“Everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened”.
I must admit that for years I thought that these words cannot be trusted without reservation… They sounded like a kind of holy exaggeration, encouraging us to pray, keep in touch with God, try our best to reach out to Him. It took me half a century of collecting evidence to come to the conclusion that Jesus means every word He says, also in matter of our “asking”, “seeking” and “knocking”… Some of that evidence may be called “historical”, yet no less true. Here it is.
First World War in Grodno (now in Bialorus). With German army approaching, the city, and with it a high school is evacuated by Tzarist Russian army deep into Russia. Among the students is Stan, a 14 year old boy, my future father in law. He is the only surviving child (out of six who had died in childhood) of his parents. They let him go believing he’ll be safer away from the front. What they do not know is that within two years Russian revolution will begin and will engulf the country, wiping out everything human. Millions were killed and lost. One Polish teenager in this mess was like a speck of dust tossed by tornado.
One woman faced that tornado bravely, Franciszka, Stan’s mother. Every morning she would make her way to Mass, armed with rosary. For hours she begged God to bring her son back home. She was no novice to prayer of a bagger. Hadn’t she prayed fervently for her lost children’s lives?
How great must have been her faith in God’s Mercy if she kept knocking at that Door that had failed to open for her five times before..
One day she came from church, however, and found her lost son at home. He was emaciated, sick, bald from typhus, worn from walking 1400 km through the bloodlands that Russia had become. The Door has opened at the sound of her persistent, trustful knocking.
I never met Franciszka who died in 1939, but I am married to her grandchild that was born in God’s response to prayerful insistence of this woman. My parents-in-law could not have children for several years and practically gave up hope. Finally Franciszka, by now widowed, reluctantly moved in with her (by now married) son. She must have been very unhappy at that time – her daughter in law was a Protestant, her son a fallen off Catholic – and there were no children. Her son “of many prayers” had abandoned the faith – how hard that must have been! Yet she kept on going to Mass every day and praying..asking for the blessing of children and no doubt, their faith, too. She also worked at home as hard as always. The family story has it that she was a scourge of lazy servants.
When her tired heart gave up on her she was making cherry preserves. In the coffin her old rosary was twined round her juice stained fingers. God listened to her prayers – but let her know it when she was Home already. One year later, in the middle of the Second World War her first grandchild was born and within the next two years, another boy. That younger boy, much later, became my husband. Raised by a non-practicing Lutheran mother and agnostic father, both boys eventually became good Catholics. It is now our turn to face our challenges and pray, knock and ask.. and how thankful we should be that we can do it!
If we were not forced to knock, would we notice the Door? If we did not lack, would we ask?
God always answers our prayers.. always – even if sometimes we have to pray for lifetime and see the fruit of the prayers after we pass away.
Maria Kozakiewicz