I was faced with a difficult question: what am I to speak about during this retreat? Among those confined were many non-believers. I had already met them once on a retreat basis -- in April, in another confinement camp in Jaworze. At that time, I tackled strictly religious subjects and had the feeling of being listened to mainly out of courtesy. I knew, therefore, that the problems should be rather moral than religious. On the other hand, I did not intend to wade into questions that would be controversial from the point of view of the state authorities. Pastoral workers in prisons were something new at that time and I could not afford to give the authorities reasons for considering them persona non grata.

Hence, I chose the themes: reconciliation, forgiveness, and love of enemies. The first day of the retreat turned out, in my opinion, unusually well. I felt that I was listened to not only with interest but with approval. I rejoiced inwardly that there were still subjects of great importance for this public to which state authorities could not, in my convictions, any objections.

How great was then my astonishment when on the next day the commandant of the camp informed me that permission for the retreat had been withdrawn and that I would no longer be let into the campus area, even for confession of the imprisoned. The interventions of the local Bishop and the secretary of the Episcopate were of no assistance, even though they contacted high officials. When as a sign of protest against cancellation of the retreat the whole community of the confined went on a hunger strike, the authorities promised to withdraw it, but did not keep their promise. The spirit of reconciliation and love of enemies turned out to be too dangerous for a political system based on violence.

The fear of peace in those who organize violence knows no limits. Another fact from my own life: in 1983 I edited in Paris, for it was not possible in Poland, a book devoted to the love of enemies in the Polish liberation tradition. The books edited in this publishing house (Editions du Dialogue) generally received the consent of the Communist authorities for their distribution in Poland. This book had to wait for such a permission until 1989. Only in the atmosphere of "round table" did forgiveness and love of neighbor cease to be considered anti-state.

In the time of martial law (and hence as a mature person who had worked for years on the question of reconciliation and love of enemies) I began to notice facts that were even more unexpected and difficult to believe. Namely those who organize violence are often actively interested in awakening hatred towards themselves. Of course, their ideal is the slavish submission of those who are "organized" by means of violence, their spiritual surrender, their resignation from justified claims and even from their own identity. When, however, they do not obtain such a submission, they want at all costs to provoke their victims to hatred. Sometimes they even try to provoke them to commit harmless (that is, not dangerous for the oppressors’ position) terrorist acts. On the other hand, the oppressors are deathly afraid lest their victims react to the harm they suffer in a way that would build their own spiritual sovereignty.

Why, I often asked, did the Communists like so much to do harm and to show contempt for their fellow citizens who do not threaten them at all, or even to their potential adherents? Why do they manifest publicly that in their publications they have to count neither with common sense nor with social interests? Why were the lies propagated in the mass media sometimes so insolent that it is difficult to presume that they could deceive anybody? What other purpose could these lies have if their goal is not to deceive the society?

Let us try to consider the latter question: it is sufficient to answer one of them in order to find answers to them all. If the oppressor really wants to deceive, usually he is clever enough to make his lies maximally similar to truth and thus to endow them with the power to delude. Hence, the purpose of one who uses overt lies is not to mislead at all. Overt and insolent lies are just another method of showing contempt and awakening fury in the powerless people to whom one lies. The purpose of insolent lies is to emit the following message: "Look how cynical I am and how much I despise you! I deserve your hate!"

Why does the oppressor want to be hated? Why for instance were the enemies of "Solidarity" so disturbed by the fact that it did not stain itself with any terroristic acts; why did they want to provoke the movement to such acts in every possible way? The answer to these questions seems to be simple: doing harm to someone who is entirely innocent causes psychic discomfort. It is much more easy to injure somebody who gives proofs that he would do the same to me if only he had the opportunity. "Obviously, if only he could, he would do the same to me, or even something worse!" -- this argument releases one doing the harm from the burden that is difficult to carry, even for him and even if he be without any moral scruples.

Therefore, awakening in his victims hatred towards himself, the oppressor wants to destroy the witness to the justice he violated. Making his victim even potentially capable of revenge, he gains moral warrant for his violence. His action is no longer a brutal assault on human rights, but acquires the features of ordinary inter play in which both parties stand against each other under the law of the jungle; it becomes only a matter of chance which is stronger than the other.

The above remarks contain an indirect explanation of why the Polish spiritual atmosphere is so loaded with warnings against hatred, with declarations of rejection of any revenge, with appeals to forgive the oppressors and to love enemies. These ideas occur literally everywhere: in literary works and in political writings, in pedagogical thought and in sermons, in patriotic songs and in letters from death rows.

These subjects were so much the focus of attention simply because over the last two centuries Poles survived in the shadow of the crime committed against the Polish nation by Russia, Prussia, and Austria in the years 1772, 1793, and 1795 which partitioned our state. The consequence of the partitions were the subsequent actions of the invaders aimed at depriving Poles of their national identity. In the situation in which the masterpieces of Polish culture were prohibited for Poles on their own territory, when it was a crime to remember the history of the fatherland, when it was forbidden to use the Polish language not only in offices, but even in schools, it was an all too obvious temptation to react with powerless hatred. The danger increased as some of the invaders’ actions aimed directly at awakening hatred towards themselves.

Hence, it is not that the spirit of forgiveness and a disinclination to revenge constitute quasi-inborn features of the Polish national character (if something like a national character exists at all). It is rather that the subjective consciousness of some Poles willingly perceives this problem in this way, spreading stereotyped images of "Slavic passivity" or of the alleged inability of Poles to repay evil with evil. In reality, the defense against the temptation of hatred towards enemies required quite a bit of moral reflection and a great work of the spirit; it also happened to be marked with imperfection and inconsistencies. Because over and over new Poles undertook the effort to protect their society against hatred towards their oppressors, these efforts shaped the above mentioned social atmosphere.

The basic point of reference in these innumerable enunciations and actions aimed at defense and construction of spiritual sovereignty in the face of the injuries suffered was, of course, the teachings of the Gospel concerning forgiving faults and love of enemies. In the community of Christians practicing their faith these teachings are incessantly repeated. An average Catholic say the Lord’s prayer several times a day, so he or she repeats several times a day the words: "and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us". Vivid remembrance of this teaching (which, of course, is not identical with putting it in to practice) is favored by the circumstance that Christ put it in the simple and unforgettable images of exposing one’s other cheek and forgiving seventy times seven.

Further, from the XVIIth century till the Second Vatican Council an average Catholic listened every year during Lent to several sermons about the Lord’s passion and it was practically impossible for him or her not to hear some commentary on Christ’s prayer from Lk 23:34: "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do". Moreover, every year on the twenty first Sunday after Pentecost he or she listened to a sermon concerning the parable about the merciless debtor; on the second day of Christmas Catholic preachers throughout the world praised the martyrdom of St. Stephen and certainly many a time the faithful’s attention was drawn by the martyr’s request on behalf of his murderers from Act 7:60 "O Lord, do not count against them this sin!". Finally, in the elementary catechism course there was a subject entitled "Seven spiritual virtues," including, under the fifth and the sixth paragraphs, the following recommendation: "You should willingly forgive injuries, and patiently endure grudges".

That this teaching of the Gospel, recalled so many times, lives in human hearts is testified by its multiple presence in social mores. Perhaps other Christian nations managed to shape their mores in an even more enriching way, more efficiently educating attitudes of forgiving attacks and of reconciliation, yet this article is an attempt to sketch how such an education shaped attitudes in the Polish society. This should help us to understand the great spiritual work done by Poles during the last two centuries, aimed at joining the struggle for national independence with an attitude of love towards one’s enemies. This work would certainly end up in defeat, or may even not have been undertaken if the gospel teaching about forgiveness and love of enemies had not penetrated this society for a long time and had not marked its mores with its stigma.

In a different way there was a universal reconciliation before Easter. This was related to the pre-Easter confession that until the beginning of the XXth century, and in a way until its middle, was for the majority of Catholics the only confession in the whole year. It was commonly experienced as a thorough expurgation and renewal of the soul, crowned with reception of Holy Communion. This event was deeply rooted in social mores and people remembered, even if the priest did not remind them, to make up for injuries, to put an end to disagreements and first to stretch out their hand as first to those they resented before they went to confess their sins. The direction to reconcile with others before reconciling with God were meticulously fulfilled. The circumstance that people went to confession only once a year was very favorable in this regard. Now, when many Catholics practice confession much more often, they obviously still remember to reconcile with neighbors, but this imperative has undergone a certain trivialization.

The reconciliation before the Easter confession took place through unforgettable private encounters between those in conflict. The history of Polish pastoral care includes also -- as an extraordinary initiative -- liturgies of universal reconciliation. They appeared during the so-called popular missions in the XVIIIth century, and their goal was to reconcile also those whose resentment was stronger than the social constraint of reconciliation. Popular missions were aimed at a religious revival of Christians overwhelmed by spiritual routine or even by ignorance. In the XVIIIth century they began with arrival of several monks in a town. The monks preached for about a month to the local people calling them to convert and to live according to faith. This happened within the frame of rich Baroque ceremonies, proper to the spirituality of that time. Everything was arranged so that each of the participants confirmed and strengthened his or her conversion with a particularly deep reception of the sacraments of penance and the Eucharist.

It is surprising that an event that lasted ten years and that gradually and systematically ploughed the whole country and caused the spiritual renewal of the society was hardly noticed by the intellectual elites. This is partially explainable by the obstinacy of censorship at that time, caring that the pilgrimage left no traces in the radio, TV, or press. In any case, it is a fact that while this powerful event was happening and objectively passing almost unnoticed it was experienced every single day by several or ten thousand people in still other towns and villages. It is time now to attempt a more detailed description and deeper understanding of that phenomenon, while several million witnesses still live.

Services of universal reconciliation are held in Poland to this day, yet in a very modest form. Their most frequent occasion is the so-called parish missions that each parish has the duty to organize every ten years. Also, not more often than every ten years, a service of renewal of marital vows is celebrated, and all couples living in the parish are invited to take part. Because the service is dedicated also to strife or even broken marriages, many a time its fruit is withdrawal of divorce claims or reconciliation of spouses even after a legal divorce.

Traditions of reconciliation in the face of death are almost over, even if they were very rich in the past. People were afraid to leave this world in the state of hostility towards any of their neighbors. A similar fear arose over the possibility that my enemy could die without an opportunity to reconcile with me. The majesty of impending death and the fact that both sides were vitally interested in reconciliation facilitated it even if the disagreements were long-lived and the resentment was difficult to overcome. The average Pole spontaneously recalls in this context the confession of Jacek Soplica from the tenth book of Pan Tadeusz: the scene of forgiveness granted to the dying by the old Steward moves the more strongly that the reader has been previously introduced into the state of Gerwazy’s mind which seemed to exclude any possibility of reconciliation.

In many regions of Poland there was a custom of reconciling the dead with the living during burial ceremonies. According to a record by Oskar Kolberg from the eighteen eighties, the reconciliation was held in the following way: "when a funeral procession passed by a religious statue or by a cross, it stopped and the coffin lid was opened. Then somebody from elder relatives excused all the attendants in the name of the dead more or less in the following words: "This soul asks you to forgive her everything she did wrong unto you, all her faults that she has towards you, all harms she has done, whatever you might have suffered. Do you forgive, do you forget?’ -- The present said, answered one after another: `We do not remember what did this soul do wrong unto us, we do not bear any grudge’. Some people said: `Let her sleep in God! Let her have eternal rest! Let her behold eternal brightness!’ Then they closed the lid and carried the deceased to a cemetery".

Today this custom has practically vanished. Only sometimes is its spirit is recalled during burial sermons.

An even more efficient -- and at the same time more discrete -- educator than social mores is everyday speech. Janusz Korczak, a pedagogue in the most proper sense of the word, a marvelous theoretician and author of very popular books for children, an orphanage director who willingly went to a gas chamber to accompany his pupils, wrote about it very wisely:

Let us have a closer look at just the proverbs. Among them are appeals for accord: "Accord edifies, discord destroys", and admonishments reminding that the other feels the same way we do: "Do not do unto the other what you yourself dislike". Often proverbs remind us of the fact that our sense of having suffered injuries results often from our egocentrism: "The one who is more guilty runs to court", "We pardon ourselves, but we examine others", "We inscribe rancor on marble, and beneficence on sand". In proverbs there is much conviction that it is not worth while reclaiming injuries: "It is better to forgive wrongdoings than to go to court", "Yield to the stupid in the middle of the road", and, what is more important, you will not achieve anything good by harming others: "Nobody can enrich himself with injuries done to others", "Even those who do wrong abhor what they do".

Another group of proverbs draws our attention, pointing to the impossibility of radical hostility between people: "I would not wish it upon my worst enemy", "Even my enemy would say I am right", "Virtue is worth praising even in enemies". Still other proverbs recall that victims happen to be co-responsible for harms suffered: "There are no enemies that you have not grown," or that the mechanism of revenge is propelled with stable acceleration and that for this reason it should be stopped at the very beginning: "Think about revenge, and the devil will slip arms into our hands".

The latter proverb passed into everyday language from the literature (yet it is not excluded that Mickiewicz, writing the mentioned Soplica’s confession, used an already existing saying). More known and more often repeated is the saying of blessed Queen Jadwiga (died 1399), who, having obtained from her husband the reparation of harm done to peasants, was to say: "but who will give them back their tears?"

Historians dealing with the Polish education system probably would be able to tell us if this project was put into practice, or may be able to point to similar initiatives. But -- I repeat -- we should not overestimate the significance of strictly pedagogical thought in the domain of shaping the spirit of reconciliation and of social contempt for revenge.

We presented briefly the spiritual situation of Poles in regard to forgiveness, the situation that made it possible to transfer the ideals we speak about into the domain of political thought and action. As we know, in recent years Polish political interest has focused mainly around the question of regaining an independent state or its sovereignty. The attitude towards partitioners and invaders was -- and it could not be otherwise -- a very important component of this interest. It is this deeply rooted ideal of forgiveness and of love of enemies which determined that these ideas began to be present in reflection and in real attitudes towards the wrongdoers of the nation and the enemies of its liberty and independence.

The above outline forces us to refrain from presenting, even very briefly, the history of the problem. I will restrain myself to indicating a couple of facts that passed into the collective memory of Poles, and of which it is difficult to overestimate the influence in shaping today’s views and attitudes. I shall begin with an event that was perhaps without precedence or analogy in the whole history of wars, and about which all young Poles learn during the lessons on their country’s history: the great manifestation of the Polish-Russian friendship held in Warsaw on January 25, 1831, in the second month of the November uprising. The goal of that manifestation, enthusiastically supported by the Polish society, was to stress that the war with Russia was not a war with Russians, but with the tzarist despotism. It was then that there appeared on Polish banners the slogan "For our liberty and yours", which from then on has been a permanent presence on Polish liberation symbols. Even if somebody attempted to interpret these events in a drastically reductionist manner, as aimed at weakening the fighting spirit in the army of the enemy, it would be difficult not to notice that an intense propaganda of friendship with the nation with whose state we are at war deviates from stereotyped patterns of war propaganda, which tries rather to denigrate the nation of the enemy. We should notice, moreover, that addressees of this propaganda were, for obvious reasons, above all Poles.

Contemporary European thought concerning relations between the nations is to a great extent dechristianized by pagan ideas of struggle for survival, for living space, for various priorities, etc. The events that took place in Warsaw on January 25, 1831 are easier to understand against the backdrop of Christian convictions that harm cannot enrich those who harm (for it rather weakens him), and that the recovery of our rights cannot essentially threaten anyone. These convictions were formulated in hundreds of ways in Polish liberation thought -- which is why we find there so many declarations renouncing revenge and so many dreams of creating just relations with our invaders.

An event especially remembered by the present generation of Poles is the proclamation made in December 1965 by the Polish to the German Bishops, which could be summarized in the sentence: "We forgive and we ask for forgiveness". Even if during the war the Polish underground press had published many prayers for Germans and many appeals to forgive the invaders and murderers of our relatives, nevertheless the Bishops’ acceptance of this attitude had to arouse considerable resistance in a society that lost during the war -- leaving aside Jews who also were our fellow citizens -- three million people (more than 10 percent of the nation), not to mention the radical devastation of the economy, a loss of state sovereignty, and privation of the ability to decide Poland’s post-war political system. Based on these circumstances, the official propaganda undertook on the Bishops’ proclamation an hysterical attack unimaginable in a normal state, since only in a totalitarian state is it possible to tune the tone of enunciations of all mass media to one and the same melody of intense hatred and to eliminate from the public forum people who think otherwise.

As a result of this attack on even the very idea of forgiveness and reconciliation, its understanding revived and deepened. A part of the society yielded to the atmosphere created by the mass media. This is the easier to understand as it was only twenty years after the war and the wounds left by this disaster were still deeply felt. Yet that was a momentary disorientation which people quickly overcame. The mass participation and enthusiasm with which the Bishops were received by the population -- beginning from April 1966 until the end of that year -- in cities during the celebrations of the millennium of Poland’s baptism was an evident proof that in the dispute concerning the Bishops’ proclamation addressed to Bishops of Germany the society stood on the side of its Bishops.