Marek Dyżewski
With thanks to Fr Stanisław.
The life of each of us has meaning and value, as long as it is simply a gift to others. So it is worth recalling what a gift Father Stanislaw Kawalec was to people of religion in Poland and Austria. In not being able personally to participate in his farewell today, I wish, as his friend, to bear witness to what he was a man and a priest.
I met him erstwhile he was a vicar in the church of the Holy household in Wroclaw in 1968, freshly after priestly ordination. My large admiration was as God’s Word preached. His homilies, highly short, condensed in content and crafty in their form, were a kind of work of art. He was able to give the Gospel truths a modern dimension, alive and timely. He knew his word not only teach Listeners but besides Let them think.
No wonder he became a legend among the faithful of the church there.
Honored by his friendship, I had the chance to watch him work on himself. Even then it was typical homo studious. Carrying on a large deal of responsibilities (the very hours of religion each week were nearly twenty), he rose at 4:00 a.m. to deepen his cognition of theology, beautiful literature and widely understood culture.
With akin strength he worked in 2 further centres, serving as a young priest: in the Parish of the Blessed Virgin Mary of the parent of Comfort in Oława (1969-1972), and then in the parish of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Częstochowa in Wroclaw (1972-4), whose modest temple was adjacent to the student houses of the Medical Academy.
Here Father Stanislaus found himself in a fresh function – as a charismatic pastor of academic youth (1974-6).
However, Cardinal Henryk Gulbinovich, who had just begun his regulation in the Diocese of Wroclaw, assigned him another task. He entrusted him with pastoral care for East workers working in Berlin from Poland. They were people separated from families, lost in the realities of communist Germany, frequently seeking comfort in alcohol and moral promiscuity. But Father Stanislaus besides found his way to them.
His church in the Karlshorst territory with each next week became more and more crowded.
I will never forget the zeal with which those restored to religion people prayed and sang our spiritual songs.
Cardinal Gulbinowicz agreed to begin his doctorate in Vienna. However, the condition for taking them at the university was the master's degree obtained in university studies. In order to get them, priest Stanislaus held them, in absentia and in highly short time, at the Catholic University of Lublin. He erstwhile and again drove a car from Berlin to Lublin to take further exams there.
I asked him, can you do it? After all, these rides, at night, 12 hours of driving is simply a murderous effort!
He responded with a quote from the Gospel:
Whoever puts his hand to the plow,
And he looks back,
is not fit for the kingdom of God. (Lk 9, 62).
After a conviction with the highest score of KUL exams and with a master's degree, he arrived in Vienna, where he began the next phase of his studies. At that time, he was provided by the pastoral ministry of female youth at the Sacre Coeur Sisters advanced School at the Pressbaum in Vienna.
In his doctoral dissertation, priest Stanislaus addressed the question of the millions of foreigners employed in Austria and Germany that the Church had not yet seen. The name ‘Gastarbeiters’ given to them was an insult to their real condition. In countries whose material prosperity they built, they were rewarded drastically low and treated as third-class people.
The bitterness of long-term separation with their homeland and their families was besides joined by: rooting out, losing ties with their native culture and feeling of loneliness, non-being-self and suspension in cultural vacuum.
This is the challenge for the Church – as indicated in the doctoral dissertation by priest Stanisław – taking these people in and surrounding their pastoral care. For those who have long parted from their own homeThis is the Church,as a community of people of faith, it can be a second homeland and it can reconstruct their self-respect, choked by the realities that they faced.
The doctoral dissertation of Father Stanislaw, expressing the postulate of pastoral care over the Gastarbeiters, as a work of all means first and revealing, was accepted by the Theological Department of the University of Vienna. magno cum laude.
In view of specified an excellent assessment, Cardinal Franz König invited priest Stanisław to proceed his mission in the Diocese of Vienna.
It was clearly the decree of Providence that it was Austria and not Poland that priest Stanislaus was to sacrifice the main part of his priestly life.
We must be aware of the scale of the feat that this Polish priest has done. After all, he did not act in his native language. The German language learned late, de facto After the priestly ordination. Yet, with incredible industriousness and perseverance, he penetrated the nuances of this language and its subtlest shades. More: He was active in a spiritual culture. This allowed him to preach the Word of God with as much strength as he utilized to do in Polish temples, and he could decision the minds and hearts of people from the country of Mozart and Beethoven. And he could have pointed out the way to the Heavenly Homeland.
In the fall of his life, Father Stanislaw again served his fellow countrymen. The last halt of his ministry was the village of Pierciec in the territory of Cieszyn. I do not know whether the parishioners there knew that the man who spoke to them and gave them sacraments had specified a rich, beautiful and heroic biography.
Today, behind Saint Paul, this dear priest can say to my heart:
In a good competition,
I finished running,
I kept my faith (2 Tm 4.7).
I believe that in the Father's home he will be received with the same love with which he as a priest served men and strengthened their hearts in this world.
