Father Miasik Maciel Tomasz, a Polish Comboni missionary, talks to us about his vocational journey and his missionary experience.
I come from a Catholic family of peasant origins living on the outskirts of Rzeszów (Poland), the capital of my region, which borders Slovakia and Ukraine. My childhood and adolescence were marked by the end of the transition from communism to a democratic system. I was baptised a few weeks after birth, and from childhood I received a Christian education within my family.
Along with my two younger brothers, I learned the basic prayers from my mother. For as long as I can remember, my family regularly attended Sunday and holyday Masses at my parish. They also bought us books with Bible stories that I enjoyed reading. At 10, I became an altar boy and later a reader.
Gradually, I came to a deeper understanding of the faith and the person of Jesus. My love for God and for the Church and my spirit of service also grew within me. Adolescence brought with it some crises of faith and of my relationship with God.
Overcoming them, however, led me to renew and strengthen my relationship with Him in a profound experience of His paternal love that filled my heart. For this reason, I became involved in the youth groups of my parish and school. Through prayer, daily meditation on the Word, and encounters with people of faith, a strong desire was born within me to share this transforming experience of God with those who did not know Him. Even though I was still in middle school, this desire soon blossomed into the decision to dedicate my life to Him.
My discernment on the concrete form in which to consecrate myself to the service of God and His Kingdom began to take shape. First, the desire to become a priest; then, to also be a religious; and, finally, a missionary. “You will leave for the missions. You have the same gaze when you hear a missionary testimony as a friend of mine who later took that step.” These words marked my journey. A priest friend of mine addressed them to me after we had listened to the words of a Franciscan from Lima, Peru.
It was during that period that I first encountered the Comboni Missionaries. They came to my parish to do missionary outreach, and I felt that with them I could fulfil my vocation. My final decision came after reading a short biography of Saint Daniel Comboni. I told myself, “If I have to be a missionary, I want to be one like him, following his charism.”
I was 18 years old and a semester away from finishing high school when I attended my first vocations meeting. The vocations director dispelled my doubts about whether my health would allow me to work as a missionary. Once I finished high school, I began my formation with the Comboni Missionaries.
I spent three years in the postulancy in Warsaw, in the only Comboni community then existing in Poland. Later, along with four other companions, we went to Italy for the two-year novitiate. It wasn’t just a time to develop my religious consecration, but also to learn to live in a community with people of diverse origins and in a country with a culture different from my own. After my first vows, I was sent to the scholasticate in Lima to continue my missionary formation.
The cultural challenges, theological studies, and pastoral work sometimes brought me great satisfaction, but at other times they challenged my religious mindset, my vision of faith, the Church, and mission. The summer missions gave me particular joy.
For three years in a row, I spent two months with two other companions in an indigenous community in the Peruvian central forest, where I felt my missionary dreams were gradually coming true. At the end of my scholasticate, and before my perpetual vows, I asked to spend my year of missionary service in the new Comboni community of Pangoa, on the banks of the Amazon River, working with the indigenous Nomatiguengas people.
This experience of forming a missionary community, where Peruvians, Mexicans, Italians, and Poles lived together, marked my Comboni life, gave the final impetus, and in some ways sealed my decision to definitively consecrate myself as a missionary according to the charism of Saint Daniel Comboni.
I was unable to fulfil my desire to continue the mission of first evangelization in Peru after my priestly ordination. I had to accept my superiors’ decision and remain in Poland for several years, working as a missionary animator, vocations promoter, and trainer of young postulants.
At first, it was very difficult for me to undertake that kind of service to the Mission, which entailed a commitment to my country and the postponement of my desire to work in direct pastoral ministry. Those were very fruitful years, especially from a vocational perspective. However, later I realized that, although we had no new postulants in that decade, many vocations of Comboni lay missionaries flourished, and many people supported the missions by helping us in various ways.
I have been back in the Peruvian Amazon for five years now. Together with two other Comboni missionaries, we are in charge of the parish of Pangoa. It is a great joy for me to be able to return to this mission after such a long time. I am reunited with many people I met when I was a seminarian.
What brings me greatest joy is seeing the people I’ve accompanied on their journey of faith and human growth, as Christians and missionaries, and seeing that they’ve responded to God’s grace and are bearing abundant fruit. I’m happy to have been able to accompany them on their journey of Christian initiation and growth in faith, not only on a personal level, but also as families, because I’ve accompanied many couples in their marriage preparation, whose unions I’ve also blessed.
The most difficult moments come when you have to leave a country after living in a place for many years and having built beautiful relationships, friendships, and somehow begun to put down roots. I’m referring to my first experience, when I had to leave Peru after almost six years there.
But also when I had to leave Poland to return to Peruvian soil after almost 11 years in the community of Krakow. Although each change has entailed a new, rather rapid adaptation, I sense the danger lies in not wanting to put down roots in a place so as not to suffer another uprooting later.
After so many years spent on this missionary journey, I can’t imagine any other way of life. If I could go back in time and have to choose again, I would make the same decision. I feel I have made this lifestyle my own, and it is now part of my deepest identity, both Christian and religious, priestly and missionary.
With its lights and shadows, I have experienced different facets of my Comboni missionary life, from missionary animation to vocation promotion and formation, and to the direct pastoral ministry in which I currently work. Everything has enriched me as a person and as a missionary.
