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by Steve McCann
Preparations are underway in the United States and the nations of Europe to
celebrate Christmas as first and foremost a tribute to materialism. These
increasingly agnostic and secular societies have chosen to ignore the existence
of God and have instead placed more and more trust in man. The consequence of
this misguided reliance and the reality of God's outstretched helping hand is
embodied in the story of a young boy from the streets of a nameless city in an
unknown country.
World War II has ended and somewhere in central Europe, a solitary figure, his
clothes in tatters, carefully walks around the piles of rubble and broken glass
on the streets of a once-bustling city now lying in ruins. The few still-upright
walls, their windows and doors blown out, appear as skeletons framed against the
blue sky. No one knows this boy's age, name or to whom he was born. After the
death of a woman he had lived with and did not know if he was related to, he was
on his own.
His daytime hours were spent in the never-ending pursuit of surviving for
another day. The search for food was his constant companion, whether begging
from the locals or foreign soldiers stationed nearby or rummaging through the
garbage cans outside of military mess halls.
At night, the least destroyed of the nearby buildings with a remnant of a roof
overhead served as a shelter from the elements. But no one could escape from the
constant stench of death and destruction which hung in the air.
As the sun rose on a day which promised to be as so many before it, the boy was
making his usual morning rounds when he heard a woman's desperate screams.
Running to the scene he saw a soldier tearing at the clothing of a teenage girl.
Instinctively he picked up some ever-present broken bricks and began throwing
them at the assailant. After a few bricks found their mark, the man released the
girl allowing her to escape. He then turned, pistol in hand, to confront his
tormentor. Scrambling to run away the boy heard a loud noise and felt a sharp
pain in his side. After falling forward from the impact of the bullet, he got up
and ran some distance before passing out.
When the boy awoke, he was in a military hospital being treated for a gunshot
wound and malnutrition. For the first time he could remember, he slept in a bed
and was fed three meals a day. After recuperating, he was placed on a train and
taken on a long journey to an orphanage near Bremen, Germany.
Some time thereafter, this befuddled boy was taken to the harbor. He stood
dumbstruck, staring up at the enormous black steel hull of a ship destined for
the United States. Walking alone up the gangplank, he had no luggage, passport
or papers -- just a yellow tag pinned to his coat.
The winter voyage was excruciating. The ocean was in a constant state of turmoil
and sea sickness plagued nearly everyone on board. Finally, on the seventh day,
as dawn broke, the young boy stood at the ship's railing and watched as the
welcoming image of the Statue of Liberty slowly emerged from the mist, framed
majestically by the skyline of New York in the distance, the peaks of its
skyscrapers reflecting the morning sun.
As the boy met the German-American foster parents that had agreed to take him
in, he knew not what the future would bring in this strange land that spoke a
different language from the ones he knew -- a mixture of German and Polish.
Embarking on yet another trip, and at last given a first name, he went to live
on a farm near a quiet, quasi-southern town in Maryland.
Subject to constant beatings and never-ending work on the farm, the boy often
ran away to find solace in the woods surrounding the fields. His only friends
were the animals on the farm and in the forest. He would, at times, go to an
adjacent farm in the quest for food. Concerned, the neighbor reported to the
police what was happening on the adjoining property. After an investigation, the
child protection agencies removed the boy from the abusive environment.
Once he had recovered from another bout of malnutrition, the young boy was
placed in a home with other orphans. There he was an outcast as he could not
communicate with or relate to the other occupants. Despair had begun to set in.
Unbeknown to him, he was slated to be sent to an orphanage somewhere in New York
State as he was unadoptable due to a lack of papers. He could not be placed in
foster care, as he had yet to be "housebroken."
During the Christmas season, a kindly man dressed in a black suit came to see
the boy. He was the pastor of the local Catholic parish. The priest took the boy
to the rectory for lunch, and then next door to the church building. The child
had never been in a church before. The small and intimate space was decorated
for Christmas. It was the most astounding sight the boy had ever seen. The
lights, the colors, the atmosphere spoke to him of something he had never
experienced: peace and tranquility. But what caught his attention was a group of
statues and a spot light shining on a baby in a manger.
The frail boy, the inner spirit that had seen him through so much now depleted,
stood before the statues. He gazed at the serene face of the woman dressed in a
blue robe looking lovingly at the baby. Was this the image of a mother? A mother
he had never known? Staring into the eyes of the infant in the manger, he felt a
presence, as if an unseen hand was touching the very core of his being. With a
tear rolling down his cheek, the boy whispered: "Hilf mir" (help me).
The time came for the boy to return to the shelter and await his fate. At the
door of the church, he turned and looked one last time at the nativity scene. A
glow seemed to surround the statues, and he was overwhelmed with a sense of hope
and optimism.
At midnight Mass on Christmas Day, the priest related the story of a young
war-orphan brought to the United States, his hardship and misfortune while in
this country and his lack of any identity making it nearly impossible for him to
be adopted. He asked, as the boy had never experienced Christmas, if anyone who
spoke German could take the child for a few days during the Christmas season
before he left for an orphanage.
During the Offertory, with the Ave Maria being sung in the background, a woman
in the congregation felt an invisible hand on her shoulder and heard a voice
tell her she must adopt the young boy. Turning to her husband she said "We have
to adopt the boy the Monsignor was talking about." He replied they could not as
they did not speak his language, they could not afford the cost to raise a child
and they could never shoulder the expense of pursuing an adoption if it was even
possible. She emphatically stated "God has told me to, we must and we will."
After Mass, the woman went to see the priest. When their eyes met, and before
she said a word, he announced to her: "You are here about adopting the boy." He
told her that during the Ave Maria, he too heard the message, and that they
would make certain God's request would happen.
The adoption process was long and drawn out involving the courts and the federal
government, but the woman, her husband and the priest, who paid the legal bills,
persevered. Meanwhile, the boy stayed at the homes of various families that had
offered to help. Around Easter of that year, he went to live with his future
parents. A birth certificate was created, and in October the adoption became
final.
At last the young boy from the streets of a war torn city somewhere in central
Europe, whose odyssey had taken him through so many trials and tribulations, had
a name, a home and a country he could call his own.
For the rest of his life, this boy would continue to fight with the demons of
his youth. He won some battles, but lost many others. Nonetheless, he knew and
relied upon the fact that God was there when life was at its best and worst.
Today, many in the United States and Europe, in their pursuit of lives of
relative ease, have turned their backs on God. This deliberate denial coupled
with disdain toward the basic rules of human behavior, as espoused by Judeo-
Christian teachings, justifies the pursuit of unfettered personal and physical
satisfaction with no guidelines whatsoever.
The moral fiber of a country, and the religious basis upon which the United
States and European nations developed, has been replaced by a misguided faith in
people. Although mankind has accomplished great things, the human race has
always been overwhelmingly susceptible to its base nature. The historical
consequence of repudiating established moral and ethical guidelines is a society
that is inevitably devoid of humility, honor and integrity.
Within that society, the governing class inexorably develops an unrestrained
craving for power and self-aggrandizement which ultimately manifests itself in
the subjugation of the populace either by force or the exploitation of greed and
envy coupled with control of the means of individual livelihood. The major
casualty of this evolutionary process is the abandonment of the fundamental
doctrine of respect for the uniqueness of all men and recognition of the
inalienable God given rights of life and liberty.
During the past century, the nations of Europe, by tolerating the ascendancy of
man's ignoble nature, suffered the near total destruction of a continent and the
loss of countless millions of lives in two wars and the emergence of communism.
On its present course, the United States will also encounter an abyss of its own
making. Societal upheaval will assuredly happen eventuating in the destruction
of the culture and subjugation by those whose only interest is to make all
subservient to their power and obedient to their ruthless ideology.
In order to avoid the potential catastrophe looming over the horizon and to
weather the tumult inherent in a requisite change of direction, the nation's
leadership and citizenry must acknowledge that throughout history the key to
peace and prosperity lies in a relationship with God and striving to live by
established moral and ethical guidelines.
During the Christmas season many years ago, I stood in front of a nativity scene
in a small Catholic church unaware of God's existence. In my most desperate hour
of need, he reached out to me. My life experience bears witness to not only the
devastation and failure as wrought by the base aspect of human nature but that
God is there for each of us...if we choose to accept his helping hand.
See Also:
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