Lest You Remain

He most probably caught from his mother, a woman shining with simplicity and piety, his love for the life of prayer. Her membership in various confraternities was without doubt a sign of her religiousness, passed down to her children. The piety of Zofia Papka likewise manifested itself in her deeply evangelical attitude of forgiveness, which Fr. C. Wyszy < ski noted in his biography of Fr. St. Papczy < ski. Insulted and beaten by her neighbor, Zofia forgave him the transgression, and by the example of her attitude she was able to calm down the impetuous young John who wished to avenge his mother. Her patience also had a beneficial influence over her husband—a man sometimes impetuous, even at times aggressive—whom she also managed to convince to forgive the offender. Young Papczy < ski grew up in a family circle where piety influenced concrete choices and attitudes of life. The history of young John’s “academic career” is also filled with signs of Divine Providence. He was sent to school at about the age of seven, quickly stopped studying, because of the inability to cope with their simplest demands. He returned home humiliated and was sent to tend sheep. However, during the following year something happened that totally changed his disposition toward studies. Father Papczy < ski’s biographers attribute this to a particular intervention of Our Lady to whom he turned for help in prayer. Unbeknown to his parents, he returned to school where he learned the entire alphabet in just a couple of hours. In the course of three years he successfully completed the elementary school program and started the high school course, unexpectedly he fell into a state of distaste for studies and returned to tending sheep. Father Papczy < ski’s childhood shows a struggle between God’s grace and the instability of his character. His departures and returns, his spells of apathy and enthusiasm, decisions to flee and then to come back, were all intertwined in a truly dramatic story. A gifted student twice returned to tend sheep, after a time of reflec- tion, he undertook a new attempt. John came through those interruptions so well formed, that at the age of 15 he left his family home to continue his education in Jaros = aw and Lvov, several hundred kilometers distant from his native Podegrodzie, where the school did not offer possible advancement. Overcoming inner trials, he now had to give his full attention to matters out of his control. Twice he became seriously ill. He had to leave colleges in Podoliniec and Lvov either because of advancing epidemics or war hostilities. He also had to earn his living by tutoring. These struggles within himself and the outward difficulties had an inestimable value for the future Founder of the Marians. They formed him into a man of faith and trust, who owed everything to the grace of God, but who also was an uncom- promising man, not shrinking before the most difficult of challenges. Mansueto Leporini—Fr. Papczy < ski’s first biographer—summed it all up in a generic but definitive statement, that he declared “to place all hope only in Divine Providence.” Biography of Fr. Stanislaus Papczy < ski 75