Blessed Stanislaus Papczynski Father and Guide of the Marian Vocation

200 Ryszard Górowski, MIC Italy, Rome, General Promoter of the Missions The fruits of the beatifi cation are the discovery of Fr. Stanislaus’s spiritual legacy and a new fascination with his life as the model to follow in striving for holiness. It seems to me that Father Stanislaus—now a Blessed— says to us today: “I have now been elevated to the altars, and where are you, what are you?” If we do not regard our Founder as a father, then we are orphans… If we don’t think of him as our father, then we may sometimes see him as some sort of kind-hearted grandfather indulging and spoiling his grandsons. Father Papczyński is nothing of the sort. He is a father who loves but also chastises, and who can also make someone fall off the ladder, even in the literal sense [of the phrase]… I thought that the time after the beatifi cation would be something like a vocation boom for us; instead came the purge in the form of decreasing vocations, especially in Poland. It was also related to the crisis of certain confreres and the departures from our community of others, which happened in the year of our Founder’s beatifi cation, no less. I think that in his role as a father who loves but also chastises, Fr. Papczyński invites us to renew our religious life and our faithfulness to our vows. I believe that some special renewal must happen in our communal, and fraternal life, in every local community of our Congregation and that it must take the form of giving the gift of ourselves—and not only externally. For it is easy to give gifts externally to people that we meet and who may be at times quite taken up with those gifts. Instead, it is a matter of mutual gift-giving between confreres in a community. In this renewal, we ought to be more involved and not only communally, but also individually, especially through prayer, unceasing prayer for vocations, so that people who would come to us may also become heirs to our Blessed Founder’s patrimony. Wojciech Jasiski, MIC England, Fawley Court, House Superior and Delegate of the Provincial I’d like to say a few words on behalf of my confreres serving in England, particularly those of my own community and myself, since I did not have the opportunity to talk the matter over with the brothers from Ealing, because I learned about my coming to the General Convention in Rome at the last minute. I’m glad to be here and to witness all that happens here on behalf of our community in England. I believe this form of witnessing to be very important (more than the printed materials which will appear in the future) for me personally, and for the community beyond the English Channel. I noticed, and it is very important for

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