MISSIONARY IN SUFFERING

 

One example of a not so ordinary man, is the newly beatified JAN HAVLIK, a seminarian of the Congregation of the Mission.  During the Angelus on September 1, Pope Francis called for a round of applause highlighting the steadfastness in the faith of this young man.

Bl.Ján was born in 1928 in Vlékovany near Skalica (now Dubovce) Slovakia, into the family of  poor worker, Karol Havlík and his wife Justina née Pollékova. In his handwritten curriculum vitae, we read, “Because I wanted to continue my studies, for two years I attended the Civic School in Holic, to which I walked 16 kilometers (almost 10 miles) each day. After two years, I began to attend the Junior High School in Skalica, traveling 36 kilometers  (22 miles) every day by bicycle.”

 Ján grew up in times of great economic crisis and coming into adulthood in the atmosphere of World War II. In 1943 he went to Banska Bystrica and entered the Apostolic School (“minor seminary”) of the Congregation of the Missions of Saint Vincent de Paul, while at the same time completing his high school studies. After the war, the political regime was changing radically. “The victorious February 1948,” as it was called, actually meant the advent of communist totalitarianism and the beginning of an open struggle against the Church.

On 29 October 1951, he was arrested along with the other seminarians of the Congregation in Nitra. The terrifying State Police interrogated and tortured him for 16 months, leaving him hungry and cold. After his trial, which lasted from February 3-5, he was sentenced to ten years in prison.  After the trail he said to his mother: “Don’t cry, mother. We wanted to offer God the sacrifice of the altar, but now we will offer our suffering and our very lives instead of the Blessed Sacrament.”

At the end of February 1953, Ján Havlík was escorted to the Jachymov lager as a miner in the uranium mine. It is in this atmosphere of fatigue and suffering that he discovered that, if he cannot be a priest, he can be a missionary.

To his close friend Anton Srholec he said, “I feel like I am on a mission. No missionary could choose a better and more difficult mission site.”

 He underwent a second trial in 1959 and another year was added to his sentence. Even in prison, he was interrogated, mistreated, tortured, and left without food and in the cold, yet he always behaved valiantly.

 In August 1961, Ján fainted at his workplace. The diagnosis in the infirmary was, “The patient’s condition requires immediate hospitalization.” When he was released from prison, he was sent home as a terminally ill invalid.

Only a wreck remained of the young man who had once been as strong as a tree. However, until the Lord called him to Himself, he still made time to describe his spiritual experience, thoughts, and prayers on paper in two small  notebooks: “The Way of the Cross of Little Souls” and “Diary.” 

These writings are important because they allow us to discover his personal conversations with God.

In spite of everything, Ján had not drunk his cup of bitterness to the bottom. When the sound of the ambulance spread through the village, everyone knew that Ján was being rushed to the hospital in Skalica.

On his name day, the feast day of St. John the Evangelist, December 27, 1965,  Ján died on the streets of Skalica. He had not yet turned thirty-eight. In the last few weeks, he perceived ever more the value of his sacrifice, as is clear from his writings: “Today, the altar of sacrifice is my sickbed and my decaying body.”

Almost fifty-eight years later, the Church acknowledged his extraordinary stature as a martyr of the faith by declaring Ján Havlík blessed. This brave young man acknowledged and welcomed the missionary opportunity amid the circumstances in which he unwillingly found himself.