Jesus' Garden Tomb: the unique Polish Easter
How can God allow Tragic
Events?
Polish Spirituality, Death
and a Garden Tomb I of 4
Rev Dr Czesław M Krysa,
Senior Parochial Vicar
Church of St Casimir, Buffalo, NY
One Holy Saturday morning in the 1970s a small girl
ran happily excited through parked cars crossing Weiss St. She was instantly killed by an oncoming
car. How could God allow such an
innocent death? Why does cancer kill a
35year old dad with three children? Or
an overdosed teen?
What kind of God could ever send an earthquake to
destroy an entire eldercare facility? How
did God allow Germans to steal babies from mothers in Auschwitz and finish them
both off; or execute my own uncle Marian with a lethal injection?
Florida news reported a hurricane disaster showing a
woman standing at her apartment door (the only thing left after the
storm). She pointed to a blessed palm
cross thumb-tacked to the door asking, “How can I believe in a God who let this
happen?”
Tragic loss of loved ones may raise the question, “Why
did God take them from me?” How could an
almighty, all-loving God do this?
However, He let it happen to His only Son. The almighty Father sent Jesus to be
gruesomely executed by humans. If the
Lord “let it happen” to His only begotten, why wouldn’t He “let it happen” to
us?
Herein lies the painful, wounded, broken mystery
Polish Americans ponder before Holy Saturday’s Tomb. “The Lord’s Tomb,” literally “Divine Tomb”
(Boży Grób) draws Polish families to church for an Easter food-basket blessing. Before returning home, they kneel at a
devotional, stone-hewn grave, pray silently, and light a vigil candle.
This grave is not a lone, cold, dark, stone cavern. St John shows Jesus’ body was interned in a
garden (19:41). Polish spirituality prefers
living faith mirrored in the environment.
One may say it’s “clean green” spirituality in each stage of life. Autumn’s falling leaves draw loved ones to
light vigil candles on graves. Winter’s
living memorial places a handful of hay under an empty, Christmas Eve, place
setting. Summer finds final resting
places blooming with well-kept flower beds.
Bountiful greenery, trees, bushy leaves, grass, fragrant
hyacinths, swaying tulips, bright daffodils, narcissus, and crocuses embrace this
cemetery’s “sweet wood” tree of the Cross. “In all the woods there’s none like thee,”
sings the Civil War English translation of the “O Faithful Cross” hymn, well known
to Polish lips. True believers do not
give up on “a loser.” Perhaps society’s
addiction to “winners” and “celebrities,” and “success” make kneeling without
protest at a grave an undesirable challenge.
No Polish family exists which has not lost someone in recent
wars of aggression. Hate filled neighboring
countries waged war on military, brutally murdering millions of civilians in
slave-labor death camps. Survivor families
find ample time to visit God’s Grave on Holy Saturday. Why don’t the many losses and breakups we
suffer in peaceful USA lead crowds, at least once annually, to Jesus’ burial
place?
Too many funerals have exclaimed in peripheral
ignorance, ‘Your loved one’s in heaven.”
Short lived and anecdotal eulogies boast, “I’ll be dancing a polka with
her in heaven,” and send survivors home carrying cremains to eventual grief
counselors.
Holy Week’s last three days are so sacred they’re called, “The Triduum,” literally a ritual triptych of God’s execution: 1) Chalice of God’s blood dripping in Gethsemane, 2) Precious Divine Blood watering the Wood of the Cross, and 3) God’s Garden Grave. Our first parents shame-facedly rejected God’s love in the Garden of Eden. Christ, the new Adam, restores it in a garden cemetery.
One St Casimir leader showed me a snapshot. He said, “Father, for us this is
Easter!” Smiling at the transept-long
Garden Tomb, I responded, “I’m at home.”
I’ve heard the history of the Keepers of the Holy Sepulchre (Bożogrobcy
-- Jerusalem). In 1400, they founded my
Dad’s home parish.
Stop by Holy Saturday. With or without your basket.
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