Lost Limb

Joseph inspects the damage to one of his very favorite climbing trees.

The huge fallen branch drapes the lawn in front of our Church.

The heart of the tree at Sacred Heart Catholic Church.

As we pulled up to Church for a funeral yesterday, we were shocked to see a gigantic branch covering the front lawn.  This tree is a favorite play-place at Church; the place where the kids (many boys) converge after Mass for climbing, games, and fir cone wars.  A strong wind hit, and the beloved tree is now missing one of its best climbing branches; a gaping hole in the place where the branch used to be.

May God bless the family who buried their beloved mother, Krystyna, yesterday and who feel so acutely the emptiness and sorrow of her passing away.  Like the tree, they now have a gaping hole in the place of Krystyna:

• who traveled great distances to visit her imprisoned husband and daughter in communist Poland where their Solidarity efforts cost them their freedom
• who boldly processed through airports carrying a framed image of Our Lady of Czestochowa on the long and arduous journey to freedom in the US with her family
• whose undying faith and devotion to her family upheld them all in their times of great sorrow and suffering
• who walked her grandson to elementary school every day for six years; praying the Lord's Prayer together in Polish before setting out each morning

What a tremendous branch Krystyna was for her family.  May she rest in peace, and may the members of her family and all families continue to grow in holiness and seek the kingdom of God above the riches of this world.  

One person in a family may be the salvation of the whole family, though it may not be given to him to see the final issues and the ultimate results.  But there is the fact - an absolute certainty, goodness inevitably produces goodness; it is unconquerable, it cannot be stifled, it has greater ramifications than evil can ever have... One saint outweighs a hundred, a thousand, perhaps a million sinners.  The sanctity of one saint prevails over the sinfulness of a thousand sinners.  Sin is negative; sanctity, positive.  Sanctity is more powerful than sin; sanctity is, in fact, the only real power.  ~Dom Anscar Vonier, O.S.B. (+1906)