THE BISHOP'S RING

Chapter 1

Even at 16 years of age Magda Tymanski knew she attracted the eyes of men, and boys giving her a confident feeling. Shy and demure, she was one of two sisters with long golden blond hair, and endowed early on with beauty far beyond their youthful years. Attracted by their enthusiasm, classmates in school were happy to be friends with the sisters. It was no small wonder others would want to form friendships with them living in Poland’s town of Wieliczka.

The year was 1957 and Poland’s Marxist rulers brought Communism into a land where personal independence and the Roman Catholic faith in God lived for one thousand years. God knows about the evil spirits which plague men’s soul. Christ spoke about them as the evildoers. The time was coming when the God of History and Mystery would begin once again to reveal Himself through a powerful saint, St. Stanislaw of Cracow, Poland.

Born in 1941, Magda was followed by her sister Marta a year later. They really never knew anything but poverty. Joseph, their father, lost his farm when it was taken from him by the Soviet Army to be a part of a collective of farms. Their mother Alina, a strong and determined woman, was a caring voice as the girls matured into young women.            Poland was in the process of being governed with puppets picked by their Soviet masters, rather than governing themselves with freely elected representatives. So intent was their Communist masters in governing what was on the outside of Polish life in attempts to remake man’s world, they failed in giving each Pole a valued self-respect, and an appropriate honor. Contemptuously, their atheistic view of life was to treat each person as a unit in lock step with their political views. God was to be taken out of daily life. Those Poles who gave “unsuspecting cooperation” to the Soviet model became puppets of the Soviet rulers. Governing meant slavish observance to the laws of the rulers in which Polish citizens had no right to dispute. Follow in lock step or be smeared, persecuted, tortured, and killed!

God was the enemy! Soviet armies supplied the force surrounding Poland to keep it from straying. In time, Poland’s Communists directed their own Soviet style indoctrinated military, with corrupt powers to take advantage of their own citizenry. Church building was strictly forbidden in a country that was more than 98% Roman Catholic. The Communists took God out of Poland, but the Body of Christ, which is the Church never left. It still remained in the hearts of the Polish people.