Greetings from Amoy! Today, I saw hundreds of Polish scouts (both boys and girls, high school-age) in the Victory Square opposite the Sofitel in a very long ceremony to honor Polish martyrs and to place flags before the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the eternal flame. 
A high school girl, Ula (it was a very long name with, of course, lots of "z"s, so she said to just call her Ula) was participating and very excited about it, though very cold as she waited for her troop to arrive from a nearby church.
We talked a bit and she explained about the giant cross in the square, beneath which were the words of Pope John Paul II, the first Polish pope (and last one, I guess). He visited Victory Square on 2 June 1979, and celebrated the Eucharist Sacrifice.
I was moved by the ceremony today. Young and old alike braved the cold for over an hour. As I looked at the beautiful young children, I could only hope that, for once, Poland can have peace, and that these children will not have to fight like their ancestors. What a tragedy that 6 million Poles died during World War II because of the greed of Germany and Russia--and that Poland's Western so-called allies abandoned them.
Below is part of Pope John Paul's 2 June 1979 message. Click here if you'd like to read the entire message.Enjoy Amoy!
Dr. Bill Brown
Academic Director, OneMBA
Xiamen University School of Management
Click Here for my Amazon eBook "Discover Xiamen.'
Pope John Paul's message (an excerpt):
Today, here in Victory Square, in the capital of Poland, I am asking with all of you, through the great Eucharistic prayer, that Christ will not cease to be for us an open book of life for the future, for our Polish future.
...We are before the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. In the
ancient and contemporary history of Poland this tomb has a special
basis, a special reason for its existence. In how many places in our
native land has that soldier fallen! In how many places in Europe and
the world has he cried with his death that there can be no just Europe
without the independence of Poland marked on its map! On how many
battlefields has that solider given witness to the rights of man,
indelibly inscribed in the inviolable rights of the people, by falling
for "our freedom and yours"!
"Where are their tombs, O Po-land? Where are they not! You know better than anyone—and God knows it in heaven" (A. Oppman, Pacierz za zmarlych).
The history of the motherland written through the tomb of an Unknown Soldier!
I wish to kneel before this tomb to venerate every seed
that falls into the earth and dies and thus bears fruit. It may be the
seed of the blood of a soldier shed on the battlefield, or the sacrifice
of martyrdom in concentration camps or in prisons. It may be the seed
of hard daily toil, with the sweat of one's brow, in the fields, the
workshop, the mine, the foundries and the factories. It may be the seed
of the love of parents who do not refuse to give life to a new human
being and undertake the whole of the task of bringing him up. It may be
the seed of creative work in the universities, the higher institutes,
the libraries and the places where the national culture is built. It may
be the seed of prayer, of service of the sick, the suffering, the
abandoned—"all that of which Poland is made".
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| Cross, Victory Square Warsaw |
All that in the hands of the Mother of God—at the foot of the cross on Calvary and in the Upper Room of Pentecost!
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| Victory Square Cross, Pope John Paul's words |
All that—the history
of the motherland shaped for a thousand years by the succession of the
generations (among them the present generation and the coming
generation) and by each son and daughter of the motherland, even if they
are anonymous and unknown like the Soldier before whose tomb we are
now.
All that—including
the history of the peoples that have lived with us and among us, such as
those who died in their hundreds of thousands within the walls of the
Warsaw ghetto.
All that I embrace in thought and in my heart during
this Eucharist and I include it in this unique most holy Sacrifice of
Christ, on Victory Square.
And I cry—I who am a Son of the land of Poland and who am also Pope John Paul II—I cry from all the depths of this Millennium, I cry on the vigil of Pentecost:
Let your Spirit descend.Let your Spirit descend.
and renew the face of the earth,
the face of this land.
Amen.
