by Fr. Bolesław Szewc — first published at frboleslav.eu, reproduced here with the author’s permission.
The Encounter
It was the last semester of my seminary studies – February 1988. The monographic lecture entitled “The Origin of Religion” had just begun. The lecturer was different from others – he requested to be asked questions. With great expertise he elaborated on non-Christian religions. It was an unparalleled apology of Christianity, revealing what a great treasure the Gospel and the Catholic faith is and how meagre other religions are. The lecture proved to be brilliant, absorbing. I had been looking forward to it as a spiritual feast. It was my first encounter with Father Doctor Tadeusz Dajczer.
Later came the holy orders and the first – difficult for me – years of priesthood. For the previous fifteen years I had been accompanied by one priest or another – a spiritual authority. Now I felt a desire for a spiritual director and was seeking one. I was involved with an informal priestly group that we called “Priestly Alliance”. Some of the colleagues had already found their way to Father Tadeusz’s spiritual direction. One day, in September or October 1989, one of them told me that he had an appointment with Father Tadeusz but could not go and offered me to go instead. It was how I found myself at Father Tadeusz’s as a penitent.
Already during the first meeting Father Tadeusz showed me my own experiences in the light of faith and I discerned in them God’s amazing sense. I asked him at once for spiritual direction. He seemed hesitating but agreed. During my meetings with him I was taking many pages of notes. He revealed to me some new prospects of the way to God, he was helping me uncover the vast sphere of unconsciousness not submitted to grace. First of all, he was helping me to wonder at God and God to choose.
At the beginning, when I was an assistant curate in Tarczyn near Warsaw, making an appointment with Father Tadeusz and reaching him was not very hard. I would arrive before 10 pm, sometimes wait a bit for the meeting to start. It would end after midnight. Then I would stay overnight at his neighbour’s in the presbytery. I would get up before 5 am to catch a return train or bus, and Father Tadeusz would go to the confessional where many were waiting for him to confess. At that time he had around 400 regular penitents. He slaved himself away and looked like someone very sickly.
The expert on interior life and the Saints – the origins of the Movement
Apart from his special field in religious studies, Father Tadeusz had a deep interest in and genuinely lived the interior life as well as unreservedly devoted himself to guiding his penitents to its ways. Thanks to Father Tadeusz I found myself in the Families of Nazareth Movement, established in 1985 amongst people involved with it through his ministry in the confessional or through participation in the meetings on spiritual life that he presided over. The establishing of the movement was attributed to Father Tadeusz and he consented to it but he had never really been interested in any formal structures and he left them over to lay animateurs and himself took care of people’s souls. The origin of the movement as such was the initiative of lay persons and particularly of Slawomir Biela. Father Tadeusz would sometimes privately say that it was Slawomir Biela who has actually established the movement. In public, however, he had never denied to have been its founder. After all, without Father Tadeusz, there would have never been the first members of the movement, neither would they be formed properly. Should not then the appellation of the founder be given to him? Father Dajczer did not want to have any formal control within the Movement, so by the first opportunity coming his way he made it over to Father Andrzej Buczel. I have never witnessed Father Tadeusz interfering in managing the Movement, with just one exception in September 2007. He was only interested in the matters of conscience of those entrusted to him. The matters of conscience could sometimes have to do with their responsibility for the Movement, but Father Tadeusz’s aim was the good of their souls and he would never run anybody’s life or deeds.
In his ways, Father Tadeusz, drew from the experience of the Saints and the Blessed. He sought solutions to his problems in their writings. He had an excellent command of them. He was fascinated in learning their faults as they often brought about a particular action of God. He learnt the Saints in an extraordinary manner – for not theoretically, but trying to live by what they did.
The lecturer and the writer
Father Tadeusz had an extraordinary teaching talent. In his lectures, there had to be a problem set and a view on it included. An interesting way of setting a problem makes students interested in its solution, whereas the visual methods appeal to them, making the understanding and assimilating the issue easier. He would say that he had learnt this method from Prof. Tadeusz Gogolewski. In his papers and spiritual writings he also paid special attention to the third element that he called “attraction”. The point here was to draw the listener or the reader to follow the recommended direction, to take predefined action. Some call it the “impressive function of language”. As far as the utterances on the spiritual life are concerned, the informative function once in a while receded into the background to concentrate, to stimulate the listener or the reader to adopt a definite attitude or making a choice. Himself, he was extremely critical of his own writings. As a general rule, he would engage someone to correct the style of what he was writing, considering that he could not write well himself. Many of his works, however, have been published with no need of any stylistic corrections.
Extraordinary cherishing of people’s souls
Father Tadeusz was an unparalleled spiritual director. He accommodated himself to the penitents and, if he saw he could not, he parted with them. His direction adapted as many forms as many penitents he had. I see in it his extraordinary love of human souls. For some he was only the confessor and the adviser. They entrusted him with what they wanted, asking him for advice, so he advised them and so his part was over. For many he was the understanding father, confirming their faith in difficulties, bolstering up their courage to proceed further.
He constituted a very strong personality. I reckon that according to René Le Senne’s typology of characters he was a very strong passionate with great mars, with wide field of consciousness and with a very strong empathy. It gave him vast possibilities of understanding, empathizing with others as well as affecting them. He was, however, a man churned up by grace and often behaving against his own character. He could shake someone to help them to choose the Lord God, but he also could be withdrawing and tractable when such was the need of a soul. What he was saying had as a general rule the so-called didactic purpose as superior. Therefore he used shortcuts, simplifications, exaggeration to highlight from various complexities the essence of what was the most important for a penitent at the moment.
The separate category of his charges consisted of a not numerous group of those who, in his opinion, were particularly chosen by God and gifted. If he saw any of those people not choosing the way to sanctity or some other compromise, he would be like Saint John the Baptist who spoke of an axe already laid at the root and about the inevitable punishment. At such moments a shocking hyperbole, being a kind of a shortcut, could be issued, something like: “In such case there is no salvation for you…” and the conversation ended. The utterance of that kind was the abridgement of a sentence: “If you do not change your concrete attitude, you may not save yourself”. In his concern for the chosen souls, Father Tadeusz did not worry that his interlocutor could cause much damage when his pride is harmed. He told me once: “When I see pride, I have to react.”
The only support – Eucharistic Jesus
Father Tadeusz went through a health crisis in 2005. A virus infection, extremely difficult to treat, occurred bringing with it huge physical suffering. At the same time, there appeared a particular interior spiritual darkness.
There remained only one sole support for him – the Eucharistic Christ. This experience culminated probably in 2005. It was the Eucharistic Christ who became the only and sufficient sense of his life. Many times I witnessed how he was born anew celebrating the Eucharist. From this experience the books in the series Meditations on the Eucharist came into being. Before his death, he believed that the Church would be born again through the Eucharist embraced with interior life.
This is an abridged version of the reminiscence. Passages concerning the internal affairs of the Families of Nazareth Movement and third persons have been omitted; the complete text is available at frboleslav.eu.
Homily on the second anniversary of Fr. Tadeusz Dajczer’s death
St. John’s Metropolitan Cathedral in Warsaw, 8 September 2011 · authorized text · first published at frboleslav.eu
Mary is appearing to us today as a person chosen by God’s grace to become a tool of the mystery of incarnation, and consequently of the mystery of Redemption, the Redemption of humankind. The one who through collaboration with God’s grace opened the road to Redemption, is taking part in opening the road to Redemption for each one of us. That’s why today’s holiday reminds us that in our lives we can in a special way unite, spiritually unify with Mary so that our road to Redemption, which happened historically, our road to actualization of Redemption in our lives, could run in a special union with Mary.
And what can it look like? A note from September 1952: “At long last I’ve decided to make three resolutions a day working on: – 1. Practicing devotion to Virgin Mary”[1] (more resolutions follow). A note from another day in September: “To offer during Adoration before prayers a whole day to Virgin Mary with all matters regarding deeds, crosses, all my thoughts and feelings of the day”[2]. Those are spiritual notes written down by a young cleric Tadeusz in the early years at seminary.
From another September day: “During the last three days I tried not to support myself while kneeling, and it‘s only thanks to my beloved Mother that I managed to resist it to the end. I was praying ever so fervently for her help, when I was thinking that I wasn’t going to resist it.”[3] These notes show how one forms a union with Mary. This union with Her also in seminarian’s renouncement, struggle with oneself. Another note: “Only mishaps so that I could better recognize my misery. How much I am loved by my Mother!”[4] An unusual thought that experiencing mishaps, one’s own misery, is love, God’s love, which can be lived through a union with Mary as Her love.
And yet another note from September 1952: “During a pastoral visitation I dropped fire. I think that my beloved Mother wanted to humiliate me that way, so that I wouldn’t care for regard, so that I wouldn’t be too sure at the altar.”[5] Mary – her presence is tied with each event. A note from October 1952: “My first after-retreat resolution, still valid. Devotion to Holy Virgin – concentration during a rosary.”[6] Another note from October of the same year: “A thought during contemplation: Virgin Mary loves me so fervently, that it is hard to imagine. So much love has God poured into Mary – my Mother loves me more than I could love myself. Even though I am such a great egotist, egocentric. She looks at everybody with this love; one has to look more at others with those merciful and loving eyes of Mary. Loving her one has to love those who are loved so much by Her.”[7] It is here that one can see the deepest foundations of love to one’s neighbour, who is loved by God just as I am loved.
I have chosen the notes about Mary because it is her holiday today. Another note: “I am feeling all-defective; maybe that’s good. In all this I see the special care of Virgin Mary. I am feeling so tormented, so miserable, so exhausted, and so vile at the same time. And in this misery still begging for human regard. It’s preparation for crushing this hateful pride in me.”[8] These notes show how God was forming the interior life of Father Tadeusz through this particular love to Mary. And as we can see, there is also a guidance to some cleansing through this relationship with Mary, full of love.
And after a few years a note from 1956, from the period of priesthood. The life of a priest who says Mass and adores the Holiest Sacrament in this special union with Mary: “Mother, come to pray in me. Come to adore in me Eucharistic Christ, when I am holding Him in my palms, come, for I cannot do it on my own. If I am praying, it is not I but you are praying in me; if I am adoring Jesus, it is not I but you are adoring Him in me. Put into my every liturgical gesture, every kneeling, as much adoration as you had when you were looking after little Jesus.”[9] This note shows in a very special way what almost 40 years later became called “the communion of life with Mary”[10] – already in the time of the Families of Nazareth Movement. It shows that this relation with God’s Mother had been forming at the time (in the 1950s) and lead Father Tadeusz to the Eucharist.
In his treatise Against Heresies St. Irenaeus said: “For the glory of God is a living man” – each man. And to many of us this very special glory of God is the life of Father Tadeusz. To many of us, this special word of God is this man who was so uncommonly enamoured with God and with interior life. Father Professor Bruno Forte, the eminent theologian, today a bishop in Italy, wrote about Father Tadeusz that he had a strong experience of God and a very special knowledge of human heart and its deepest dynamisms.[11] He read it so, not knowing Father Tadeusz, but knowing his book The Gift of Faith. Professor René Laurentin wrote about Father Tadeusz that he was gifted with a charisma of spiritual leadership whom he devoted most of his time.[12] He had a great power of influence. Whoever met him could not remain the same, something would always happen.
He was sharing with us this amazing faith that each of us is God’s love. The God’s whom we meet in the most direct way as Eucharistic Christ. Here are the words he put in Christ’s mouth with a deep conviction – he wrote them in his book The Mystery of Faith: “For you I have died, just for you. Everybody says dying for everybody is like dying for none. Yet I have only you. I, the God who reveal to you My incomprehensible love in the Eucharist, am really present. I, the world’s ruler, am Master of heaven and earth. Nonetheless I find you to be priceless. I take care of the whole world yet I tell you, I have only you.”[13]
[1] Fr. Tadeusz Dajczer, Trudny kawałek życia [Tough patch of life], Poznań – Warszawa 2010, p. 12.
[2] Ibid., p. 14.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid., p. 15.
[5] Ibid., p. 16.
[6] Ibid., p. 19–20.
[7] Ibid., p. 20.
[8] Ibid., p. 21.
[9] Ibid., p. 114–115.
[10] Fr. Tadeusz Dajczer et al. ed., Komunia życia z Maryją [Communion of life with Mary], Zeszyty Ruchu Rodzin Nazaretańskich, Warszawa 1994.
[11] Cf. Bruno Forte, Presentazione, in: Tadeusz Dajczer, Dialogo sulla fede, San Paolo, Milano 1995, p. 10–11.
[12] Cf. René Laurentin, Préface, in: Tadeusz Dajczer, Méditations sur la foi, François-Xavier de Guibert, Paris 2006, p. 7, 9.
[13] Fr. Tadeusz Dajczer, The Mystery of Faith. Meditations on the Eucharist 1, Eucharistic Renewal Books, Tintagel, Cornwall 2008, p. 112.
© Fr. Bolesław Szewc. Both texts first published at frboleslav.eu and reproduced on dajczer.eu with the author’s permission. A Polish version is available on the author’s site.
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