Uncle Jim has decided to forego further treatment and will likely pass on. Of course, those of us who have been witness to the many miracles associated with Uncle Jim can’t give up hope just yet — he’s had many recoveries.
We have many Uncle Jim stories. When I was in my early teens, he would arrive back from Rome and go looking for the copies of MAD Magazine that Mike and I had lying around in our room. More to follow.
We all get to celebrate a blessed life. Pray for him.
SS
Next year—2019—will mark the 30th anniversary of communism’s collapse in Poland and Eastern Europe. It will also mark 35 years since the murder of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko. I was safe in California when the communist secret police killed my former vicar in Poland in October 1984. In May 1980, Father “Jurek” Popiełuszko was assigned to our parish, St. Stanislaus Kostka, where I was baptized. He was a physically frail servant of God with an indomitable spirit. To understand Father Jurek, we must shed some light on his personal background and the social and political context of his life.
Farm, Seminary, and Priesthood
One of five children, the future priest was born in a farming family in Okopy in the Podlasie region in what is now eastern Poland. The infant was originally baptized Alfons, to commemorate his mother’s brother, Alfons Gniedziejko, an underground Home Army…
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Tota pulchra es, Maria, es macula originalis non est in te.
Consider first, how man who was originally created in justice and sanctity – to be happy here in grace and innocence, and eternally happy hereafter in the enjoyment of his creator – having wretchedly fallen from God by sin, and forfeited his original justice with all the advantages annexed to it; and incurred at the same time all kinds of miseries, both for time and eternity; out of which it was not in his power to extricate himself, by anything that he could do of himself – the infinite goodness of God, out of pure pity and compassion, was pleased to decree that his own eternal Son should come down from heaven to be our Saviour; to redeem us from all our sins with his most precious blood; to bring along with him mercy, grace, and salvation to us…
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Solutio Problematis Omnes (aka "The Catholic Linker") 