It was April 19th, 1952, the Saturday after Easter that year, and a group of college students in Kraków were intent on escaping the drab, communist-controlled, city for a weekend trip to the Zakopane mountains. Five of the girls dormed together at the convent of the Sisters of Nazareth on Warszawska street and were that evening stealing across town to catch their late-night train south. Several of the men studying at the Kraków Polytechnic whom they had gotten to know through the Catholic chaplaincy in the city were going to meet them at the train station and they were going to spend Sunday hiking and taking in the splendid crocuses that were just then beginning to bloom. When they got to the station, news arrived that the guys’ exam had been moved up so they would miss the trip, instead a man in battered clothes stepped forward to join them for the trip.
Their uncertainty was only slightly relieved when the recognized their college chaplain, Fr. Karol Wojtyła, whom they had gotten to know when attending Mass at St. Florian’s just outside of Kraków’s old town center where he was also one of the vicars. They had never seen him not wearing his cassock, and furthermore it was absolutely forbidden by the communist authorities for a priest to work with groups of young people. They could go to St. Florian’s without too much trouble, but traveling on a train with a priest could get them, and him, in very hot water. Poland was a country under the heel of Soviet Communism. Countless cities had only recently been rebuilt in the aftermath of WWII, during which millions of Poles had been sent to concentration camps and never returned. Millions more had returned, or been forcibly resettled into a newly redrawn Poland within the borders of the USSR. Countless priests and religious and other leaders had been killed during the war, and thousands more by the communists after, and the beatings and disappearings were still commonplace.
Their Catholic faith was one of the few lights amid the darkness and anchors that the Poles still tenaciously held onto in those difficult days. But still … the train pulled to a stop … they glanced at their priest not knowing what to do … “Let’s get in” he simply said, and so they did, and so began an epic tale of taking on an evil empire from the inside.
It is a story I look forward to telling over these next weeks. Yes, about Fr. Wojtyła, many years before he was Pope St. John Paul II, and his teaching and investing and engaging and praying for this group of young people. But also, to come to know those ordinary university students – that night six young women: Danuta, Ola, Wanda, Elśbieta, Teresa, and (another) Danuta – who risked much (and gained much) by stepping into authentic Christian community. This was one of the many little groups that would come together over the next few years to form what John Paul would call “my środowisko.” That polish word has a range and depth of meanings something like “environment” or “mileau”, and it helpfully captures both the wide variety of different people who would choose to join the fledgling band coalescing around this thoughtful young curate and the sheer quantity of life they would share together. But I think that pronoun “my” adds the essential personal element that was always there when you were with Fr. Wojtyła. These were never just a “congregation” or anonymous members of his chaplaincy, they were a community, friends, companions, fellow explorers and actors in the drama of human life, and yes, fellow combatants for a life of freedom, and truth, and authenticity, within a culture-of-death that sought to erase all that from their hearts.
Far away from the secret police wandering the foothills of the Zakopane mountains, the students slowly warmed up to their incognito chaplain, but as they headed back to the train station for their return journey something of the reality back in the city began to sink back in. “What should we call you on the train?” Danuta shyly asked. Their priest grinned and quoted the most famous line from a trilogy of iconic novels about polish history and identity, “Call me Uncle” he said. It was the term ‘Wujek’ in Polish, a nickname they would fondly call him by for the rest of his life.
– Fr. Dominic will return to Kraków next week. Just one thought to tie things together. Notice that Jesus also will be “incognito” in a different fashion when taking on the empire of Satan. He does not come with thunderbolts and heavenly hosts, He comes on a donkey, and takes up the weapon of the cross. Our fight will most likely be more like theirs’s than what we find in comic books and epic showdowns.