Tenth School Year in Déva!

Letter to my co-workers both near and far, from half way, to all those who have worked, are working with us or by their donations and kind words have helped and are helping to better Transylvania’s precious land.

We began in 1992 by breaking down a lock, and in horror we paced through the several hundred-year-old Franciscan cloister that had been hideously desecrated and abandoned for 22 years. My superior encouraged me and told me that his heart’s most secret desire is that we repair and fill with life the Déva cloister which is consecrated to the honor of the Virgin Mary. We had a rather vivid imagination, but after this first look-around with my friar companion, Böjte Mihály, and with youth who were already with us, we only dared to dream that maybe we could take back and repair one room so that we could hold youth meetings and religion classes there.

Ten years have passed. These ten years have been a desert wandering with its own difficulties, but we can humbly say that throughout the course of our journey we have been sinking under the weight of God’s gifts, and now we can bear witness to more and more amazing chains of miracles.

We have reclaimed and repaired the entire cloister building. We renovated it to the best of our abilities, and on October 4, 1999, it was officially given back to our order. This is the only property in our archdiocese that the state truly gave back. Not only did our friars find a home in the cloister, but so did Transylvania’s first independent, private, Hungarian school.

By God’s grace, we purchased an apartment building in which 8-10 poor, orphaned children live as a family with their foster parents. We purchased two substantial properties, which we transformed into dormitories for boys and girls. With the help of our benefactors, the small shopping center adjacent to the church became ours, and we rebuilt it so that our large family would have a kitchen and dining hall. We are in the process of buying an industrial compound, where we would like to start vocational workshops, in other words, incubators for life-long careers.

In January of 1999, God saw it fit that a small group would split off from the Déva motherhouse, and in Szászváros a new center for child protection in honor of St. Elizabeth of Hungary was born. Here in the partially renovated cloister, 70 children and 15 adults found a home. In other regions of Transylvania, additional centers for child protection are being born with stronger or looser ties to Déva.

What has been most important throughout the years is that God has graced us with many, many children. Presently, we provide a home for 300 children, big and small.

We praise God for sending us religious brothers and sisters, young laypeople, and nice healthy families. Almost seventy of us are building and beautifying God’s kingdom, Mary’s Land.

There has been a lot of work, prayer, struggle, and new beginnings in these ten years. All of this has created such a spirited community of children and youth with which we bravely and proudly dare to embark on this journey and dream a new, better world. Possibly the greatest treasure is that we succeeded in leading those entrusted to us to have a positive hope and a love-filled worldview. Every day I marvel at the manifestations of a living faith, real hope, and a love that shares all in the children and my co-workers. Often, like a smoldering, sooty twig, they reignite me into the branches of a flaming bonfire.

My heart’s great joy is that every day I can see more and more of my graduates amongst my co-workers raising and encouraging the little ones.

It is also brings me great joy that three of the young people that have moved on from here joined religious orders. We feel the weight and blessing of their prayers.

Amongst the graduates are others who are attending colleges and universities. This year one young man is starting seminary. Women have gotten married, given birth, and have raised their own children. I feel that none of those children that have been entrusted to us have lost their way. What we started here together in Déva often laughing, learning by teaching, sometimes with gritted teeth, other times - let’s be honest - crying, struggling with despair, and praying continues in the lives of those who have moved on from us. I feel that nobody has crumbled away, but by scattering good grains of wheat we are making the blessed land of Transylvania productive.

After all these gratitude-filled lines, one might rightfully ask what the letter’s subtitle means, namely, that we are half way. I feel that our institution hasn’t been totally born. Mary’s Land, everything that we are and what we have is presently just the embodied dream of a few charismatic people, and only a sprout or sketch of the institutional structure has been outlined.

We are bearing the burden of the Romanian government by teaching and raising the children, Romanian citizens, but the state has only accepted a third of our expenses. It is not right this way! We still have to blaze many trails and many things have to ripen and crystallize.

The nursery school, kindergarten, and grades 1-8 are working, but the 9-12 grades and vocational school, which provide our children with opportunities in life, are still waiting to be formed. So far each year 3-4 have been graduating, but in two years the classes with 25-30 students are coming. We have to develop workplaces for them with competent Hungarian contractors in Déva or Hunyad County. Our mature, clean hearted young people have to be helped so that after graduating from 8^th grade, 12^th grade, or trade school, they can find their place, their calling, and make a living while helping to preserve the Hungarian heritage in the ‘‘szorvány,’’ a land sparsely populated with Hungarians. It is important that whether in tourism or the catering trade, they can announce the past and show the future in our historical places and buildings as witnesses and living ‘‘kopjafák,’’ ornately carved wooden posts common to Transylvania. They should be able to live their own lives, start families, and meet their expectations while living with the possibilities offered by this area’s beautiful scenery, mountains, and rivers and working with successful tradesman, merchants, and contractors. In this way, the Hungarian communities can grow and strengthen. The everyday joy of communal honest work and the unifying strength of mutual honest material gain can form living, autonomous islands in the southern Transylvanian ‘‘szorvány’’. I am convinced that this road is the only alternative for the survival of our ‘‘szorvány’’ communities. Of course, all of these new, unknown structures need to be dreamed up and created, and buildings, classrooms, laboratories, and workshops are necessary to bring them to fruition.

We could easily stop taking progressive steps for the sake of our children and region, afraid that our previous efforts were only a springboard for our children to leave our area and country. But we must come full circle so that our schools next generation of students come from the blessed families of the locally nurtured, beautiful, loving, and holy marriages. Frighteningly much work, begging, and investment awaits us, and all of us must know that the time for resting or letting up has not arrived.

Often the presence of the devil is very strong. In me, around me, and in all the parts of the institution, it is quite evident that the devil is walking around like a growling lion looking to see whom he can swallow. He’s trying to steal from our hearts the hope and the trust sown in each other and in the future, which can give strength and bring flight to our energetic progress.

With continuous repentance and stubborn restarts, we must stay on our feet. With stubborn faith in God, we must seek our way out from the seemingly dead-end life created by the Treaty of Trianon. I believe that even here in the ‘‘szorvány,’’ there is hope and a walkable path for the Hungarians of southern Transylvania, a path that is worth walking for us who were given this home.

We are only half way on the path, but I feel that the miracle of the last ten years gives us the right, rather, the duty to humbly continue building God’s wonderful work here in Déva and in the ‘‘szorvány’’. At the dawn of creation, the Lord said let there be, and there was. We are the children of this awesome, all-powerful Lord. Through us also, God wants to make the land of Transylvania a nice home, a house of love, which unfortunately is now just our native land, but it can become our home if we ask with faith and build it with hard work.

A grain of wheat remains a single grain unless it dies. Let us follow Saint Joseph’s example and dare to die unto ourselves for the sake of our entrusted, Christ-bearing, children. Let us not hold back; let us dare to burn to the end of our wick. God, whose kingdom we are building, is powerful enough to repay us with overflowing measure. We trust in the Lord, and this holy adventure and amazing journey that we generously began, we are continuing and will complete in the arms of our God. For the glory of God, for the children of our people, in the hope that Transylvania will again become a fairyland.

Love,

Böjte Csaba ofm