Spirituality of the Religious Life According to St. Stanislaus Papczyński 120 life. Nonetheless, it is easy to notice that the spirituality of the religious life in Papczyński’s understanding is rooted in a love of God the Father, the Giver of all good things, as well as in man’s loving response, manifested in discerning and fulfilling God’s will in the manner of Christ. Thanks to this, God the Father is truly glorified, while man – also following the example of Christ – is going to the house of the Father, where he will gaze at His loving countenance. In the context of the Polish theology of the 17th century, the fact that the image of God the Father as a harsh and avenging judge is absent from the discussed documents is quite amazing. AsM. Brzozowski remarked, it was characteristic of the Baroque period to present God in two ways. On the one hand, as the harsh and avenging God of the Old Testament, a concept which was to be linked to the idea of the absolute power of that time. On the other hand, we find an understanding and forgiving God who approves of the world and embraces it with His unlimited fatherly love, which provided grounds for the democratic forms of the regime.29 The works of the Marian Founder do not depict God as a judge. The “true Judge,” who “will come to judge the living and the dead,” is Jesus Christ, “the Son of the true God.” Before Him, as before the supreme Judge, says Papczyński, “each of us has to appear twice […] at first in the individual judgment” and then “in the general judgment, which Christ the Lord shall arrange […] when the world would be coming to an end and totally destroyed.”30 The judgment is depicted as harsh and the Judge as avenging only sometimes, but we shall not forget the fact that Papczyński tried to mitigate the austerity of these descriptions. Perhaps, it is in connection to the then concept of God as a harsh and avenging judge that Papczyński writes in one of his meditations: “Realize that this happens so that you, being burdened with evil deeds, do not despise the remedy of penance because you consider God as an excessively severe Judge. For the truth is that he mercifully calls everyone 29 Cf. M. Brzozowski, Kulturowe i historyczne uwarunkowania kaznodziejstwa Tomasza Młodzianowskiego, Lublin 1988, p. 219. 30 IC, First Sunday of Advent, BHC, pt. 1, Daily Meditations, Wednesday night, pt. 1.
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