Carpe Diem solo Deo Gloria
 
By Dorothy Ralph Gager

The year was 1969. Russia was then in a Cold War with the United States. Nikita Kruschev was their leader. The USSR had announced a limited opening to tourists. This was very appealing to my adventurous husband, Jerry, so we applied for visas to car camp.

At the Finnish-Russian border, we were given a map that showed only the roads we were to travel. Our passports and visas were to be relinquished each night to the master/mistress of the campground.

For two weeks we experienced Communist Russia. Governmental control was so tight and oppressive. No one knew when he/she was being observed by the Communist Party. The slightest error or mistake would cause one to be interrogated.  Churches were boarded up, or turned into museums. The Hermitage in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) had limited and unpublished hours that made it next to impossible to plan a visit. There were lines for petrol, lines for bread, and even for ice cream.

The Russian people seemed cold and suspicious, but also curious. When our eyes met, theirs asked, “Who are you and why are you here?”

A rainy Sunday ten days later found us on the exit road. We had eaten enough caviar for a lifetime, purchased a few souvenirs to show we had been there, and saved all our expense tickets for the final border check. The little Fiat couldn’t get to the border city, Brest, fast enough.

The freedom, which the border town of Brest represented, faded when a detour sign blocked our road and redirected our journey.  Now we were at the mercy of the government and their signs. We were using the map given to us at the Finnish border. It was one way the government controlled independent car campers for it showed no other roads than the route we were assigned.

The windshield wiper motor moaned under a deluge of rain. Detour signs led us off the paved road and onto rutted dirt paths that turned to muddy rivers of water. Soon we arrived at an old village. The rain stopped.

A woman with a wrinkled brown face trudged down the middle of the street in heavy black boots. She wore a long black dress covered by an apron. A babushka (printed scarf) covered her head. Swinging from her hand was a battered metal milk bucket. I was getting ready to take a picture when she made a gesture that caused me to gasp. She used her free hand to make the sign of the cross and turned to look at an unmarked building to her left. The door to that building was open.

“Oh, Jerry, that’s a church,” I said. “Please stop. I’ve got to go in.”

Jerry stopped, and I ran up the worn wooden steps. Beside the door in the North X, there hung a life-sized wooden crucifix. The body of our Lord was weathered with split wood and cracked peeling paint, but the woman ahead of me didn’t seem to notice. She reverently touched the toes of the crucifix letting her fingers linger to make it a prayer, and then she crossed herself.

This was a foreign kind of worship for me, because prior to this experience, I had been led to honor only the empty cross signifying the resurrection. So I too, touched the toes of the crucifix, and for the first time in my life, awkwardly crossed myself.

A floorboard creaked as we continued into the nave. Quickly selecting an empty pew, I placed the kneeler down and began to pray. I pulled a small, red New Testament from my pocket and found comfort in the Psalms. I glanced around the room. The walls were white and bare. The altar was stripped and there were no flowers, no candles, no communion cups, and no books. A robed priest sat in a corner at the back of the church staring at some spot on the floor. I wondered what it would have cost him if he were found wearing the vestments of faith.

God was there. Each time I heard that creaky floorboard followed by a kneeler set down, I was aware that other believers joined the worship. In our collective silence, fervent and eloquent prayers were being raised to our Lord.

What I learned that dark, rainy Sunday was this: No tongue, no power, no governmental decrees, or political forces could silence the fact that 2000 years ago Jesus Christ had paid the ultimate price for our freedom from sin by hanging on a crude and rough cross to the death – and even in the oppressive dark, behind the Iron Curtain, we were free indeed. This truth could not then, and cannot now, be silenced!

The question may be asked: Why would you go to all the trouble of reproducing the Stations of the Cross when so many artists through the centuries have already so eloquently addressed this event? The answer is this: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.” Our stations at St. James Chapel of the Holy Innocents are a voice for 2004. In creating the Stations of the Cross in bronze for our “Way of the Cross” we are speaking a truth that cannot be silenced. We are seizing the day for the glory of God only.

Amen.