Dear child,
I have the opportunity to respond to both of your dear letters from February 15 and 28, which arrived simultaneously. I am saddened that I cannot help you materially in any way. Those poor shipments of chocolate are now banned, and yet we lack nothing here: neither food nor coal. Oh, if only I could be of some use to you! With all my heart, I wish you were here or in Italy, to which I could send you something. All those barriers piled up by the cruelty of men can now only be crossed by the love of the Savior.
I plead with him for you with all the strength of my poor heart. I ask him to fill your heart with rays. In fact, dear child, I envy you. I would like to be with you in that little house and bring Jesus to the sick, as I did two years ago in L., to share in your common suffering. It is not possible for God to send such trials without bringing holiness to souls. It compels one to those great acts of faith and love that cause souls to become lost in the ocean of God's darkness. “Et nox illuminatio mea.” Oh, dear child, when I saw the Polish church in L., I admired it, was deeply moved, and I will never forget that sight. But the church in Poland has never been as pure, as holy, as radiant as it is now. All that suffering accepted in faith, that heroism of love that allows one to endure hunger and cold without cursing, all of that, from which saints have grown, is given to you. And all the suffering of the heart, disrupted and afflicted by sorrowful families, all that which, dear child, a person would never choose for themselves because they would not dare to do so, as it would be arrogance, behold, all of that Jesus offered you, to miraculously liken you to Himself. I remember your kind parents, who surely did not believe that such wounds would fall upon their hearts before leaving this world; I pray for them very fervently. I remember that mother with whom I loved to talk about the church. She understood it so deeply and so clairvoyantly because her heart was filled with love. I remember you, dear child; you have always sought the greatest sacrifice, and behold, it has come to meet you. I wish I could rescue you all from that trial, I wish you could get to Switzerland or Italy, but in my heart, I envy those moments. I am jealous that God deemed you worthy of those great things while my life is filled only with troubles. Do you understand, dear child, what I have in my heart when I elevate the host above the world during the transformation, and what I carry in my heart when I go to Bourguillon to the Holy Virgin, where it seems to me that I meet the Polish Virgin Mary, whom we invoked in the evening during the litanies? With all my heart, I bless you, my child. I hope so much that I will be allowed to see the beloved faces of you all again! May Jesus intoxicate you with His love and grant that all His heaven descends upon your sufferings!
abbé J.
(Cardinal Charles Journet /1891–1975/, letter to occupied Poland, March 29, 1940)
