{"id":337,"date":"2025-11-16T13:00:27","date_gmt":"2025-11-16T12:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/springs.testtojest.pl\/?p=337"},"modified":"2026-09-10T17:55:52","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T15:55:52","slug":"stories-2-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/springs.iftest.pl\/?p=337","title":{"rendered":"My Extraordinary Christmas in Rome"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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My Extraordinary Christmas in Rome<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Lately, I\u2019ve been thinking about what my ideal Christmas would look like. Maybe something like the Christmas Witka Wilka once had, when, just before Christmas Eve dinner, he came across a boy collecting bottles from the trash who didn\u2019t even know what Christmas Eve was. He tells the story on the S\u0142u\u017c\u0105c \u017cyciu<\/i> channel.<\/p>

And today I realized that I once had an extraordinary Christmas of my own.<\/p>

I think it was October when Dorota said to me:<\/p>

\u2014 \u201cSweetie, I really don\u2019t want to spend Christmas at home. Let\u2019s go somewhere.\u201d<\/i><\/p>

Oh gosh, but where? A guesthouse somewhere? The mountains? Masuria? The Suwa\u0142ki region? I didn\u2019t know any places like that. What would it be like? And what would my family say?<\/p>

Then suddenly, like a bolt from the blue, it came to me: ROME!<\/b><\/p>

Let\u2019s go to Rome. No one will be upset with us for going there, and we\u2019ll be in the heart of the Church.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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A Decision and a Confession After 17 Years<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Dorota had advanced lymphoma, and by then it was no longer responding to treatment. She had to ask her doctor if she was well enough to fly.<\/p>

Her doctor said yes. And then she turned out to be an angel:<\/p>

\u2014 \u201cDorota, if you\u2019re at the Urbi et Orbi blessing on Christmas Day, a plenary indulgence is attached to it. Maybe you should go to confession.\u201d<\/i><\/p>

She went just before we left. She stood in line for an hour, but she did it. I still have no idea where she found that kind of determination. She hadn\u2019t been to confession in seventeen years.<\/p>

Padre Mirko arranged for us to stay with some Spanish sisters, just a few streets away from Santa Maria in Trastevere, one of Rome\u2019s oldest basilicas. As soon as we dropped off our luggage, we went to see its mosaics.<\/p>

Dorota sat down next to me:<\/p>

\u2014 \u201cSweetie, I was given a penance, but I don\u2019t know how to pray it.\u201d<\/i><\/p>

\u2014 \u201cWhat did you get?\u201d<\/i><\/p>

\u2014 \u201cThe Chaplet of Divine Mercy.\u201d<\/i><\/p>

I took out my rosary:<\/p>

\u2014 \u201cI\u2019ll start, and you join in. You\u2019ll pick it up quickly.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Christmas Eve and Midnight Mass with the Pope<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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The next day was Christmas Eve. We had dinner in a little square somewhere among the charming old buildings of Trastevere, sitting outside under gas heaters with a handful of other tourists. There were no uszka<\/i> on the Christmas menu. No beet soup. I don\u2019t think there was even any fish. There was definitely some kind of meat.<\/p>

At around eleven that night, we were supposed to meet a Polish nun who had tickets for us to Midnight Mass with Benedict XVI. She led us through the side gate on the right, the one by the little church of Sant\u2019Anna dei Palafrenieri. We passed the first guard, went up some stairs, crossed a large hall, and continued toward another papal guard. All the while, she was moving the beads of her rosary through her fingers. Then it turned out that one ticket was for Midnight Mass and the other was for the New Year\u2019s Mass.<\/p>

So we were only half legal.<\/p>

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dorota wiping away tears. Over the next few days, I saw her cry again at the tomb of John Paul II during Mass in the crypt of St. Peter\u2019s Basilica, and when we met Padre Mirko, who took us to St. Paul Outside the Walls.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Not in the Way I Had Imagined<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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A few years earlier, during a pilgrimage to Cologne, I had received a word from the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 9 \u2014 the passage where Peter raises Tabitha. Tabitha is also called Dorcas.<\/p>

At the time, I hoped that Peter would heal her. And he did. Just not in the way I had imagined. Dorota died on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, a year and almost nine months later.<\/p>

When I was with her in the hospital on that last day, I asked her:<\/p>

\u2014 \u201cSweetie, what can I bring you? What do you need?\u201d<\/i><\/p>

She said:<\/p>

\u2014 \u201cO God, come to my assistance.\u201d<\/i><\/p>

There was a breviary lying on the metal cabinet beside her hospital bed. I began to pray the psalms. By then, she had been praying the breviary regularly for some time.<\/p>

Many years have passed. And only today have I realized that back then I was touching Christmas in the way St. John writes about:<\/p>

\u201cThat which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life\u2014the life was made manifest, and we saw it, and tes<\/span>tify to it, and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us\u2014\u201d<\/i><\/p>

\u00a0<\/div>

(1 John 1:1\u20132, RSVCE)<\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I thought I knew the Christmas story\u2014until it actually happened to me.
\nA simple journey that brought the Word off the page and directly into my story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":261,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-personal-stories","category-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/springs.iftest.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/springs.iftest.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/springs.iftest.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/springs.iftest.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/springs.iftest.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=337"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/springs.iftest.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":620,"href":"https:\/\/springs.iftest.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions\/620"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/springs.iftest.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/springs.iftest.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/springs.iftest.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/springs.iftest.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}