I watched a speech translated into English days after it was given by John Paul II in Warsaw Poland in June of 1979. At the end of the speech hundreds of thousands of Polish people who for thirty years were not allowed to openly worship God under the atheistic communist regime in Poland shouted for 14 mins ‘WE WANT GOD”.
I was stationed at Camp Lejeune with Marine Recon at the time, and an Old grizzled Marine Master Sargent, a Viet Nam vet he, opined—”The Pope just won the war”. The Iron Curtain fell several years later. I have always believed that it was the faith of the Pope, the faith of Ronald Reagan, and the faith of Lech Walesa and the faith of the Eastern European People, that won that war without a shot having to be fired or a life lost in combat. The greatest war in the history of the world—with Nuclear Weapons on both sides at the ready, was won by a people shouting WE WANT GOD!
Are our children ever taught that great truth of history today?
Part of his speech says this—substitute any country for the word Poland:
“To Poland the Church brought Christ, the key to understanding that great and fundamental reality that is man. For man cannot be fully understood without Christ. Or rather, man is incapable of understanding himself fully without Christ. He cannot understand who he is, nor what his true dignity is, nor what his vocation is, nor what his final end is. He cannot understand any of this without Christ.
Therefore, Christ cannot be kept out of the history of man in any part of the globe, at any longitude or latitude of geography. The exclusion of Christ from the history of man is an act against man. Without Christ it is impossible to understand the history of Poland, especially the history of the people who have passed or are passing through this land. The history of people. The history of the nation is above all the history of people. And the history of each person unfolds in Jesus Christ. In him it becomes the history of salvation.
The history of the nation deserves to be adequately appraised in the light of its contribution to the development of man and humanity, to intellect, heart and conscience. This is the deepest stream of culture. It is culture’s firmest support, its core, its strength. It is impossible without Christ to understand and appraise the contribution of the Polish nation to the development of man and his humanity in the past and its contribution today also: “This old oak tree has grown in such a way and has not been knocked down by any wind since its root is Christ” (Piotr Skarga, Kazania Sejmove IV, Biblioteka Narodowa, I, 70, p. 92). It is necessary to follow the traces of what, or rather who, Christ was for the sons and daughters of this land down the generations. Not only for those who openly believed in him and professed him with the faith of the Church, but also for those who appeared to be at a distance, outside the Church. For those who doubted or were opposed.
3b. It is right to understand the history of the nation through man, each human being of this nation. At the same time man cannot be understood apart from this community that is constituted by the nation. Of course it is not the only community, but it is a special community, perhaps that most intimately linked with the family, the most important for the spiritual history of man. It is therefore impossible without Christ”… (for us to understand ourselves or each other—jml)
WE WANT GOD AMEN
