Simplicity and modest living conditions, but also warmth of the home hearth, mutual help, sacrifice, deep faith, sustained hope, these are the values that made up the atmosphere of the Wojtyła family life. The life of the family consisted, as it usually does, of moments of joy and sorrow. Despite the difficulties and the drama of the departure of his loved ones, Karol Wojtyla went through life with the strength of hope that he was very much “in God’s hands” and that he would develop the good that his loved ones had passed on to him.
“The little prince”
Karol remembered his mother mainly from the period when she was ill. She used to go to the doctors then lie in bed, exhausted by illness. She probably suffered from heart and kidney disease. Maybe she had a congenital heart disease… What Karol could not remember, witnesses, neighbours remembered.
Halina Szczepańska recalled how Edmund, the elder son of the Wojtylas (born in 1906), helped his mother to carry the pram up the winding stairs from the first floor, with Karol inside. (Born in 1920, he was called “Lolek” as a diminutive.)
What a joy in the family. Mrs. Wojtyła carried the pram with the child to our yard (…). There was some greenery in front of our tenement (…) There was a well in the middle. So Mrs. Wojtyła would bring the child, sit by the well and I would go out to the porch. Very often she asked me to come down and look after Lolek, because she had to take care of dinner or go out for errands. Then I would come down and wheel her son in his pram.
Halina watched in awe as fourteen-year-old Edmund devotedly helped his mother with his little brother.
Mother would constantly send him for nappies, a bottle, clothes. Poor Edmund was always running upstairs, I felt sorry for him. At the time, I thought – what will this little baby grow up to be? They jump around him like a prince.
The neighbour’s memory is, above all, an image of a loving family. The simplicity and warmth of their mutual relations created an atmosphere that little Lolek breathed.
The high price of a dream fulfilled
Emilia Wojtyła wanted one of her two sons to be a doctor and the other one a priest. It was quite an exaggerated dream for those times, although realistic. It required the couple to make considerable sacrifices in order to give their sons a sound education. It was not easy… the family lived on a single wage. In 1924. Edmund began six-year medical studies at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. The tuition fees were paid in instalments.
A few years later, Emilia’s condition deteriorated to such an extent that her husband decided to take early military retirement. He had to take care of the house, his sick wife and youngest son.
Zofia Pukło also helped to run the household, regularly visiting the Wojtyla family. Emilia did not leave the house for the last months. One of her neighbours, Maria Kaczorowa, recalled that “on sunny days she was put out in a deckchair on the balcony. She was busy sewing or mending…”.
Emilia did not live to see Edmund graduate from medical school. She died in April 1929, and Edmund’s medical promotion took place a year later, in May 1930. Not long afterwards, in 1932, the young doctor Wojtyla died from an infectious disease. On 1 November 1946 Karol was ordained a priest by Archbishop Stefan Sapieha. Emilia’s dream that one son would be a doctor and the other one a priest came true…
We can guess that the last months of her life, when she was getting weaker and weaker, were filled with the prayer of entrusting her husband and sons to God. The prayer of trust of a person powerless in the face of an inexorable fate is powerful.
Longing
Few memories of his mother remained in Karol’s memory, but he thought of her with a great longing. It is significant that he addressed Mrs Maria Kotlarczykowa, Mieczysław’s mother, and Aleksandra Kydryńska, Juliusz’s mother, i.e. Karol’s friends, by saying ‘mamusia’ (mummy). “He was clearly looking for maternal affection…”. This is expressed in one of his youthful lyrics, entitled “Totus Tuus”.
[…]“I know already, mother, I know, you say – do not finish –
I am not finishing, my mother. I’m just going to hug
the spring days, the memories, your motherly breasts, and tenderly, and tenderly –and in that way you will be close again, close by my side”.(Translation of AD)
Serenity and inner discipline
For Lolek, the loss of his mother and brother were painful experiences, leaving a “mark of orphan loneliness”. The future Pope’s childhood should not be seen only in its “harsh, dramatic dimensions. As a schoolboy he was constantly being looked after by his father, a man of great serenity and at the same time inner discipline”. These two qualities he inherited from his father, i.e. serenity and inner discipline, and both were connected, and built on the foundation of a faith marked by suffering, a faith put to the test.
“Sufficient for a day is its own evil” (Mt 6:34), Jesus taught, instructing us to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness”, starting with ourselves. The words of the Gospel can be applied to the attitude of the father (Karol Wojtyla senior) and his relationship with his younger son (Lolek), when they remained alone, spending much time together. The father taught his son to go on through life despite everything, to enjoy every day, to shape the good, not to lose, but to develop serenity and inner discipline.
John Paul II referred to the figure of the father on many occasions. In an interview with André Frossard, he confessed that his father’s spiritual life, after the loss of his wife and elder son, “deepened enormously”. In the Pope’s confession, which I will quote here, every phrase and every word is important:
I looked closely at his life, I saw how he knew how to make demands of himself, I saw how he knelt to pray. That was the most important thing in those years, […]. A father who knew how to make demands of himself, in a sense no longer had to make demands of his son. I looked up to him, and I learned that you have to make demands of yourself, and that you have to make an effort to fulfil your own duties.
I think that the influence of the father on his son Karol should not be linked mainly to religiousness and a life of prayer, but above all to an existential attitude. Faith was the strength to rise from a difficult situation and to face the rest of his life. It was the strength to turn the dramas of the past into a path towards the future. Not to “celebrate” the wounds, but to be able to enjoy life in spite of them, to enjoy life as it is, creating good around.
“You must make demands of yourselves…”
The words from a meditation given by the Pope during the “Appeal of Jasna Gora” (18.06.1983) also come to my mind. John Paul II was explaining to young people what he meant by “to watch”. He said that it meant being a man of conscience, working out the good within oneself, overcoming evil and doubt… It was in this context that a significant sentence was said: “You must make demands of yourselves, even if others do not make demands of you”. When I examined a copy of the manuscript of this reflection, I was amazed to find that there were no deletions, no corrections, no additions in the text. John Paul II wrote this reflection under the dictates of his heart, from his own experience, his deep conviction, which he derived… also from his family home, from the example of his father.
The sentence “You must make demands of yourselves, even if others do not make demands of you” connects – in my opinion – with the memory of his father and the Pope’s confession: “I looked up to him, I learned that you have to make demands of yourself…”.
Man lives by hope
John Paul II is right when, during the aforementioned reflection, he added that what man will be like depends on many things: what vision of man we shape and carry in ourselves, what goals and norms we set for ourselves.
Karol Wojtyla had many reasons to break down. After all, he also lost his father in 1941, when he was twenty years old. He was left alone during the ongoing Nazi occupation. And yet he went on with his life, pursuing his priestly vocation and at the same time his mother’s dream, the ideal of serving people, which also inspired his brother Edmund, and the example of his father, his serenity and inner discipline. All this confirms and explains the words spoken during the “Appeal” to young people in 1983: “Man cannot remain without a way out”. Christian faith and hope indicate that there is always a way out, and that it is sometimes necessary to look for it.
It would seem that for John Paul II the memory of family life was connected above all with the dramas of the loss of loved ones. However, despite these dramas, it was also a huge inspiration and probably had an impact on his attitude and teaching on the role of the family.
The example of the Wojtyła family can also inspire today, when there is no shortage of families marked by suffering and dramas of various kinds. It can inspire to create good and it can inspire hope. “Man cannot remain without a way out”. There is always a better tomorrow, a way out of a difficult situation. Everything that represents value is put to the test: it costs because it requires effort. It is always worth giving yourself a chance and opening the door to the future.
Andrzej Dobrzyński