My story

The conversion of St. Paul on his way to Damascus, the Cross dream of Constantine the Emperor, the encounter between St. Francis and the leper… Nothing like that happened in my life. I am almost seventy years old and if you want me to describe my road to faith, I should quote Pope Pius IX:

 

Give me children until the age of six, and then you can take them back.

Childhood and early youth years create a firm background in human life. Even if we err and get lost in future, we always know where we are supposed to come back – to our spiritual home, to our world of intimacy and communication with God.

I spent my childhood and youth in the city of Nitra, close to the Calvary, where lies the church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. I’ll try to describe how my faith grew by using only a few words. It was thanks to my family and to the surrounding environment, priests and believers. I lived my faith with great joy. First of all, the liturgical year. During Advent we lived around the Advent crown – we used to pray and marked our good deeds. From Maundy Thursday to Resurrection we had our radio sealed and covered with a black cloth. On Good Friday, at 15:00 – when Jesus died – we all knelt before the cross inside our house. In our Calvary parish we used to celebrate the Assumption of the Virgin Mary with an annual pilgrimage on August 15. It was wonderful to admire the beauty, joy, and depth of popular devotion. Our family always received many visits from priests, nuns, and various other pious people. Religiousness was a natural part of our life, with its rules, but without pressure or coerciveness; it was often accompanied by smiles, by keeping distance from everything which was not genuine.

All this happened in an environment and atmosphere of continuous persecution, detention of priests and nuns, police hearings, house inspections, etc. Throughout my life, youth experience showed me that Communism is against the Lord and persecutes believers and other honest people. It is a bad thing and we cannot trust such an ideological system.

Prayer to God, the Virgin Mary, and the Guardian Angel were progressively becoming part of my life. I was not able to accept a prescribed life of prayer. My only regular prayers were in the morning and in the evening. Prayer was an essential need for my life. We also prayed the rosary and other beautiful prayers of the Church. I was discovering the presence of God, of the Virgin Mary and of my Guardian Angel and – day after day – it all brought me great joy and peace. In youth years I do not recall any crisis in my faith. As a teen-ager I once asked my mum about some rational doubts on this subject. She said just one sentence and all doubts disappeared. Natural authority of parents and people close to us is an irreplaceable form of help for our growth process.

In 1966 I moved to Bratislava for studying physics and mathematics. From that time until the fall of Communism I was part of the so-called underground Church. I got close to great people like bishop Ján Chryzostom Korec, Vladimír Jukl, Silvester Krčméry, and many priests, especially Jesuits, etc. We were fighting for freedom of Church. We were spreading our faith, especially among young people. We were advocating for freedom of information and other rights. I was acting in an ideal environment for my spiritual growth. Nevertheless, this period of my life was not so calm and harmonious as my childhood and early youth years.

They were years of sincere engagement, often with wonderful results, but at the same time they were also characterised by several doubts.

I cooperated with the secular institute named “Fatima”, very close to Vlado Jukl. He used to tell me: you have two possibilities, consecrating your life to the Lord through religious vows or choosing another way. I was not able to take a firm decision. Back then, bishop Korec helped me a lot. However, I also remember he once told me: “You should already be farther than you are.“

This wise sentence (actually, a question) always accompanied all my life. What does it mean “being farther”. Is it like “having bigger knowledge”, “being self-disciplined”, “having a goal and going right towards it”? These people leave some traces in this world. They are appreciated and honoured among other people and they reflect an interior concentration. The basic problem I felt inside me was finding myself, or identifying with myself. In this regard, I intuitively sensed that this is the starting point of all human and Christian life.

If a person finds this way, he/she does not need to be successful, but can be glad and satisfied. It is the peace of our old mothers that we used to admire when we were children.

I had hard time finding myself. The people I mentioned above were kind, patient, and lovely towards me. They gave me freedom. The Desert Fathers said that the fruit of such journey is calm and silent joy in the soul. People don’t feel too safe on such roads. Today, I see that the road towards my interior being was often characterised by mistakes. I am not looking for justifications. Eventually, my failures freed me from false visions of myself. During such searching I was always able and I am still able to pray in the best manner. If I’ll meet the Lord face to face, I should be myself and not the mask I am wearing in my life days. In youth years and in periods of fight for freedom and enlargement of Church, faith in God and faith in Church was the same thing for me.

Freedom came after November 1989. Defence of liberties of faith and Church was no longer necessary. I joined politics and I acted for 20 years in that field. My activism in the Fatima community was also one of the key points of my life. One of the key spiritual pillars of this community was the fact that it was known as “a community supplying concrete and actual services”. In other words, fulfilling one’s own duties and then becoming useless again.

We made efforts in politics in this sense. During early years of freedom we tried to secure solid basis to all churches in the Slovak society. It was a sort of new challenge for the position of Church within society.

As I already mentioned, when I was a child, in my youth years, and during Communism, the Church represented my spiritual purpose (actually our spiritual purpose). I was completely attached to the Church and it was for me a joy and a hope nobody could dispute about. Freedom came and I had a chance to experience and observe the life of the Church also from a different point of view. I said I never had any major crisis in terms of faith. I could say the same thing with regard to the Church. Indeed, the Church brought me faith and I live according to it. When freedom came, I noticed that the Church is also made of human beings and human errors. It was a completely new experience for me and I had to accept it. I was raised with the concept that Catholicism is the most correct way to faith.

Thanks to Pope Francis and his calls I understood that people have to share testimony of their faith and leave all the rest to the Lord. I made no more differences between Catholics and Non-Catholics.

I’ve already mentioned my lifelong attachment to the Catholic Church and I will be forever anchored to it. At the same time, right now I feel the Church is called to pass through great times of transformation. Searching and internal debates of today’s Church are also my searching and my internal debates. Freedom brought us such new experiences. I realised that freedom is the greatest gift a person can receive from God. A free man is able to know things in their depth, to live and compare his own experience and searching.

My life of faith and Church was always accompanied by joy. Freedom gives me a chance to understand such joy in a better way. I make efforts to study and discover more and more new things, to debate with friends, and to follow world events and news. Of course I also care about my daily business and life stories. I have no time to study back all neglected stuff. I’m sure I won’t fully understand everything. But in prayer I find back my joy and safety.

My road to faith began in my childhood years and continued during my youth years, under the Communist regime. Thanks to liberation and to freedom it now looks like a sort of conversion story – as the ones I mentioned at the beginning of this text. It is no longer an obvious thing, but something that requires personal answers to the events that I experienced and that I am experiencing. I tried to write down a few lines about my faith story and my relation with God. Of course, I know that the fundamental pillar are Christ’s words: “Love your neighbour as yourself!“ (Matthew 22, 39). This is the starting point of Christian life, search, and knowledge of God.

At the beginning of my text I wrote I was going to look at my story of faith from the point of view of a seventy-year-old man. I should add a further sensation that is today already an integrating part of my relation with the Lord.

It is a feeling of thankfulness. For my family, friends, and priests I met during my life, for good health, for my wife, and for several other things.

My faith was formed in my interior dimension, but it was not the story of an eremite from the desert. Faith was always present in people and events that featured my life. The story is not over yet and I can do nothing else than praying God for help for the time I still have before me.