By Dr Andrew Kania
One ordinary afternoon in 2006, just as I returned home from another day at work, I received a phone call from my godmother’s daughter.
The message was stark; my godmother was dying, and I was being advised to go into the nursing home to see her.
I had visited her many times over those last few months of her life – as well as having made a habit of always seeing her regularly during my adult life.
My godmother, Ciatka Nadia (‘Ciatka’ meaning ‘Aunt’), was a simple, good woman of the Ukrainian soil.
When I say that she was simple, I do not describe her as such, with any derogatory connotation attached.
The simplicity I speak of is one of love of God and love of family. Ciatka Nadia had worked so hard her entire life.
Her home was filled with the scent of good cooking, and was decorated with Ukrainian embroidery – an exquisite artwork.
She had been chosen to be my godmother, but she was not a Ukrainian Catholic; but Ukrainian Orthodox.
What friction there may have been between the two communities of Ukrainians who had migrated to Perth, I never felt.
In fact, to this day, many of my closest friends among the Ukrainian community are among the Orthodox.
My parents in their wisdom had chosen what I have always said to be the best godmother a boy, and a man, could have had.
The gold chain that I still have today was given to me by my godmother when I received the Holy Mysteries of Initiation as an infant.
The cross, that came with the chain, I lost at Perth Airport, when Josef Cardinal Slipyj arrived.
Many of my fondest memories are punctuated by my childhood visits to Ciatka Nadia’s home, and her visits to my family home.
One of the first places that I took my then girlfriend, and now my wife, Kathy, was to Redcliffe to visit Ciatka Nadia.
She was in relatively good health then, but in hindsight I now know she was beginning to show the first signs of her eventual decline.
When I arrived at the nursing home, Ciatka Nadia was lying in bed, and we were alone together.
I sat beside her at the head of the bed, and held her hand. I am a man of very few tears; but I cried as I looked at her.
I spoke to her, and told her that in but a few days, my son was to be born, and how proud I would be to bring him in to see her.
Selfish my words were, but I asked if God could grant this moment. I knew in my heart that this would be too much to ask of a woman who had suffered so much.
I sat near her; my head in my hands. Now and then she stirred. She had been born in a part of Ukraine that had experienced the Holodomor, the Stalin Famine.
She had lived through World War II, and begun a new life on the other side of the world. After all this, I had never seen her be anything but gentle, loving and patient, and yet, I have met many people who have grown up in privilege and peace, who have been bitter and spiteful.
The sun was beginning to set on that day, on her life, and on the bond that we had together.
There is a quote from Aeschylus that wisdom often comes in the darkest night, when the soul is walking through a forest of pain: “In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God”.
Here was a man, who was thinking back to times as boy, and hoping that his godmother could understand he was grateful for her presence in his life.
I have met many so-called great men and women, whose names are in encyclopedias, and whose names bear landmarks and buildings, and people like my godmother are never invited to their parties – but this, I believe, says more about what society values as being great, than it does about who these simple people are.
I was thinking how unjust her life had been; that for want of opportunity her life had been pruned back to what it was.
Wherein lay her greatness? She was a wife, mother, grandmother – she was my godmother. Can any of this be considered great?
The French poet, Charles Péguy, in what I consider to be one of the greatest works of world literature, Le Porche du Mystère de la Deuxième Vertu (The Portal of the Mystery of Hope), once put into exquisite words, much of what I felt that afternoon as I sat beside Ciatka Nadia.
He wrote that the greatest proportion of our lives deal with the mundane, but we must not consider that these hours, days, weeks, months, and years, are worthless and lost; for in essence, Christ, our brother, lived simply, and the Gospels only record a fraction, a splinter, of his life.
We do not see the majority of Christ’s life. We do not see his trudging kilometre upon kilometre, with his father, Joseph, walking to work, on some site that has by now been long forgotten.
We do not see his learning to use a hammer, or a plane – we see nothing of this.
But Christ, was and is, human – and through this humanity, consecrated the mundane – made it holy, made it worthwhile; made lives like Ciatka Nadia’s, and mine and yours, blessed by their sheer living and breathing.
Greatness lies in the increased capacity to love – to overcome the drudgery of the everyday, by seeing and appreciating the beauty and hope in it.
Let Péguy continue in his genius: “Every day, you say, repeats itself. No, they are added to the eternal treasury of days. The bread of each day to that of the day before.
The suffering of each day (even though it repeats the suffering of the day before) is added to the eternal treasury of sorrows.
The prayer of each day (even though it repeats the prayer of the day before) is added to the eternal treasury of prayers.
The merit of each day (even though it repeats the merit of the day before) is added to the eternal treasury of merits.
On earth everything repeats itself. In the same matter. But in heaven everything counts and everything increases.
The grace of each day (even though it repeats the grace of the day before) is added to the eternal treasury of graces. And it’s for this that the young hope alone doesn’t spare anything.
When Jesus worked at his father’s shop, everyday he relived the same day. There was never any trouble except once.
And yet to this fabric, within these days of sameness, this is the web of the same workdays that make up, that eternally make up, the admirable life of Jesus before his preaching, his private life, his perfect life, his model life.
The life he offers as an example, as an imitable model to imitate, to everyone, without a single exception, only leaving to certain ones, to certain rare chosen ones (and still it’s in addition and not to the contrary), the examples of his public life to imitate,” (Péguy, 1986, p. 120).
Péguy will continue to write in this poem that each day looks the same, each one of our steps erases those of the day before, so that it appears on earth that nothing is achieved.
But this is not so – for heaven records and knows. No work, however isolated it appears, is ever done in complete isolation; for every act either builds or detracts from the individual, or his or her neighbour, either in their time, or at some time in the future.
When I woke from my thoughts I was sitting in darkness; I hadn’t realised that the light had gone.
I placed a kiss on Ciatka Nadia’s forehead, and then left the nursing home. I never saw her again. It was now a winter’s evening.
On the drive back home, I was determined not to bring gloom into the house, where my pregnant wife would be waiting.
As Kathy opened the door, she looked tired – but so cute. Inside her was new life, a fresh hope, a new mystery of hope waiting to unfold.
My son was born shortly after Ciatka Nadia’s funeral.
Dr Andrew Kania is the director of spirituality at Aquinas College.