Recently I had the very great joy to re-visit (after a gap of nine years since my previous visit) what is perhaps the most beautiful city in the world – Prague. There are some who would of course find cities that they prefer, but from a personal point of view I have yet to find anywhere that would match it.

A few days in Prague is a wealth of opportunity to see the most amazing buildings, the most incredible churches, and a kind of ‘unspoiled’ European ‘ruggedness’ which I think is very charming. As I toured round on the rustic trams, listening to the almost unpronounceable language around me, I was aware that there was so much to take in.

What struck me most of all was how very fortunate I was to be seeing such a beautiful place, and how wonderful it was to simply take my passport and my suit case through customs, and see it all. We take this for granted now, when it is only a few years back that a visit to the Eastern-block was tremendously difficult, and the security there was unbelievable – even today, people still remember people being followed around by political policemen watching your every move.

People in Eastern-block countries of course were not allowed to leave their countries either – the beautiful city of Prague was to all intents and purpose ‘locked away’ and it is only in recent years that we have been able to visit such places and to be enthralled by its splendour – and there are many other wonderful cities in that part of Europe for which the case was the same.
What is very ironic is that in the airport I picked up a book about a Jewish lady who was a concert pianist from Prague – musician biographies usually interest me, and I started reading it on the plane. The story followed her from Prague to the concentration camp at Terezin which is situated about an hour away from Prague itself. During my stay I made the journey there to see the museum at Terezin. It was, as all such places are, a place which will stay with me for a very long time.

Just as when I have visited Auschwitz in the past and also the Anne Frank House, you can never really put into words what it means to be in those places and the impossibility of trying to understand what horror went on in these places.

In Terezin, the lady in question, Alice Herz-Sommer used to give piano recitals, as well as other concerts by several famous musicians had been encarcerated there at the same time. During that time, and obviously weak from the existence she had there, she gave recitals of all 24 Chopin Studies. This is a tremendous feat for any pianist; only once have I ever attended a concert where 12 have been played live, but all 24 is not only an incredible feat, but is also quite rare. The Chopin Studies incorporate every imaginable pianistic difficulty, and very few people – even master pianists – can really play them with enough confidence to programme them all in a recital.

In a kind of mind over matter, this lady decided that such a feat was actually what she needed to concentrate her mind and her energies away from the horror of what she was having to survive. Picking up this book and visiting the actual place was an experience which will stay with me for a very long time, I am sure.

Courage takes many and varied forms, and in the example I have used here we see courage in a very extreme case – courage which was necessary not only for someone’s own sanity, but also for their own survival.

As a priest I see examples of courage on a regular basis – often very easily missed, but they are there. Courage, in fact, has many facets and even in the smallest examples it is there. That is one of the things which makes a priest’s life very special…the people a priest comes across in the course of a working week, and the way they embrace life and its difficulties, and somehow always come out on top.

For all of us, life throws challenges at us from time to time, but some people get more challenges than others – and the great courage which they show is always very humbling to those of us around them.
That strength of course, does come from God who loves us for the people we are, and in his love, we have that strength to champion the challenges which life very often throws at us!

With all good wishes

Fr Yenda