During the German occupation of Poland during World War II, it was an open secret among the Jews of Warsaw that if anyone needed refuge, he or she could find it from the nun known as “Mamma.”
Mother Matylda Getter and her community, the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary, risked their lives protecting hundreds of Jews – including many children – at their house, which they turned into a clinic and soup kitchen during the Warsaw uprising.
Mother Matylda later said the sisters acted not only “in the spirit of Christian love and Franciscan joy,” but out of a sense of human decency. Mother Matylda put it this way: “I am saving man.”
“I am saving man”— the dangerous work of Mother Matylda and her sisters was more than just rescuing a child, a woman, a man. Her courageous compassion redeemed ALL of humankind: in the midst of such overwhelming darkness, they were a light of hope that refused to be extinguished. Mother Matylda believed that as long as even an ember of God’s love burned somewhere, humanity could be redeemed.
If we are to save our world, if we are to lift up our own fallen humanity, it will not be by divisive rhetoric or walling off those we perceive as enemies. It will be by small, ordinary, individual acts of generosity and mercy that mirror the love of God.
Bishop Libasci has asked that this weekend be a time of prayer and fasting in the wake of violence that has caused so much death and destruction throughout our world. Bishop Libasci writes of his hope that we Christians can be a “visible sign of hope in our world.” (Listed in this bulletin are opportunities for our parish to come together to pray this weekend and on Monday, the Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary.) We can be that sign of hope in ways that are surprisingly ordinary and simple: a kinder attitude toward our brothers and sisters, a less cynical approach to the needs of all, an awareness of the suffering of others.
May our prayer this weekend be that we embrace the spirit of Mother Matylda by offering our own small and ordinary works of reconciliation and peace “to save man.”
-Deacon Jay