Pope John Paul II: 'Our Polish freedom costs so much', address to Polish Catholics - 1983

18 June 1983, Jasna Gora Monastery, Częstochowa, Poland

Our Lady of Jasna Gora is the teacher of true love for all. And this is particularly important for you, dear young people. In you, in fact, is decided that form of love which all of your life will have and, through you, human life on Polish soil: the matrimonial, family, social and national form - but also the priestly, religious and missionary one. Every life is determined and evaluated by the interior form of love. Tell me what you love, and I will tell you who you are.

I watch! How beautiful it is that this word is found in the call of Jasna Gora. It possesses a profound evangelical ancestry: Christ says many times: 'Watch' (Matt. 26: 41). Perhaps also from the Gospel it passed into the tradition of scouring. In the call of Jasna Gora it is the essential element of the reply that we wish to give to the love by which we are surrounded in the sign of the Sacred Icon.

The response to this love must be precisely the fact that I watch! What does it mean, 'I watch'?

It means that I make an effort to be a person with a conscience. I do not stifle, this conscience and I do not deform it; I call good and evil by name, and I do not blur them; I develop in myself what is good, and I seek to correct what is evil, by overcoming it in myself. This is a fundamental problem which can never be minimized or put on a secondary level. No! It is everywhere and always a matter of the first importance. Its importance is all the greater in proportion to the increase of circumstances which seem to favour our tolerance of evil and the fact that we easily excuse ourselves from this, especially if adults do so.

My dear friends! It is up to you to put up a firm barrier against immorality, a barrier - I say - to those social vices which I will not here call by name but which you yourselves are perfectly aware of. You must demand this of yourselves, even if others do not demand it of you. Historical experiences tell us how much the immorality of certain periods cost the whole nation. Today when we are fighting for the future form of our social life, remember that this form depends on what people will be like. Therefore: watch!

Christ said to the apostles, during his prayer in Gethsemane: 'Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation' (Matt.26: 41) 'I watch' also means: I see another. I do not close in on myself, in a narrow search for my own interests, my own judgements. 'I watch' means: love of neighbour; it means: fundamental interhuman solidarity. Before the Mother of Jasna Gora I wish to give thanks for all the proofs of this solidarity which have been given by my compatriots, including Polish youth, in the difficult period of not many months ago. It would be difficult for me to enumerate here all the forms of this solicitude which surrounded those who were interned, imprisoned, dismissed from work, and also their families. You know this better than I. I received only sporadic news about it.

May this good thing, which appeared in so many places and so many ways, never cease on Polish soil. May there be a constant confirmation of that 'I watch' of the call of Jasna Gora, which is a response to the presence of the Mother of Christ in the great family of the Poles.

'I watch' also means: I feel responsible for this great common inheritance whose name is Poland. This name defines us all. This name obliges us all. This name costs us all.

Perhaps at times we envy the French, the Germans or the Americans because their name is not tied to such a historical price and because they are so easily free: while our Polish freedom costs so much. My dear ones, I will not make a comparative analysis. I will only say that it is what costs that constitutes value. It is not, in fact, possible to be truly free without an honest and profound relationship with values. We do not want a Poland which costs us nothing. We watch, instead, beside all that makes up the authentic inheritance of the generations, seeking to enrich it. A nation, then, is first of all rich in its people. Rich in man. Rich in youth. Rich in every individual who watches in the name of truth: it is truth, in fact, that gives form to love.

My dear young friends! Before our common Mother and the Queen of our hearts, I desire finally to say to you that she knows your sufferings, your difficult youth, your sense of injustice and humiliation, the lack of prospects for the future that is so often felt, perhaps the temptations to flee to some other world.

Even if I am not among you every day, as was the case for many years in the past, nevertheless I carry in my heart a great solicitude. A great, enormous solicitude. A solicitude for you. Precisely because 'on you depends tomorrow'. I pray for you every day. It is good that we are here together at the hour of the call of Jasna Gora. In the midst of the trials of the present time, in the midst of the trial through which your generation is passing, this call of the millennium continues to be a programme. In it is contained a fundamental way out. Because the way out in whatever dimension - economic, social, political - must happen first in man. Man cannot remain with no way out. Mother of Jasna Gora, you who have been given to us by Providence for the defence of the Polish nation, accept this evening this call of the Polish youth together with the Polish Pope, and help us to persevere in hope! Amen.

 

Donald Tusk: "Europe as a political entity will either be united, or will not be at all', 60th anniversary of Treaty of Rome - 2017

25 March 2017,  Rome, Italy

Donald Tusk is the President of the European Council. This speech was delivered in the aftermath of Britain triggering Brexit.

I was born exactly 60 years ago, so I am the same age as the European Community. For this reason, please allow me for a more personal reflection today. As you know, sometimes the place of birth is even more important than the date of birth. In my case, it is the city of Gdańsk, persistently built for hundreds of years by Poles and Germans, by the Dutch, by Jews, by Scots and the French. In 1945, incidentally also in the month of March, within a few days Hitler and Stalin destroyed my hometown. It was burnt to the ground.

I was 8 years old when the Community established a single council and a single commission through the Merger Treaty; the road I then took to school every day still led through the ruins of the burnt city. For me, the Second World War is not an abstraction.

In 1980, a year after the first elections to the European Parliament, in my Gdańsk, the Solidarity movement, Solidarność, was born. I was there at the time, in the Gdańsk shipyard, among the workers, together with Lech Wałęsa, who had the courage to shout out the truth about our dreams in the face of the communist regime. They were simple dreams: about human dignity, about freedom and democracy. At that time we all looked to the West, towards a free and unifying Europe, instinctively feeling that this was the very future we were dreaming about. And although tanks and troops were sent against us, those dreams lived on.

When in 1987 the Single European Act (the beginning of the Single Market) entered into force, we in Poland were preparing ourselves for the final battle. Solidarność won, and soon after, the Berlin Wall also fell: the road to Europe opened up for us. And some 20 years later, already as Polish Prime Minister, I was opening the most modern stadium in Europe, of course in my hometown of Gdańsk. The city, that was then completely rebuilt and beautiful as never before. My country had already been in the European Union for 8 years.

I am recalling this brief course in history today only to make everybody aware that for millions of people, and today those millions will be demonstrating in the streets of our capitals, in Rome, in Warsaw, even London, the European Union is not about slogans, it is not about procedures, it is not about regulations. Our Union is a guarantee that freedom, dignity, democracy and independence are no longer only our dreams, but our everyday reality.

I lived behind the Iron Curtain for more than half of my life, where it was forbidden to even dream about those values. Yes, back then, that really was a two-speed Europe. And that is why today I have the right to loudly repeat this simple truth: that nothing in our life is granted forever - that to build a free world requires time, great effort and sacrifice. This is why it was achieved in so few places on Earth. And yet we made it. To destroy such a world is very easy. It only takes a short moment. As it happened once, with my Gdańsk.

Today in Rome we are renewing the unique alliance of free nations that was initiated 60 years ago by our great predecessors. At that time they did not discuss multiple speeds, they did not devise exits, but despite all the tragic circumstances of the recent history, they placed all their faith in the unity of Europe. They had the courage of Columbus to enter unchartered waters, to discover the New World.

And so tell me: why should we lose our trust in the purpose of unity today? Is it only because it has become our reality? Or because we have become bored or tired of it?

Europe as a political entity will either be united, or will not be at all. Only a united Europe can be a sovereign Europe in relation to the rest of the world. And only a sovereign Europe guarantees independence for its nations, guarantees freedom for its citizens. The unity of Europe is not a bureaucratic model. It is a set of common values and democratic standards. Today it is not enough to call for unity and to protest against multiple speeds. It is much more important that we all respect our common rules such as human rights and civil liberties, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, checks and balances, and the rule of law. This is the true foundation of our unity.

The Union after Rome should be, more than before, a Union of the same principles, a Union of external sovereignty, a Union of political unity. Prove today that you are the leaders of Europe, that you care for this great legacy we inherited from the heroes of European integration 60 years ago. Thank you