Page 29 - Priorities #66- Winter 2017

He cautions against the mythologizing of monastic life. It’s difficult, he says. “You are not hand-picked by God so you fit together perfectly,” he explains. “You have to work on it.”
Now in fragile health, Father Pius is reflective about his choices, the challenges of living in commu- nity, and the state of the world.
He has no easy answers about the future of Priory once the monks are gone. “That’s the great unknown,” he says.
He cautions against the mythologizing of monas- tic life. It’s difficult, he says. “You are not hand-picked by God so you fit together perfectly,” he explains. “You have to work on it. That’s your challenge, be- cause that’s the ideal and the idea you represent to- ward others.”
And he reminds us it’s not just monks who have to learn to get along. “That’s what human society is,” he says. “You can see today that we are unhappy be- cause we cannot live together. At so, at least compas- sion, gratitude, that was my response. You try to do what little you can to help people.”
Even today, when he finds himself troubled by the state of the world, or by the persistent gap between rich and poor, he looks for what he calls the “human element,” those moments of connection and compas- sion that can always be found, no matter how difficult or bleak the circumstances.
“I learned that during the war,” he says.
He remembers when his family lived on the front line and Russian soldiers regularly entered their home to take food or find warmth. “They didn’t burn down our houses,” Pius concedes, “And they would cry when you mentioned their children. You’d say, “Do you have a baby?” and they would show you photographs.”
Then there was the Russian child soldier who’d lost both his parents in the war. “He must have been my age,” Pius says, “Fourteen. And he discovered my sister and myself, and my mother (my father was away in the military), and he needed company. He kept coming. And Mother gave him food. Mother’s cooking was better than the military’s cooking. He had nobody. He was just a kid.”
The family attempted to communicate with him despite the language barrier. Father Pius remembers how the boy’s machine gun scared his mother. “In Hungarian, and in sign language, she said, ‘Put down that damn thing!’ And the boy obeyed.”
Now, after almost two hours of talking, Father Pius is growing tired, and the visiting nurse is coming soon to pay him a visit. But he smiles as he shares one more detail about the Russian boy from over seventy years ago.
“One time he wanted to give me a souvenir. So he opened his pack and gave me a bullet.” He laughs quietly, remembering.
“I’ll never forget Nikolai,” he says.
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