I received this letter years ago from Markó Piroska ! It says a lot about her  beautiful spirit, her love for the children ! A lot of people do not even accept their own child, Piroska took care of other people’s children and even during her holidays she loved , cared for them as her own ! Often I pray that children growing up in their own families receive so much love , care, time spent with them as they do growing up at the Saint Francis Foundation, received from her, and the carers who accept them, take them in !

At her funeral her children though nobody asked them, took the cross, the wreath and brought it to the grave !

Rest in peace dear Piros ! With prayer and love,

Father Csaba

The peace of the Lord be with you !

I am not sure how to start my letter, I thank you for your trust and thank you for your love ! I thank you for being part of my life , you stood by my side and helped me to unfold, to grow up , to find, love and accept myself . That you saw in me that I would like to be part of a community , and dared to entrust me with tasks , children.

God’s ways are interesting , the way I met you at the camp in Kiruj, you stood by my side and accompanied me part of the way . I remember your homily of that day , That Jesus was also a child like the rest of them, played with a rag ball and paid attention to His mother’s words , that God became like us, and by taking this step He identified Himself with us , and became man . Meetings….You could have gone past me and perhaps I would not be here now and I would not be doing this, but the Lord had a different purpose with my life and we got to know one another. 

I am sorry and I ask for your  forgiveness , if I hurt you during the past years either by word or deeds , that I could not love you without impinging on your personal freedom .

You are my brother in Christ ! 

I am in Sebes with the children , I came for a few days upon Leo’s invitation and I accepted it. True that he is not at home , he is spending the whole week in Kolozsvár , he is only getting home on the week-end ! From Sunday five or six children will go to camp in Déva so this way I did not have to make the journey twice.

An interesting thing that I discovered , I miss the monastery , the hustle and bustle of the initial times when I was in Déva. 

Here I can stop for a while , I can go into the chapel ,attend holy mass daily , the children can get to know and experience the spirituality, closeness of the life in a Franciscan community . They show a lot of love towards the children. Matyi was successful in his exam today , he received a seven , I am happy for him and it’s good to think back , that even if just for a short period of time but I was also raising him. He became a wonderful adult .

Benjamin baked a bread for us also walnut roll, that made the children very happy.Today Sebestyén was passing through here. We have not seen him for a long time and the children were very happy to see him. 

It has been a long time since the two of us had a chance to sit down and have a talk, I know you have a lot on your plate , but at times I remember the early days when we all set around in a circle and you told us where you have been .

Now it’s raining , Matyi recorded an episode of a cartoon and the children will watch that . Yesterday we picked green peas from the stem , today they learned about the art of bread making from Benjamin. I was thinking about it that the monastery is part of my life even if until now I have not fully realised this  .

May the Lord be with you with all His love , this way I could keep my promise to the children about the camp.There is a need to play and to spend time together , there is a need to let go, so that the connections, relationships  may become firmer. 

With love, have a nice day,

Piros 

translated by dr k.e.