Polish Mystic Saint of Bread and Dogs by Tracie Morrell

Polish Mystic Saint of Bread and Dogs

Her last taste of broken

bread was in the Pradnik Sanatorium

Chapel.  That day was long

before they called her Saint. As Sister Mary Faustina

of the Blessed Sacrament coughed, the bread

speckled red with traces of consumption.

The day of her arrival was when the dogs

began to congregate.  In the chapel, kitchen

hands laid the bread of Christ, this time made

with gouda and stout, on a make-shift alter made of saw

horses and a broken mahogany door covered

with woven gold threads.  First, there was

an Owczarek Podhalanski, it was a very dirty

animal, but it could translate prayers.  Shortly, more

came, sometimes, by the dozens, and all different

breeds.  The Hounds of Hell came much later,

after there were already hundreds

there to hear a dying nun’s visions.

It was the arrival of beasts that told the men,

who owned the word, that she had been

touched.  Those men did not know that truth

never has the same meaning, especially when told

with lies.  But the day of speckled

bread, the dogs knelt before a Nun

carried to alter by Christ himself, as all the men

watched in horror.

 

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