Alicja Lenczewska: conversations with Jesus

The Polish mystic Alice Lenczewska was born in Warsaw shortly before the Second World War. When the Nazis invaded Poland and took control of Warsaw, the family was displaced and went to stay with relative, After the war, they moved to Szczecin. Alicja had a religious upbringin but joined the communist party as an adult, which made her lose sight of her Christian faith. The death of her mother in 1984, when Alicja was 50, was traumatic, but her grief led her to the Renewal in the Holy Spirit. She did a retreat in 1985, where she received the "mystical gift of conversation with Christ" , a gift that continued almost until her death on 5 January 2012. She recorded her conversations with Jesus and his instructions in two books, Testimony and A Word of Instruction, which received the imprimatur of the vicar general of the local bishop, Monsignor Henryk Wejman. An exceptional spiritual figure, Alicja Lenczewska dedicated her life completely to Jesus and to helping other people.

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Reasons to believe:

A member of the Communist Party, Alice Lenczewska was away from the Church for a long time. In 1985, when she had already begun to return to the faith, she had a real encounter with Jesus Christ: "Something happened there that changed my life. Jesus stood before me. More real, more true than anything in the chapel."

After her conversion, which was to be definitive, her life was radically transformed: she attended Mass every day, adored the Blessed Sacrament, read the Bible, recited the rosary, fasted on Wednesdays and Fridays on bread and water, and so on. Such a change in lifestyle is not just for show.

Between 1985 and 2010, Alice had regular mystical encounters with Jesus. Her conversations with him, simple in appearance, were not only judged to be perfectly orthodox in terms of the faith by the ecclesiastical authorities responsible for examining them, but also of uncommon theological and spiritual depth.

Alice always led a modest life, without excess, and with no known psychiatric concerns.

From the moment of her conversion, Alice never stopped doing good around her, consoling the unfortunate, helping the needy and spreading the word of Christ. The fruits of her witness are many and obvious: conversions, a return to the faith, vocations, etc.

Summary:

Alicja Lenczewska was born in Warsaw on 5 December 1934. When she was just five years old, her father died and her mother was left to bring up her two children, Alicja and her brother, alone. After the Germans invaded Poland and took Warsaw, the family moved to the town of Rzeszów in the south-east of the country. When the Second World War ended, Poland was in ruins, martyred by the Nazis and the Soviets: in 1946, the family decided to move to Szczecin, where Alicja continued her schooling. Her mother made a point of going to mass regularly with her children and praying with them every day.

But Alicja, who worked as a home economics and mechanics teacher at the Szczecin secondary school, joined the Communist party and gradually forgot her mother's lessons: her faith weakened and became almost non-existent. She would later admit that her life was far removed from the teachings of the Catholic Church. She wrote in a letter: "There were periods of several years during which I lived outside the Church, almost openly in opposition to the divine commandments." Nevertheless, she sought the meaning of life, the good and the beautiful: "Nostalgia for these values took me to many countries over several years. But in the end, I felt ever more clearly the emptiness of such a lifestyle." It was above all the death of her mother in 1984 that marked a turning point in her life: after the trauma of losing the loved one who had marked their whole lives, Alicja and her brother became close to the Charismatic Renewal. It was in this community that Alice gradually discovered a singular bond with Jesus and decided to devote herself to him: "At that time, I started to read religious books, including The Cross and the Switchblade (David Wilkerson), Nine O'Clock in the Morning (Dennis Bennett), The Happiest People on Earth (Demos Shakarian), and others about the Charismatic Renewal." Reading these books reawakened her faith.

On 8 March 1985, while taking part in a retreat for leaders in Gostyn, she received the mystical gift of conversation with Christ. She later recounted this in her diary: "Something happened there that changed my life. Jesus stood there before me. More real, more true than anything in the chapel, than the people standing next to it. It happened after communion (during mass), when I thought with contrition how far behind I was in my journey towards him. Everything ceased to exist, there was only him. His strength, his power, hisever greater greatness, and me ever smaller in comparison. A mass of love so great, so exceptional that, faced with it, we could only weep for his ingratitude. And then the joy of knowing that he loves me. A joy that makes your heart burst."

It was then that her life turned upside down and she decided to devote everything to him: "From that moment on, everything changed: my hierarchy of values, the structure of my needs, the purpose of my life. He - JesusJesus Christ became my only value, my only desire and my only goal. And my most beautiful moments became those of my encounters with him: in daily prayer, in daily Eucharist, in Holy Communion, but also in everyday activities and in service to others. He gave me everything I lacked and everything I had been looking for for so many years all over the world. He gave me much more than I could have imagined or desired."

Alice began to attend the Eucharist every day, to adore the Blessed Sacrament, to read the Scriptures, to recite the rosary and the liturgy of the hours, and to fast on Wednesdays and Fridays on bread and water. Jesus also asked her to abstain completely from alcohol. At the beginning of 1989, Alice also received the gift of invisible stigmata.

Alice retired from teaching in 1987. For sixteen years, she worked as a volunteer in the office of the Holy Sacrament parish. Devoted entirely to evangelisation, she became a member of the Family of the Heart of Crucified Love : in March 1988 she took temporal monastic vows in this community, and final vows on 25 December 2005.

Deeply involved in the Apostles of Pure Love community, which she co-founded, she runs seminars for the Charismatic Renewal at Saint-John-the-Baptist church.

Until 2010, Alice's mystical encounters with Jesus became less frequent, and then stopped. That same year, she was diagnosed with kidney cancer that had metastasised to her lungs. She accepted this illness and suffering with great serenity, as a specialgift from God. After several hospital stays and operations, she was admitted to the Saint John the Evangelist hospice in Szczecin on 7 December 2011. She very much wanted to spend the last days of her earthly life there, because she wanted to attend Mass every day and not be a burden on her loved ones. Surrounded by the attentive care of the nursing staff and the prayers of her brother, sister-in-law and many friends, Alicja Lenczewska died on 5 January 2012 at 7.42pm. Her last words were: "Jesus, look at me! We are on fire, Jesus! We burn to the end! You consumed yourself to the end. I consumed myself to the end."

In the course of her exchanges with Jesus, Alicja transcribed all the spiritual advice she received - among them is an invitation to a profound veneration of the Eucharist - in two texts: Testimony [Świadectwo] and A Word of Instruction [Słowo pouczenia]. The depth of these texts touches hearts, strengthens minds and represents a valuable source of instruction for the soul. Alicja's spiritual diary came into the hands of Archbishop Andrzej Dzięga, who formed a theological commission with the aim of evaluating the diary's content. It turns out that Alice Lenczewska's writings contain rare theological and spiritual depth, and that they are entirely in line with the teaching of the Catholic Church. On this basis, Monsignor Henryk Weiman, the Vicar General, agreed to the publication of the diary.

Jacques de Guillebon is an essayist and journalist. He is a contributor to the Catholic magazine La Nef.