26 society. Luckily, we are protected from this spiritual apathy by our martyr brothers, including the martyrs of the communist era. They are people capable of confronting evil because they trusted God and committed themselves to Him. They nurtured in themselves the mentality of mercy – “Jesus, I trust in you”. In their openness to Jesus’ Spirit, they had courage to give up their lives for God and others. Because the mentality of mercy includes the gift of courage to spread the Gospel, trust in the omnipotence and goodness of the Creator, the imperishable testimony of a life greater than pain, sin and death. Their way of life shaped a generation of mercy. Mercy can be compared to a kind of gene which had been instilled for good in the generation raised on the life of Saint Faustina, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, Saint John Paul II and many saints and blessed, including Marians: Saint Stanislaus Papczyński with the imagination of mercy reaching Purgatory that led Father Stanislaus to entrust those fallen in the battlefields of the then Republic of Poland to God; the blessed martyrs of Rosica - Antoni Leszczewicz and Jerzy Kaszyra, with the imagination of mercy allowing them to accompany others to the last moments of their life so that they could look death in the eye with hope and courage, enter together the Glory of Christ who comes forth from the future to lead them to it; and finally, contemporary candidates for the altars, like, those already mentioned in these reflections, Jānis Mendriks, Andrzej Čikoto, Fabian Abrantowicz, Vladas Mažonas, Eugeniusz Kulesza, who with the imagination of mercy amidst communist terror, mental and physical abuse, resisted suffering and amid savagery bore witness to the human dignity of a person immersed in the grace and goodness of God. Mercy in martyrdom – ex aerumnis carceris – a slow death from torment, exhaustion, harassment in a prison or a prison camp. Although it wasn’t a sudden death for faith, those who were slowly dying were ready to accept it. Their readiness to accept suffering leading to death was an expression of the deepest faith. Mercy embraces in itself a horizon of infinity which breaks through the humanistic restriction to temporality and opens up to heaven which we pursue throughout our entire lives – where Christ is seated at God’s right hand. Mercy also verifies the value of the culture we live in. It accurately exorcises any ideas which are supposed to help man, especially humanism without Christ which, while trying to tame evil, becomes incapable of fighting it and wallowing in acedia pushing to crimes. A gene of mercy is incarnated. The Incarnated Mercy is Christ. Mercy delivered is the disciples sent by Christ, filled with His Holy Spirit which at the time of trial tells themwhat to do and say. In addition to the above-men-
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