Arka Pana. On May 15, 1977, the building of the Arka Pana, “The Lord’s Ark,” was completed in Nowa Huta, Kraków, Poland. Through His Church, Christ transports people in an ark from a lost and ruined world to a new and lasting one. Built in the modernist style of Swiss architect Le Corbusier, Arka Pana is shaped like Noah’s Ark to symbolize the Polish Church’s triumph over godless communism.
To understand worship is to understand politics.
One of my favorite twentieth-century stories of the inseparable link between worship and politics is that of Karol Wojtyla, who took on the might and folly of the Soviet Empire with bread and wine.
On December 24, 1959, Wojtyla drove a definitive nail in the coffin of Soviet Communism. He did it via a Secret Counsel gathering for Eucharistic worship in an empty field of Nowa Huta, on the outskirts of Kraków, Poland. This worship service was the moment when the Soviet Union’s fall became inevitable. Wojtyla’s longtime secretary would write years after the Christmas Eve Eucharist service of 1959, that it “began right there in Nowa Huta.”
Nowa Huta
In 1949, the communist occupiers of Poland came up with the “brilliant” idea to create the first Polish city with no church. It was the biggest mistake the communists ever made.
They envisioned a model socialist city, a proletarian paradise of Stalinist propaganda. They named it Nowa Huta, meaning “New Steelworks.”
Not only did the communists intend for Nowa Huta to have no church, but socialist urban planners created apartment complexes housing 40,000 workers with modules designed to keep people separated from each other. To visit a neighbor required taking the stairs or the elevator to the ground floor, exiting the building, then re-entering the building through a different doorway. People then had to locate and ascend the unique set of stairs or elevator that went to their neighbor’s housing module. Any form of community loyalty other than to the state was forbidden.
But the workers of Nowa Huta and Karol Wojtyla saw things differently.
Wojtyla Goes Head On With the Communists
On July 4, 1958, Wojtyla was appointed the auxiliary bishop of Kraków. On Christmas Eve, 1959, Wojtyla chose an open field in the Bienczyce neighborhood of Nowa Huta to make his stand against the Soviet Empire. He led hundreds of workers to erect a large cross and then set up the Table for a Eucharistic worship service.
Video Clip. Cinematic recreation of the scene at Nowa Huta in 1959 when worshipers were surrounded by soldiers.
As portrayed in a 2005 cinematic recreation of the scene, the worshipers were surrounded by soldiers. But Wojtyla simply announced that Christ already had a house in Nowa Huta. This house was His Church that Christ had established in Poland a millennium before the communists arrived and that would be there long after the communists left. In the film, some soldiers remove their helmets and cross themselves.
The central purpose of Christian Eucharistic worship is to concretely and publically witness to the fact that Christ in His Church is alive and well on planet earth. There’s nothing any army, or politician, or human empire can do about it. What’s done is done. He’s here.
The Communists Implode
Unable to derail Wojtyla’s Christmas Eve Eucharistic worship service, the communists pulled down the cross from the open field on April 27, 1960, sparking a riot.
Desperate to regain control of the city, the communist politicians prevailed upon Wojtyla to write a letter to the townspeople, instructing them to refrain from further violence and protests. But Wojtyla outwitted the politicians by writing a letter to the people declaring there was no reason for further protests since in the future the people would set up the cross again, and the communists would not remove it.
The political authorities predictably rejected Wojtyla’s letter. So Wojtyla responded by raising the stakes even further. He proposed adding a statement to the letter that the only way to keep the peace in Nowa Huta would be for the people to build a church, not just erect a cross.
As portrayed in the 2005 film, the communists wrongly thought that because Wojtyla was a “dreamer” and a “poet,” that he was “fundamentally benign.” They imagined him as someone “open to persuasion,” who could be “manipulated and controlled.” But poetry, especially the poetry of grace enacted in the Liturgy, is the language of heroes, not elegiac pessimists. Confidence that Christ is building His Church and that the gates of Hades will not prevail is something for which communists have no category. This makes them irrelevant and subject to extinction.
Building the Ark
Wojtyla and the workers of Nowa Huta continued to assemble in the open field each Christmas Eve for the next two decades.
In a vain attempt to keep control of the situation, the communists finally issued a building permit for a church on October 13, 1967. The next day, Wojtyla went to the open field with a pickaxe to help dig the first section of the church’s foundation.
In 1969, Wojtyla laid the first cornerstone of the church––a rock from the Apostle Peter’s grave in Rome.
Over the next several years, the communists revoked the building permit, confiscated building materials and appropriated (i.e., stole) donations. On August 15, 1976, Nowa Huta’s local priest, Józef Kurzeja, after enduring constant police harassment and interrogations, died of a heart attack at age 40. Nevertheless, people from all over Poland collected two million polished stones from Poland’s rivers to decorate the outside of the church. Volunteer laborers from Poland and Europe pieced the structure together brick by brick.
On May 15, 1977, the church structure was completed and named, Arka Pana, “The Lord’s Ark.” Through His Church, Christ transports people in an ark from a lost and ruined world to a new and lasting one. Built in the modernist style of Swiss architect Le Corbusier, Arka Pana is shaped like Noah’s Ark to symbolize the Polish Church’s triumph over godless communism.
People attended the dedication ceremony from across Poland and Europe. They came from Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. East Germans showed up from the German Democratic Republic. Others came from Western Germany and Austria. A Dutch delegation came to hear the bells they had donated. Other delegations came from France, Belgium, Portugal, Great Britain, the United States, Finland, and Italy. One guest came from Japan. A moon rock collected by Apollo 11 and given to Pope Paul VI ended up in the center of the church’s tabernacle––a tabernacle sculpted to symbolize the cosmos.
In an oxymoronic twist, the steelworkers of Nowa Huta cranked up the Lenin Steelworks to create a gigantic figure of Christ.
At the dedication, Wojtyla declared, “This is not a city of people...who may be manipulated according to the laws or rules of production and consumption. This is a city of the children of God [and] this temple was needed so that this could be expressed, [so] that it could be emphasized…”
Then, just over a year later, on October 22, 1978, Karol Wojtyla was elected to be the Bishop of Rome, a job most people recognize as that of Pope. Wojtyla took the name John Paul II. Communist politicians the world over could be heard collectively uttering a deep sigh that this “dreamer,” this “poet” was now positioned to finish what he had started in Nowa Huta.
The Collapse of the Soviet Empire
The dedication ceremony of the Lord’s Ark was a global testimony to communist totalitarianism’s failure and the triumph of Christ and His Church.
Eight months after being elected Bishop of Rome, John Paul II visited his homeland of Poland, arriving on June 2, 1979, during one of the early weeks of the Church Year following Pentecost.
John Paul II directly challenged the communist government, but not by leading an uprising. He simply did in 1979 what he had done in Nowa Huta in 1959. He broke out the bread and wine.
There’s nothing magical about bread and wine in Eucharistic worship, but there is something sacramental. The bread and wine testify to an accomplished fact, namely that the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. In short, Christ is already here and there’s nothing politicians can do about it except bow the knee.
On Sunday, June 10, 1979, John Paul II led a Eucharistic worship service in the Blonie Field of Kraków. It was the largest gathering of humanity in Poland’s history. Two million or three million or more came to this Secret Counsel gathering and experienced the certainty of Christ’s presence among them. This certainty afterward spread and galvanized the courage of ten million in Poland, bringing communism in Poland to an end. Then, what happened in Poland spread over Eastern Europe, catalyzing the collapse of communism in one country after another. The Soviet Union dissolved on December 26, 1991.
On the night before Christmas in 1959, true to the Christmas story itself, the communists had no place for Christ in their socialist Inn. On the day after Christmas in 1991, the communists were ushered out of Christ’s house into the footnotes of history.
History belongs to worshipers of Emperor Jesus. You can’t get more political than that.
Boyd+
The Fourth Week After Pentecost, 2015
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