By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — Who knows how far the influence of a comment may go? A Polish priest’s remark in a homily in 1935 that “It’s not difficult to be a saint” ended up affecting the thinking of Karol Wojtyla, the young man who would become St. John Paul II, a speaker told a Zoom meeting of the Institute of Catholic Theology (ICT), headquartered here at St. Thomas the Apostle Church.
The priest’s observation first changed the life of the Venerable Jan Tyranowski, an introverted Polish man born at the beginning of the twentieth century who was asked to become a Catholic youth leader and who passed on this outlook to Wojtyla, a member of his group, Simone Rizkallah in Southern California told the Zoom meeting on December 5.
Rizkallah’s background provided by the ICT says she has studied at the St. Albert the Great Center for Scholastic Studies in Norcia, Italy, at the Phoenix Institute at the International Theological Institute in Trumau, Austria, and at the Tertio Millennio Seminar in Krakow, Poland.
Introducing her as the speaker, ICT Director Eric Westby, Ph.D., said Rizkallah was in Poland last year, along with Catholic commentator George Weigel and others, studying the social teaching of St. John Paul.
Rizkallah said she hadn’t heard of Tyranowski before and was very interested to learn more about a man who had been a major influence on the future Pope. “John Paul II wouldn’t have become John Paul II without Jan Tyranowski,” she said.
Tyranowski lived during the Nazi occupation of Poland that caused concern among the clergy they might all be deported, so lay leaders would be needed to carry on the life of the Church in their absence.
“That’s fine and good to be involved in politics” in threatening times, she said, but is the power that changes the world politics or spirituality? Tyranowski understood that “a hidden life, a small life” changes the world, she said.
One hears about “the universal call to holiness,” Rizkallah said, but “I’m personally called” to this role as well. She said it’s fascinating to see people lined up for Confession, publicly showing “I’m a bad person” who needs reconciliation. Rizkallah said she has “a little bit of a bad temper…I have all these character flaws.”
Tyranowski took a vow as a lay celibate and prayed four hours a day, she said, adding that people don’t have to pray that much, but maybe an hour? This creates “an availability to God….
“We do know that the more ora, the better the labora,” Rizkallah said, citing the Latin words for the monastic practice of prayer and work.
Nazi leader Adolf Hitler said, “I’m going to crush the Church like I crush a frog,” causing the clergy to make alternate plans, she said, with Tyranowski as a youth mentor being “really…such a crucial part in continuing the Church” if it had to go underground.
The young Wojtyla was a charismatic personality who considered a career in acting but Tyranowski was awkward personally, with a background as an accountant and tailor, Rizkallah said, and the two of them didn’t immediately hit it off, but the future Pope was to see that his youth group’s leader “represented a new world that I did not yet know” for an interior life.
This was like Wojtyla’s being able to go through the wardrobe door into Narnia, Rizkallah said — a reference to the Christian allegorical adventures written by C.S. Lewis. Tyranowski wasn’t a gifted speaker but he certainly inspired a gifted speaker, the future John Paul II, she said.
Tyranowski held clandestine youth spirituality meetings in his apartment, Rizkallah said, adding that living in Nazi-occupied Poland “does make one mature quickly.” Tyranowski “was available to everyone in the group.”
An even more humble person played a key role in Wojtyla’s vocation to the priesthood, she said, “a little Polish woman” who signaled when the street was clear so he could go to secret seminary classes at the bishop’s residence. “He saw his fellow seminarians killed by Nazis,” Rizkallah said, so this woman was important for his safety.
Tyranowski lived to see Wojtyla ordained to the priesthood in 1946, but died a few months later, in 1947, from tuberculosis, perhaps cancer, and had had an arm amputated, she said. “He died holding a crucifix.”
Working In Mysterious Ways
Wojtyla spent much of his life under Communist control in Poland, where the Marxists had a say in the life of the Church, Rizkallah said, but they were mistaken about him. After rejecting six other possibilities Rome wanted to appoint as a cardinal, the Communists accepted Wojtyla because they thought, “We can easily control this guy,” she said.
As it turned out, the prelate who became Pope John Paul II is credited with being one of the major forces bringing about the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, along with President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
Wojtyla as a man easy to control by Marxists? A PBS Frontline article on “John Paul II & the Fall of Communism” said that Wojciech Jaruzelski, former head of the Polish Communist Party, “laughed ruefully and shook his head at this evaluation during a long, revealing afternoon we spent talking with him. He admitted that one of the great ironies of the regime he served was how much they had underestimated Wojtyla.”
“My Communist colleagues decided that the bishops ahead of Karol Wojtyla on the list of candidates were not good for the state, so they pushed Karol Wojtyla. The Holy Spirit works in mysterious ways,” the article quoted Jaruzelski.
Thus, the man who was to help end the iron grip of Communism over the Church and human liberty in Europe had been inspired by an awkward youth leader.
Rizkallah went on to comment on how the power of Christian families can change a civilization. The whole Roman Empire was converted “by happy Christian families,” she said — the women became converts, then the men, then pagans were converted by seeing these families.
Earlier in her talk, she said, “Christianity is spread by envy…‘I want it, let me in’.”
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