of communism. In these hard times, I would like to encourage you to solidarity in the work of building peace and reconciliation. We are also encouraged on this anniversary day with the words of Christ from the Sermon on the Mount: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God (Matthew 5:9).
Bishop Waldemar Pytel
