From: Lubosh.Hanuska@anu.edu.au (Lubosh)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic
Subject: Quo Vadis ? #7
Date: 8 Nov 92 22:55:39 GMT
Organization: ANU Canberra
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X-XXDate: Mon, 9 Nov 92 17:54:40 GMT

Heading back home
I safely came back to Copenhagen, without any troubles at the borders. I
skip the details here, but it really was amazing how the Lord completely
took care of me. And I had to start my journey back to Czecho-Slovakia.
Again my friends were trying to suggest that it's better to stay in
Denmark..., but I knew that once there is going to be an end to the
Communist regime, and I have a place there to make sure there will be a
change to democracy. (However, when I came back almost everyone was
surprised that I am back - my Christian friends thought I'd stay abroad
to study theology, and non-Christians believed I'd rather stay in Denmark
than come back.) Well, but the journey back wasn't that pleasant. First
of all I had my backpack full of books considered illegal in the
Communist countries... What I usually did when hitch-hiking I got on the
ferry and I was there looking for somebody to give me a lift. So I found
a German student from West Berlin. His name was Thomas, and he was a
Christian, so he was keen to help me with my stuff. I gave him half of my
books to carry over to the East Germany. I passed by feet to meet him on
the other side. Surprisingly I didn't have any problems, but he had. This
was because his lot of books contained "The Gulag Archipelago" from
Solzhenitsyn (the only non-religious book I had). It was printed in
Slovak, so the German customs couldn't read it, but they still new the
name of the author. At least Thomas couldn't have any real trouble, since
he was a West German citizen. But the customs sealed all the books into a
container, and he had to present it when leaving East Germany to West
Berlin to ensure that the books are not going anywhere else than West
Berlin... He promised me to send it to me later by mail, and I'm sure he
did it, but no book ever arrived to my address... Well, to make it easier
from East Germany to Czecho-Slovakia I decided to hitch-hike only to
Dresden, and then to take a train. I was naive to think that they can't
pull me out of the train. They did. There was a young woman custom
officer who was checking me on the train, and she told me to get out. She
was quite nice, and I thought I can convince her not to let me miss the
train... She was looking at the books I had there, flipping through some
pages (she did it quite professionally though, so that nobody else in the
office even noticed what she's looking at). I was standing there like a
guilty smuggler, doing nothing except squeezing the rosary in my pocket
and praying quietly. I don't know what was going through her mind, but
suddenly she closed my bag and told me to pack it up. It was quite
amazing, really. The train was gone, and I had to go out looking for a
bus, or something else, but it didn't matter so much. I was thanking God
for it, He carried me through all that, even the last obstacle was over !
In the same year some students were caught trying to bring some religious
books into the country through Poland, some of them just kicked out of
their studies (that was quite enough, because the record was never wiped,
and followed the person for the rest of life), but three of them were
even put into jail. 
However, 1985 was also the year of the biggest religious gathering I've
ever taken part in - the 110 anniversary of the death of St Methodius
took place at Velehrad in Moravia, and almost 300,00 people from all over
the country came there ! I can't describe the atmosphere, anyway it's
difficult to understand for those who weren't there. There was a lot of
police folks, lot of spying, photographing and videorecording - but the
secret police probably never had enough time to process all those films.
It simply had to be a surprise for them that so many people came. They
just couldn't outnumber us, and we had such a great feeling of being
together... and being so many we felt the power of God being on our side.
It was just incredible. After this I was sure that it's not going to be
long until Lord will help us to gain the victory. For me this was the
beginning of the end of the Communist regime. The Velvet Revolution in
November 1989 was mainly political, and the Christian groups just stayed
humbly behind, so nobody ever acknowledged any important role to them. We
never had political ambitions of Charta 77 and other dissident groups,
and we really felt the lack of political experience after all... I'll
tell you more about it later.
Yours in Christ,
Lubosh
+ !           "Pray also that God will rescue us from wicked and evil
people;
                         for not everyone believes the message."      2
Thes. 3,2