SAINT KINGA OF POLAND, MY COUSIN - July 24, 2022

 

Saint Kinga of Poland

Depicted holding her monastery

at Stary Sacz

b. 5 March 1224 - d. 24 July 1292

My 7th cousin, 25 times removed

My 7th cousin, 25 times removed, is Saint Cunegunde, also called Zinga, Kioga, or, more popularly, Saint Kinga of Poland. Saint Kinga of Poland, Patroness of Poland and Lithuania, was born 5 March 1224 In Esztergom, Hungary.  She was the princess daughter of King Bela IV of Hungary and was a niece of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary and the great niece of Saint Hedwig.  An illustrious and pious family, her sisters were Saint Margaret of Hungary and Blessed Jolenta of Poland.

The sisters:
Saint Margaret of Hungary, Saint Kinga of Poland, 

and Blessed Jolenta of Poland

Both Kinga and her husband, Boleslaw V "the Chaste" embarked upon a marriage in which both parties were vowed to perpetual chastity.  Boleslaw's family was similarly pious and sincere.  His sister was blessed Salome of Cracow.  When he ascended to the throne as Prince of Cracow, Kinga became his princess.  Kinga soon began to devote herself to the care of the poor and the lepers and was known, both for her deep concern for the people, and her obedience and devotion to Christ and His Church.

Saint Kinga's husband

Boleslaw V "The Chaste"

Duke of Poland

b. 21 June 1226 - d. 7 December 1279

The storyline in which a saintly person vows lifelong chastity is common in Orthodox Church,  Catholicism , as well as other major religious traditions. In the Hindu faith, it is linked with the path of Enlightenment through meditation. Without celibacy, progress on the path toward spiritual enlightenment is considered negligible. Each religion has its own narrative of exactly WHY this is true. I just think it is interesting that the focus on restraint of the sex urge is an important one in all major religious traditions.

Kinga is patron saint of the salt miners, and the salt mine of Wieliczka in Poland has a large chapel dedicated to her that is 101 meters under ground.  It is a remarkably beautiful Cathedral that is able to accommodate about 400 people.

Poor Clare's Monastery

at Stary Sacz

When her husband died in 1279, Kinga sold all her possessions and gave the money to the poor.  Not long after that, she joined the Poor Clares monastery at Sandec (Stary Sacz).  Matters of state, and the prestige of her royal position, held no interest for her.  She was too modest and humble to have any taste for such power. Her heart belonged to Christ alone.  In fact, she would allow no one to call her by her official title of Grand Duchess of Poland.

Hers is a beautiful comment on the reality of the emptiness of fame, wealth, status and prestige. None of it comes close to the experience of the Lord in our hearts. Touched by the grandest force of all, humility would naturally occur, don't you think? It is from her humility that I surmise that she had a profound mystical experience of the Lord at some point.

While her life with the prince had been characterized by charitable works and service, her time in the monastery was spent in silent contemplation.  In 1292, at the age of 68, she passed from this world. In 1690, she was beatified, and in 1999 she was sainted.

Saint Kinga's convent, the Monastery of the Poor Clares, in Stary Sacz, Poland, remains a much-beloved landmark in the oldest section of this historic little town.

Poor Clares Monastery

Stary Sacz

On June 16, 1999, Pope John Paul II visited Stary Sacz, the town of his birth, for the proclamation of the canonization of beloved Saint Kinga.  A papal altar was erected on the common outside of the monastery that Kinga created and in which she had died.

Wooden altar at Stary Sacz

built for Pope John Paul II's visit

When suffering from headache, I recommend very simple rote prayers, such as the Jesus Prayer or the Rosary

Jesus Prayer

Lord, Jesus Christ,

son of God,

have mercy upon me,

a poor sinner.

Saint Kinga would have been familiar with the Jesus Prayer. It is a prayer used very much by Orthodox monastics and often "counted" on rope prayer beads. I have a set of these myself.

My prayer rope

I keep it in a box with my

Chaplet of Divine Mercy

The Jesus Prayer was probably first set out in the Philokalia, that great Orthodox spiritual work, in a discourse on Abba Philimon. What I have written out, above, is the "long" version that can be reduced to the shortest form: "Lord, Jesus Christ, have mercy upon me," but the version in the Philokalia only omits "a poor sinner" from its text.

Here we have another example of how the major religious traditions mirror one another in certain spiritual practices. The Jesus Prayer of the Orthodox faith, counted on knotted rope strands, is reminiscent of the Zen Koan's and the Hindu Mantra, and a little less similar to the Rosary, which is far more complex and involves meditations upon a variety of concepts.

Contrasting the role of Jesus as "son of God" with our own, "a poor sinner," sets us up for a more humble frame of mine. I imagine it is probably always good to keep in mind the difference between ourselves and The Lord.

Care has to be taken not to become attached to these things as a sort of magic talisman, of course. Advanced spiritual aspirants realize this without being told. I DO like to advocate for the beauty of the rosaries, chaplets, prayer ropes and the like, because beauty DOES attract us and, if it can attract us to something good and holy, then beauty serves a divine purpose. This is why I am not one of those people that blabs about how we should live so simply that we do not allow ourselves any beauty at all. That philosophy is the death of art and just causes stress, as far as I am concerned. Some Protestant sects are overly concerned with making things as PLAIN as possible. Certainly, a plain rosary is absolutely fine to use - but must we all have the same? No.

Rosary I made for myself

with my 29th Great Grandmother,

Saint Margaret of Scotland,

in the center piece

(Design is my original and copyrighted!)

A few years ago, I made myself a nice rosary of St. Margaret of Scotland, with her centerpiece and some lovely beads and charms that remind me of my Celtic, English and Scottish heritage. I did something unique with the bead caps to help keep me going in the right direction so that as my vision recedes more and more, I am able to follow the rosary without a problem.

There is nothing wrong with incorporating beauty into one's spiritual accoutrements. Certainly one can achieve the same result with a wood rosary or a silver one, but it's a matter of style, as far as I can see, and we shouldn't judge one another by it. Everyone has their own taste and inclinations.

This coming week, I have another eye doctor appointment. It seems like I was just there yesterday! I am praying that I do not have to have another shot in my eyeball, as I did last time! The doctor keeps lobbying to just give me the shots every month, and he gives me a headache with the pressure. My blood pressure goes up after he gives me one of these shots, and I just don't want to have them unless something is happening in my retina that calls for it. I am not fond of the anaphylactic approach.  Besides which, if I know that I am definitely getting a shot in my eye, I tend to apprehend it and my anxiety level rises. It's just what happens with PTSD. There is no magic bullet to make this stop. It's just one of the symptoms I have to deal with.  Anyway, please pray for me that the necessity for the shots will disappear and that I can stop doing this every month! I do know someone who had three shots and then never had to do it again, so it is not unreasonable to hope that I may do likewise.

Please pray for me as I pray for you, dear friends!

Next month is my birthday, and I have made an Amazon birthday wish list. I am still trying to do something positive with my diet, but food is so very expensive at the moment, it is hard to do! Ordering is easy. Amazon has my address and mails to me direct.

Here is the LINK - CLICK HERE

May we all be blessed!

Silver Rose

Sannyasini Kaliprana

P.S. All of the blog posts I write are independently researched and written by me and all of them are protected by legal copyright, so please just enjoy them here and leave them here where you found them and do not copy any of it to any other place for any purpose.

(c) Copyright 2022, Silver S. Parnell

All rights reserved.

FREEDOM

Just because God allows something to happen doesn't mean he wills or desires it. Without giving us freedom - free will - we would not have the power to give Him our love and attention of our own volition. Who wants to be forced to love? Could one even call it "love" under that circumstance? If God created the World and all things in it, He had to give us all our freedom so that He could be chosen for Himself, loved for Himself, and worshipped for Himself. Otherwise, we would be slaves.

I watched a television episode earlier this week in which a young woman, previously on fire with love of the Lord, decided she no longer believed in Him because something unpleasant happened to her. She had to have a surgery that rendered her sterile, and she blamed God for it. She had her heart set on having children and she decided that because God allowed her to become sterile, God did not therefore exist at all  because a loving God would give her everything she wanted. She expected to be repaid for her "faith" and because God didn't deliver, she had no further use for Him. This is a mercenary type of religion that is nothing more than an exercise in selfishness.

I have always found the story of Job to be inspiring during difficult times such as these. Dealing with multiple physical illnesses, blindness, disability, deaths of loved ones and pets, assaults and thievery by neighborhood hoodlums: If hadn't some faith in God, I would be weeping every day. 

In the Bible, God allowed all sorts of suffering to be brought down on Job's head, despite the fact that Job did not deserve it. The Lord told Satan that He was sure of Job's love and allegiance and that, no matter what Satan visited on him, Job would remain faithful - and that is exactly what happened. Job was tormented with sore boils all over his body. His sons and daughters and servants were all killed. His entire world was destroyed.

Job had always "feared God" and "avoided evil," and therefore none of the harsh disasters that were visited on him were warranted. He didn't greet those calamities with a sanguine calm. He openly expressed his suffering and wore the signs of it on his person.

"Then Job rose up and rent his garments, and having

shaven his head fell down upon the ground and worshipped."

Job 1: 20

Shaving one's head and ripping one's garments are symbols of extreme grief or anguish. Despite being established in the Lord and firm in faith, Job felt the pain of these earthly torments and he expressed his misery. Wearing these emblems of gloom, he fell to the ground in humility of surrender and praised the Lord, as was his firm habit.

It is perfectly understandable to feel unhappiness and to express it, but what is crucial is that, despite misfortunes falling upon us, it is our attachment to The Lord that is key. Do we keep company with the Lord and have faith in His Love, despite what happens to us in this "veil of tears." This is where spiritual disciplines come into play. If we have the habit of inclining the mind to God, deliberately and regularly, it is to Him we will automatically turn when we are burdened with woes. 

There is a tendency among spiritual folk to assume that if your faith is solid, you don't suffer at all - that you meet hardships like an automaton or a Mona Lisa painting - serene in the midst of it all. I am sure some people may behave like that. Certainly others aspire to it. But it isn't necessary. Whether or not you express suffering doesn't matter in the slightest. What DOES matter is whether or not you continue to keep faith with your Lord. The rest of it is window dressing.

Of course, as our practices become finer and finer, it is natural that we mourn less frequently and for shorter periods of time, until one day we may remain peaceful in the face of catastrophe, but it isn't a sin to be unhappy or express it. Instead, it is human. God does not guarantee that earthly circumstances will go our way, but He can be relied upon to comfort us. All we have to do is turn to Him.

Several of Job's friends wept with him, ripped their clothing, sprinkled the dusts of the earth over themselves, and then sat with him for 7 days and 7 nights. Other friends harassed him with criticisms - insinuating that if he was actually a holy man, he would not have these misfortunes visited upon him. They added to his torment instead of accompanying him and sitting with him. God can be relied upon to comfort us when our friends abandon us through their selfishness and insensitivity.

"Blessed are they that mourn for they shall

be comforted."

Matthew 5:4

In the "New Age", the emphasis tends to be on the wrong aspect of the thing entirely. Instead of accompanying a suffering person in their sorrow, people will often accuse them of not being "spiritual" enough when it is actually the attachment of the person to the Lord that matters. Some of these people are so confused that they believe that if you feel any emotion other than kumbaya happy clappy sentiment, you will "attract" to yourself (and deserve) further suffering. Forget the weeping, the cutting of hair, the rending of garments, and the mournful vigils. They want you to wear a happy façade or they blame you for every misfortune. The selfish ignorance of these people can be annoying, at the very least, and an incredible burden in one's darkest days - but continuing to return to thoughts of the Lord will soothe us when humans can't be bothered to sympathize.

It is also common among the misguided and unlearned to tell you (or to insinuate broadly) that your suffering is nothing in comparison to such-and-such a person. Indeed, it is almost impossible to experience any suffering for which there is not someone in the world who is experiencing far worse. It may be helpful, during a more philosophical time, when the initial reaction to misfortune has worn off a bit, for the recipient of bad luck to contemplate those type of facts, but for others to foist it on you in place of sympathy is just another cruelty, heaped upon someone already afflicted.

"Will the wild ass bray when he hath grass?

or will the ox low when he standeth before 

a full manger?"

Job 6: 5

I suppose the point of all this is that regular meditative practice, both formal and informal throughout the day, prepares us for the difficulties of life.

On Monday, I will be going to the Cancer Center with regard to a melanoma that has suddenly appeared on my scalp. As a religious hermit without community, I have no one to accompany me on this appointment. Every time the clerks call me to "remind" me about this upcoming appointment, they mention that I am allowed one person to come with me, but there is no one I would burden with it, especially now, with Covid pandemic raging across the globe. I wouldn't want anyone to risk their life just so I could have the comfort of a calm and supportive presence. It wouldn't be fair. Instead, I will take myself and rely upon the presence of God within my heart to sustain me. After decades of training the mind to return to the feet of the Lord, I tell myself that I can do this. God will be with me.

I suppose it does not seem "fair" to me that, on top of everything else, I have skin cancer to deal with, but this is my life.

A particularly good little book, THE PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD, is one which I've turned to over the years for inspiration. It is about Brother Lawrence, a friar who was deemed nearly useless to the monastery and was relegated to the kitchen. He couldn't be a priest. He couldn't chant the office. I get the impression that his brother monks treated him with disdain and looked down upon him. But he, on the other hand, said that he felt as close to his Lord among the pots and pans as he would have been in the choir stall, singing the beautiful hymns.

Practicing the presence of God throughout the day is very similar to the Buddhist practice of "walking meditation," in that the mind is kept with the Divine during an activity that is pedestrian - not thought of as particularly spiritual. The practice yokes the mental activity with the breath and the body's movement, so that the three spheres act upon one another. It is very helpful.

Another "easy" prayer that inclines the mind to God without requiring intellectual exercise, and which can be recited mentally throughout the day, directing the mind to the Divine, is the Jesus Prayer:

Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God
Have mercy upon me, a poor sinner

This prayer is widely prayed by the Orthodox monks, who carry a prayer rope that is knotted at close intervals, to count the number of times the prayer is said.

I highly recommend giving these things a try. Read the little book I mentioned above. It is widely available. If I remember correctly, it was written by a fellow monk who knew Brother Lawrence. I think perhaps Brother Lawrence was illiterate.

As usual, if you have rudimentary questions about meditation, I will be available. Just make a comment and I will respond.

In the meantime, I ask that you pray for me, just as I pray for you.

God bless us all

Silver Rose
Sannyasini Kaliprana

PRAYER CORNER REVAMP

Dec. 2018

Living Room Prayer "Corner"

Every so often I write a post about my prayer corners. I change them around as often as I reorganize the living room, which is a very small space that is ruined with doors, windows and walkways. No matter where I put my recliner, it is in the way of a door, window or walkway. The present configuration is no different, and I think I have finally given up. As long as I live in this odd little apartment, I will just live with the set-up as it is and stop trying to find a better organization. The space is so awkward, it will never be comfortable or spacious.

When you enter my apartment, you will have to scoot around my recliner and the table I must have next to it. We will pray that your hips are more narrow than mine and you won't end up knocking everything off the little tables and onto the floor. Welcome to my world!

Now that I have resigned myself to this odd little piece of air, I decided to reorganize for the LAST time, and look forward to the day when I can leave here, hopefully to a house that I will buy from the proceeds of my writing. I have never had the money to buy any sort of home, but the dream still lives.

Whenever I buy a lottery ticket or think of what I might like to accomplish if I were to sell my book and/or paintings, I immediately think about a Catholic ashram where I might host several other senior religious women like me. It would be be an Indian style house of prayer that would rely upon the sale of art works for its income, and regular times of quiet and meditation in a quasi-monastic schedule. [We will have to be relatively flexible with all of this because of the vagaries of the human body as it breaks down with age.]

Because of my disabilities, I am physically unable to adapt myself to someone else's routine and premises, nor would I want to, as I tend to take charge under most circumstances, and religious institutions typically don't want that. I am alpha. It is my natural posture in relation to the world, and as far as I can ascertain, God has made me this way, and therefore it is good.

 

My Shrine table

In the Catholic Byzantine tradition, having at least one prayer corner in one's home is highly stressed as very necessary to the corporate spiritual life of the family that lives there. You can have dozens of icons or just a few, a big shrine table or just 10 inches square, as I have here. The point is to create a sacred space conducive to regular prayer.

I try to create sacred space throughout the entire apartment, but my joints have disintegrated to such an extent that I am not able to even keep it tidy. It is hard to feel all holy and elevated when the dust bunnies are the size of small cats. Especially important, to that end, is getting a special vacuum cleaner that will address my asthma as well as those dust bunnies and the peculiar requirements of cleaning a linoleum floor that is manufactured to look and feel like wood. Dirt and dust become wedged into the "grain." This apartment is so dusty that the walls around the heater vents are black with it. [After much research, I found an excellent vacuum that will both clean AND help me BREATH. My Amazon wish list is HERE ]

Invite the Lord into your home in a more visible way. Having a prayer corner creates a remarkable environment that encourages prayer. The visual reminders of the Lord and His saints leads you into it. You'll find that it is easier to find time to sit and meditate if you have a beautiful space in which to do it. I happen to have a lot of beautiful icons and statues that people have given me and that I have collected over the years, but you don't need all that. One picture, a candle, a set of prayer beads, set on a small table with a chair nearby: these are all you really need.

Try to remember that God is everywhere, including most especially in your home. There are many advantages to having at least one prayer corner in your home, but I won't tell you all of them. Discover for yourself.

God bless you all.

RETURNING TO THE SOURCE

Part of my living room shrine

I have written blogs for the last 4 or 5 years now, but have decided to retire the majority of my posts. It was never my idea to put myself "out there" in that way, but after several strong encouragements by a former friend, I began to write. She had anticipated this as a means of gaining some support for my solitary monastic life, since I have no community, but this did not happen. Not only did I receive almost nothing for my efforts, but the cost of internet and the upkeep of a computer proved to be extra expenses for which I do not possess the resources.

In addition, the time taken to research my posts distracted from my primary contemplative mission of prayer. I enjoyed the writing, especially my forays into educational topics, but the world can easily live without my musings on information that is available elsewhere.

For myself, I prefer reading the original saints and doctors of the church, as well as the Bible (of course!) and almost never read blogs. In that vein, I encourage the same for everyone. Blogs are a waste of our time, for the most part. Now that I have realized this, I am chastened by disappointment that I did come to this fact sooner!

There are many elderly, disabled ladies like myself who have dedicated the remainder of their lives to the Lord, however, and I wouldn't like to lose track of my fellow hermitesses, anchorites and other holy people, so I leave this page, by way of a method of contacting me, should they wish it.

If you leave a message on this blog, it will find its way to me. Forward your email address, and I will contact you.

In the meantime, may the Lord's blessings be upon you daily, and may our Blessed Mother lead you by the hand to Jesus.

In Jesus' precious name, I remain your friend,

Silver Rose Parnell