CBS Movie about Catholic Social Worker in WWII

Beautifully this movie will air on Divine Mercy Sunday! Tomorrow April 19th at 9pm ET. Rumor has it that Irena kept a Divine Mercy prayer card with her when she was imprisoned and kept that card her entire life.

I hope and pray she is considered for Sainthood.







Story Courtesy of Catholic News Agency:

New York City, N.Y., Apr 18, 2009 / 12:58 pm (CNA).- On Sunday evening CBS will broadcast a movie about the heroic efforts and “courageous heart” of Irena Sendler, a Polish Catholic social worker who created and led an underground group that rescued Jewish children from Nazi persecution. Sendler created and led a conspiracy of women who moved in and out of Warsaw’s Jewish Ghetto disguised as nurses. While saying that they were simply to prevent and contain the spread of Typhus and Spotted Fever, Sendler and her companions helped the children of consenting Jewish parents escape imminent deportation to death camps, CBS' website says.

The children were sometimes sedated and hidden inside boxes, suitcases and coffins to escape the ghetto. They were given new identities and placed with Polish families and in convents.

Sendler kept a hidden record of the children’s birth names and locations in hopes that they could be reunited with their families. About 2,500 children were smuggled to safety, with none being discovered by the Nazis.

After the Nazis discovered her operation in 1943, Sendler was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo, who broke her feet. On the day of her execution, she was rescued by the underground network “Zegota,” with which she had worked to save Jewish children.

She kept a Divine Mercy holy card from her prison cell until 1979, when she gave the card to Pope John Paul II as a gift.

CBS will broadcast “The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler,” a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, on Sunday, April 19 at 9 p.m. Eastern Time. It will star Anna Paquin as Irena while her mother will be played by Academy Award winner Marcia Gay Harden.

Nathaniel Parker will play the role of Dr. Majkowski, the head of Warsaw’s Department of Health who helped Sendler’s operation. Goran Visnjic will play Stefan, a Jewish university friend of Sendler with whom she fell in love when she began her underground operation.

The movie is based on Sendler’s authorized biography, Anna Mieszkowska’s 2005 book “Mother of the Children of the Holocaust: The Irena Sendler Story.”

Sendler was granted the title “Righteous among the Nations” by the organization Yad Vashem of Jerusalem in 1965 and was nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize. She died on May 12, 2008 at the age of 98.

More Videos on Irena:

A clip from the Movie


On Glenn Beck

Handing Over the Spirit - TRUST

In prayer today I was trying to focus on the prayer and not what I was praying for. I was praying a Chaplet and kept losing my focus to worrying about what it was I was offering up. As I sat there losing my place for the fifth time I finally stopped and ask God why I can't focus.

I just want to trust God with everything; I want to hand it over and trust that he will take care of it all. But instead I'm sitting there thinking of solutions, figuring it out in my head while I recite the prayers. Why?

In truth I think it is because where the rubber meets the road when it comes to trusting God is in actually handing over our troubles one by one and actually letting go. This is what God desires of us in prayer. To hand it all over to him and let it be His concern. "Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span?" Matt 6:27

I began to think about Christ on the Cross in that moment of handing over His spirit and breathing his last. He had to actually hand over his spirit; he had to lay it down. He had to trust that His Father would not fail Him.

I think about that in relation to my own struggles. I must hand each one over to God and die to it. Christ breathed his last and so too must I breathe my last breathe of concern and worry. I must give it over to Him and die to the worry - If I hand over my worry, my anxiety about one thing or another - I must like Christ say "into your hands Lord I commend my spirit." Not so I can pick it back up later. Often I think we pray, and then we go to work trying to solve this or that. Or we pray and let it go only to wake up in panic the next day continuing to worry. Rather, what we ought to do is breathe our last concern over that matter, hand it over to the Father through Christ's Divine Mercy and allow Him to do the rest. In a sense we are waiting for a "resurrection" of that concern/worry/situation.

This is a difficult task and one that must happen over and over again, as new situations rise in our lives and we hand them over one by one dying to our worry a little more each day. Each time we do this His infinite Grace and Mercy fill that place in our hearts and goes to work in our lives.

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, truly present in the Holy Eucharist, I place all my trust in you.


I offer this simple prayer to help you in handing it over to Christ.

A Prayer of Trust
Father, into your hands I commend my spirit; my human weakness, my frailty, my anxiety and fear. Into your hands Lord I commend __________________ (list a concern or burden). I die to this worry in full trust and confidence that your mercy and grace are sufficient for me and that just as your Son rose from the grave you will resurrect this situation in my life.

Another prayer from the Divine Mercy Novena:

Eternal God, in whom mercy is endless and the treasury of compassion —
inexhaustible, look kindly upon us and increase Your mercy in us, that in
difficult moments we might not despair nor become despondent, but with great
confidence submit ourselves to Your holy will, which is Love and Mercy itself.

If you haven't prayed the Divine Mercy Chaplet I encourage you to pray it regularly to help you in this dying to your worries and concerns. You can find it here.