Pillars of Fire In My Soul

her maturing desire to devote her life to God as a religious sister. The most serious obstacle was her family; they were opposed to her leaving them for the religious life. They cited their poverty and inability to provide a dowry as their principle reason. A dowry was intended to help support the religious community, or to provide financial assistance to a young woman who was not able to take final vows and had to return to the secular world. Helen said to them, “But He promised me that He would take care of all my needs.” It seems clear that she meant Jesus. Helen’s family held firm to their conviction that unless they provided a dowry for her, Helen could not become a religious sister. Helen, in obedience to them, went along with their decision for quite some time. In fact, she determined to devote herself to the pleasures of the secular life. With this attitude, Helen attended a dance in 1924. Suddenly as she was dancing, she saw Jesus, stripped and covered with wounds. He said to her, “How long must I wait for you?” She walked off the dance floor and sat down in a daze, telling her sister Josephine that she had a headache. Then she made her way to the cathedral where she fell prostrate in the form of a cross in front of the tabernacle, saying to the Lord, “What will you have me do?” The Lord answered that she must go to Warsaw where she would enter a convent. At the end of her prayer, Helen bought a couple of cookies and a little bottle of whisky for her uncle. She went to his house and gave them to him, asking that he take her to the train station so she could go to Warsaw to find the religious order Jesus wanted her to join. Years later a religious sister who knew her at the time of the dance said, “Is that what happened to her?” She had seen Helen acting as if she were stunned at the dance and then Helen disappeared without a trace from the local scene. 142 Pillars of Fire in My Soul