Like the fathers of the desert

When they ask me: how did you understand your vocation? Well, thanks to Hitler. There is a lot of talk about vocation, as if it were only a drastic choice, said Father Tomáš Špidlík, (photo) and not simply welcoming what God disposes for us through the events of life, even those that do not seem at all illuminated by a divine light . Špidlík was born a hundred years ago in Boskowice, Moravia. In 1939 his land had been occupied by the Nazis, the universities were closed. He, who loved to study, did hard labor for the Germans. It had been sad on Christmas Eve. "With the father and mother we ate a piece of sweet bread with coffee and milk, speechless.

I had managed to avoid the Nazi concentration camp, but my life seemed broken. There was no hope for my university studies and for the future there was only one possibility: forced labor outside the homeland.
Not to think about it, I spent the next few days skating wildly.
On the last day my mother told me: "Go to church!". I obeyed more out of desperation than out of devotion. And when the parish priest invited the people to sing the Te Deum to thank the Lord for the goods received during the year, I was stunned: should I thank God for what had happened to me? After a hesitation I did it ... ".

The holidays pass, a school friend comes to visit him. He tells him that he decided to join the Jesuits, because only they had gymnasiums where he could study mathematics. "Take me to Velehrad, where the college is." 150 kilometers by bike.
Tomas is waiting outside for his friend's interview to end. It arrives noon.
A tall father with white hair approaches him: are you a student? Yes. Did you come here with a friend? Yup.
Do you want to go to lunch? Yes. He was full of hunger, that yes. Become a Jesuit. That yes follows an impressive life for studies, writings, academic and international awards.

It is he who inspires one of the most ecumenical acts of John Paul II, the mosaics of the Redemptoris Mater chapel in the Vatican, a symbol of the union between East and West, between Byzantine iconography and Western art, a masterpiece of great theology. He preaches the spiritual exercises in the Curia in 1995; in 1999 Pope Woytyjla made him a cardinal; on his death, on April 16, 2010, the body was blessed in St. Peter's by Benedict XVI; he is buried in the sanctuary of Velehrad, in Cekia. Father Špidlík transformed patristic and oriental spiritual theology, of which he was the greatest connoisseur in the world, into a vital theological vision, deeply embodied in real life.

He knew how to communicate it in a simple, direct, full of spirit, with the style of the desert fathers and eastern starets. He transmitted joy, friendship, relationship: the true theology, the one he lived. Everything was born from an act of obedience, from a yes full of hunger, from the reading of one's own history with the eyes of God. Who, if we look closely, also uses evil. Even Hitler.

Flaminia Morandi
January 2020