Portraits In Faith: Father Andrzej Bafeltowski Preview

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PRIESTHOOD FROM A WHEELCHAIR
"On my way to become the parish priest in the south of Ukraine, the Podolia region, I was driving in a car with two young Ukrainians. I felt tired so we changed drivers and I moved to the back seat. It was in the autumn, a time when tractors left mud from the fields on the road, and the car skidded. I did not remember anything else until I woke up in a hospital.
While in the hospital I did not feel any pain. At some point, I remembered I had money in my pocket and I wanted to get up and check but I couldn't move my hand. It was a very hard experience and I asked, ‘God, why is it like this?’ It was difficult.
At the beginning, I was unable to accept it, but I had hope that, despite everything, God would not abandon me. I thought I would stay in the hospital for one or two months and I would walk again, yet I knew that this was my experience-that of suffering. Before the accident I was a tough guy, very fit, and all of the sudden I had to rely on others.
Slowly, God became part of this experience-and it was needed-my descending just into humility. Praying helped me; reciting the Psalms. I was unable to read, to keep a book in my hands. Students from the seminary, clergymen, visited me in the hospital. Young seminarists were praying with me. The other passengers in the car with me, the ones from Ukraine, in the meanwhile entered the seminary. They were giving me hope. They said that I could be their confessor, even as I was laying in bed.
When I recovered, I returned to the seminary and I was a confessor for two years. At that time I was learning to use the wheelchair.
For sure, that kind of experience was the touch of God. The accident was for me a sign that God existed and that He was guiding me. Until then I was always the guy at the peak, at the top, a very proud person, egocentric. Perhaps it was what I needed-to be able to notice the needs of other people, the sick ones who were in the hospital with me, the handicapped."