Olga Ilnicka rscj

I am sitting in front of the computer and trying to share the experience of my apostolic service in Moscow with you. I have been trying to do so, as I promised, for last few days but haven't succeeded. For it is as if I tried to describe someone I love to a group of anonymous people whom I, in fact, don't know. So, forgive me, that it is so subjective and emotional!

Olga Ilnicka, rscj

In was in Moscow for one year as a teacher of Religious Education in the Polish School situated next to the Polish Embassy. For sure I gave my heart to the lives of those children of Polish diplomats or businessmen whom I taught. They are very lonely and feel lost in spite of belonging to seemingly well-off families.

But in fact, my heart is even more with those whom I met in the Catholic Cathedral in Moscow, and in trams, buses, in the underground: I don't know why, but the body of an old homeless woman who died one freezing autumn night near the block of flats where we live in Moscow, stands for me a symbol of them all. Maria Stecka and I found her body on our way to church in the morning. Then we learnt that the body, as that of a dog killed by a car or a piece of rubbish fallen off the rubbish bin, stayed there for half a day. This woman showed me how much I am a stranger in this country (in spite of my Russian origins) and how little I can do. The face of this nameless woman will stay in my memory for ever as a symbol of the truth that Jesus exists more in the simple gestures of Love which we can give each other every day than elsewhere.

Russia is a country I love and that it the reason why it is difficult to write about it. But I want very much to ask you to keep this place in your memory, in your prayers. The situation from, the human point of view, is hopeless. But I do have hope in Jesus who has special attention for what is smallest, poorest, without hope, and in the fact that there is where He wants to show His loving face. He wants to do so by human hands, by the simple everyday gestures of love. He wants to do embodiedd in those who in spite of the pressure of media, of what happenings in the street say, choose Goodness everyday

I am sure I will never forget the faces of those people.