For the first 25 years of my life, I was not a priest. For those years and until now, I have listened to and have been catechized by many priests. They served as my confessors, ministers of the Eucharist and other sacraments, teachers, organizers, leaders, advisers and models. I remember all of them, but two priests were especially influential in my life. They were both associate pastors nearly at the same time in my native parish and were in their late thirties.
Fr. Joseph Posluszny was responsible for altar servers numbering 120 and Fr. Joseph Zajac took care of a youth group of approximately 200 youth. Each of these responsibilities would be sufficient for a full-time job alone, but each priest also taught religion classes and ministered at the parish.
Every year the altar servers participated in a 10-day retreat in scout’s camp. They helped decorate the church for Christmas, Easter and other occasions, assisted priests with visiting families after Christmas, prepared a Christmas play, special dinners, led a music group, played soccer, and participated many other activities.
Fr. Zajac coordinated youth groups and children in the formational religious movement named “Light and Life.” Every Thursday evening, there was a Mass celebrated for young people with over 200 participants. The youth had a meeting once a week and a two-week retreat once a year in the mountains, as well as some other gatherings.
Both priests were crucial to my and other students’ religious and spiritual growth, especially during our high school. This was a time of making crucial life decisions for me and my classmates.
Fr. Posluszny has now been retired for 10 years and lives in a house in my native town. I have had an opportunity to visit him once or twice a year. Fr. Zajac lives in a retirement home for priests some 60 miles away in another diocese, and I managed to visit him for the first time five years ago. This summer some of his former students, including myself, organized a reunion to see him. We invited him to a restaurant where we prayed and recalled stories from our past. He was very grateful for our visit to him.
Why am I sharing all this? Such an active youth ministry program was not in every parish and currently is not even in my native parish. I do not want to boast but to give a witness to the hard work of the priests and lay people who ministered to me and with me when I was a child and a young man. I have no hesitation in admitting that I was really very lucky in spending those years with the church and for the church. My church in Konin was for me a midwife and a mother feeding me with the milk of the Gospel and the food of truth. I was blessed to be in circles of young people who did not used a foul language, did not drink alcohol, did not smoke cigarettes, did not take drugs. Although many of us fell in love in high school and had a boyfriend or girlfriend, we lived in chastity. All these values were supported and nourished by these priests and many lay mature volunteers and couples. All of us belonged to this or another formational group and were very engaged in parish life. It is no surprise then that these years had a long-lasting and profound impact on our lives.
Now, as an adult, we feel a strong gratitude to these two priests and other priests as well. We not only remember them, pray for them, but also try to visit them. In this way we show them how much we value their dedication to our upbringing and being both religious educators and witnesses to the faith. The author of the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us of this attitude that should be part of the life experience of all people, not only Christians: “Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith” (Heb. 13:7).
Please remember, pray for, and possibly visit the priests and the people who positively impacted your life and served you.
Fr. Mark Jurzyk
