2023-04-29 01:58:00
April 28, 2023 / 6:58 p.m.
On the first day of his apostolic visit to Hungary, Pope Francis held a meeting with the bishops, priests, religious, consecrated women and pastoral workers who serve in the country. There, he heard the testimony of two priests —one of them a Greek Catholic—, a nun and a catechist.
First, Fr. Joseph Brenner, from the Diocese of Szombathely, and brother of the Blessed Martyr János Brenner, spoke.
In his words, the priest recalled that those who lived through the Second World War “were always faithful to the Church, we had to flee and finally suffered the persecution of communism for decades.”
Sons of Christian parents, he and his two brothers took up the priestly vocation. His brother János “was brutally murdered at the age of 26 by the atheist regime. His Holiness placed him in the ranks of the blessed in 2018, ”he recalled.
Fr. Brenner stressed that the priestly motto of his martyred brother is: “Everything contributes to the good for those who love God.”
“With unwavering faith and fidelity, we repeat the words of the Apostle Saint Peter: ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life,'” he concluded.
Sándor Kondás, Greek Catholic priest of the Eparchy of Miskolc, responsible for the study of the Greek Catholic Media Center in Hungary, also offered his testimony before Pope Francis.
“I thank God for being born Hungarian, a Greek-Catholic, and for having planted in me the seed of a priestly vocation,” he said.
Most of the Eastern Catholic Churches that answer to Rome, such as the Greek-Catholic, allow married men among their priests.
When recalling the beginnings of his priestly vocation, Fr. Kondás referred to his wife, with whom he experienced “the miracle of being able to say together and irrevocably: ‘Let us offer ourselves, each other and our whole lives, to Christ our God’”.
“After adopting a child in the seventh year of our marriage, we had four more children, the fifth with Down syndrome. The Lord helped us to accept their capacities and health conditions as they were in their divine scenario”, he valued.
Finally, he thanked God because “he made me understand that the success of the priestly ministry is not based on what I can do, but on emptying myself to abandon myself to Him.”
The testimonies of a nun and a catechist
Next, the Dominican religious Krisztina Hernády thanked the presence of Pope Francis in Hungary and focused her testimony on the question: “Why does one decide to become a religious in the 21st century?”
First of all, she recalled that in her childhood the desire to become a saint was born in her heart. “Less is not worth living for,” she said.
“But when I began to realize that God was calling me to a very specific path, I began to discuss with Jesus why he was calling me,” he recalled, since religious life “did not particularly excite me, at least at first.”
It was during a retreat run by the Jesuits that he discovered “the joy of being in a direct and personal relationship with God,” and at the same time “the conviction that everyone in the world should know this joy and the desire to work for it.” .
The young Dominican nun today lives and teaches in Hódmezövásárhely, in southern Hungary, along with six other sisters.
In that region, he explained, “the image of a God who loves us personally and cares for us has faded in the minds of the people during the trials of the last few centuries,” he lamented.
“As a consequence, we face physical poverty every day, and above all the spiritual poverty of the people,” he admitted. However, “in the hearts of people there is an openness to goodness and a search for truly pure answers.”
“My sisters and I work to be instruments of God through which we can show those who live here the joy of the Gospel,” he concluded.
The last testimony was that of a collaborator of the Catechesis Commission of the Hungarian Episcopal Conference, Dorina Pavelczak-Major, who greeted Pope Francis on behalf of the lay pastoral agents, ministers of the Liturgy of the Word, extraordinary ministers of Communion Eucharist, readers, acolytes and catechists.
“In our ministry we focus on deepening the faith of the people entrusted to us, preparing them for the dignified sanctification of Sunday, celebrating the Liturgy, practicing charity and promoting community self-management,” he specified.
In addition to the fields of Catholic education, they work in public educational institutions, “because there are many who await the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” he said. For this reason, he considered it important to “understand, touch the hearts of those who seek the ultimate truth, and introduce them to our mother Church.”
Aware that “there is no other way to remain in humanity than to follow Jesus Christ,” he stressed that “the authentic evangelizing ministry is also expressed by our presence in the life of Christian families, in dialogue with them.”
Finally, he thanked Pope Francis for the provisions in relation to evangelization, catechesis and social issues, which have been “of great help”, together with the renewal offered in the apostolic letter Antiquum ministerium, which establishes the ministry of the catechist.
“We give thanks because, like the apostles, we too can live and say with confidence that Jesus Christ is our future, that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life”, he concluded.
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