The Miracle of the Nuns.John Noble

 

Vorkuta Gulag: From 1931 to 1957, 2 million prisoners
from the U.S.S.R. and 21 other countries
passed through the Gulag system 

        When the conversations turned to religion, as they soon did. I heard of an extraordinary happening. a miracle, which had just occurred in Vorkuta. God indeed was there with us! And the eagerness with which the men told me this story left no doubt as to the fact that the Iron Curtain could not keep God out of a country or out of the minds and hearts of its people. 

  

         It was in November of that year, 1950, just after our own arrival, that three nuns reached the camp under sentences of hard labor. The many thousand women prisoners at Vorkuta did not work in the mines but performed other rugged work, and the nuns were assigned to a plant which made bricks for construction work throughout the whole Arctic area of Russia. 

...servants of God and not of Satan...

        When the nuns were first taken to the brick factory, they told the foreman that they regarded doing any work for the Communist regime as working for the Devil and, since they were the servants of God and not of Satan, they did not propose to bow to the orders of their foreman despite any threats he might make.                                                                                            Stripped of their religious garb, the nuns' faith was their armor. They were ready to face anything and everything to keep their vow and they did face their punishment, a living testimony of great courage. They were put on punishment rations, consisting of black bread and rancid soup, day after day. But each morning when they were ordered to go out to the brick factory, into the day pits, or to any other back-breaking assignment, they refused. This refusal meant, of course, that they were destined to go through worse ordeals. Angered by their obstinacy and fearing the effect upon the other slave laborers, the commandant ordered that they be placed in strait-jackets. Their hands were tied in back of them and then the rope with which their wrists were bound was passed down around their ankles and drawn up tight. In this manner, their feet were pulled up behind them and their shoulders wrenched backward and downward into a position of excruciating pain. 

Men and Women in Christ.Elisabeth Behr-Sigel.

Christ in history was neither a political agitator nor a reformer of the traditional mores of the society in which He was born. Even though He showed himself free from many taboos and prejudices especially with regard to women, Jesus did not spend His time transgressing the customs of His time. "The one thing necessary" for Jesus was the interior turning, conversion, the change of heart that opens the door of the Kingdom: "Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand." His preaching is summed up in these words, but this change of heart must be ex­pressed in acts, whether it is expressed in ordinary or exceptional circumstances.

Jesus and the Samaritan woman.

Jesus did not encourage women to take on roles or life-styles that were considered masculine in the culture of the time. The women that Jesus associated with busied themselves with household chores and served at table. The number of such women is remarkable, and the gospels often give us their names. They were sometimes prostitutes. However, He did not send the courageous women who had been following him since Galilee back to their husbands and their pots and pans, and in fact, He praised Mary of Bethany who left domestic cares to her sister Martha.