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| Baptizing an infant (Adam Bujak) |
On this day in 1948, Father Wojtyła arrived at his first parish in Niegowić, Poland. Here the
future Pope found himself fifteen miles east of Krakow, at the Church of the
Assumption of Our Lady.
Upon reaching the parish boundaries, Saint John Paul II knelt
and kissed the ground, which is something that he learned from the story of St. John Vianney. Wojtyła continued to perform this gesture as he encountered new places
throughout his life.
The parishioners he served were poor farmers, and Fr. Wojtyła himself had no electricity or
running water. He lived with few and well-worn belongings, which garnered respect from the community he served. Parishioners provided some material
things for him, but he was known to give even those things away to others in
need.
As assistant pastor, the great saint was asked to provide
religious education to young children. He often celebrated Mass, and like John
Vianney, he saw himself as a "prisoner of the confessional." According to papal
historian George Weigel, St. John Paul II understood the confessional to be the
place "where priests encountered their people in the depths of their humanity,
helping the person on the other side of the confessional screen to enter more
deeply into the Christian drama of his or her own unique life. If priests
stopped doing this, they’d become office managers or bureaucrats" (Witness to Hope, 92).
