Why is a birthday important, is it important at all? What is it good for? Should we be sad that we have become another year older, or should we rejoice that we have existed for another year? Can only one person have a birthday, or a whole nation? I think that the latter only has a soul like us.
Without a soul, a person can be like someone who has had a lobotomy. A moving, breathing, but empty dust pod unsuitable for independent life. It exists, but it's just there.
A nation is also distinguished from its people by its spirit. The people is there, but it lacks everything that makes it worthwhile to exist. That is why there is more, much more to a nation than a people.
On Hungary's birthday, St. Stephen's Day, a sentence from Mihály Vörösmarty's speech keeps popping up in my head: "Even if depleted, but not broken, a nation lives in this country" . However, there was less than a chance that it would still be alive after more than 1,100 years, in the middle of the Slavic and Germanic sea. However, our nation has a soul, and thanks to our holy king, a protector stands beside us and above us, whose son redeemed the whole world.
That's why we managed to keep our soul, while the nations of Europe and even America were slowly losing it, nation after nation impoverished and the atrophy has not stopped here. If a group of people is no longer just a people, it loses its ability to maintain itself and defend itself, and first becomes subjugated, and then slowly disappears into the abyss of history.
They say that when two Hungarians get together, they want three, and this is probably true. But it is also true that the sons and daughters of a nation with a soul are able to act together in times of trouble, they can put their differences aside, because for them the nation is an important, existing thing. Even for those who get chills when they hear "holy". Even those who deny God, for whom Christianity is anathema, because the national spirit lives in them, even if deeply, but inexpressibly.
But what is the basis of the soul of the Hungarian nation? We are diverse, so what can we have in common? I think the boundless desire for freedom. We carry it in our genes, we are the proud people of the wide steppes, as the rock opera singers sing in the rock opera István a krály. At the same time, we were and remained free and Christians submitting ourselves to the Creator.
We weathered the storms of history that swept away peoples - I am quite sure of this - by the grace of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we were and remain Regnum Marianum, the Kingdom of Mary. How else can we explain that neither the devastation of the Tatars, nor the Turks, nor the Labans, nor the Western powers that crippled and dismembered our country, nor the rule of the Reds were able to destroy us. What were the chances of us staying?
Saint István founded not only a country, but also a nation, i.e. he gave Hungarians a soul. It is also a miracle that after the devastating attacks and the battles that decimated Hungarians, the foreigners who settled soon became true Hungarians. More than once, countless times throughout history. Swabians, Olachians, Jews, Gypsies - often preserving their identity - all became Hungarians. How could this happen?
There is no rational explanation for it, only the will of a higher power could have shaped it this way. St. István's decision to offer the country to the grace of the Virgin Mary preserved us to this day, protected the nation, and did not let our souls be lost.
No one can get a bigger birthday present than this.
Amen.
Author: György Tóth Jr
Photo: Pixabay
