From the Spiritual Diary of a Young Curate: "The Shepherds Came for a pastoral visit"
When Christmas arrives, for many it is a time of beautiful family gatherings. In parishes, however, every priest knows that it also means the time of the pastoral visit. The pastoral visit, affectionately called the "Pastoral visit", is that period of the year when a priest turns into a wanderer. The presbytery becomes a stop along the route, and the main dwelling place of the pastor is the stairwell (in towns), the street (in villages), or the thresholds of successive homes. This is the pastoral visit: a time when, for several weeks, I knock from door to door, never quite knowing what awaits me behind them.
The pastoral visit is a peculiar rollercoaster of emotions. Some await the priest with joy, others hide in panic behind the curtain or the door, and all you can hear from behind it is "shhh, he'll go away in a minute", while still others suddenly remember that today, of all days, they must do some very important shopping at the discount store, because after all, eggs are on sale. And I do not blame them: it is not an everyday occurrence that a priest with an aspergillum and altar servers suddenly appears on the doorstep.
I always admire the remarkable phenomenon of this season: the pastoral visit is the only event in the year that makes the general cleaning in some homes reach the level of a complete renovation of the flat. Sometimes all that is missing is the renovation crew walking out of the building. I enter and immediately feel the freshness: the furniture gleams, the floor shines, and the air smells of detergents. I would not be surprised if some people varnished the parquet. Though there are also those wonderful places that have not been aired for several days, with the radiator turned up to "5". All out of concern, of course: so that the priest does not freeze in the flat, since he is coming in from outside, surely chilled to the bone. So you sit there in your coat and scarf, in a home where it is about 30 degrees. Not only do you get a conversation, you get a free sauna as well. What a life!
But this is only a cover. Entering, I see something more. The tense faces of the hosts: because "what will the priest say?", because "is everything arranged properly?", because "will the children know how to pray the Our Father?". And the children? They often look at me the way they look at a teacher during a surprise quiz, and nervously whisper to their parents: "Mum, is he going to ask questions?", "Is he going to check our notebooks?"
But the most spectacular reactions come from the four-legged residents of the homes. I do not know what dogs are told about priests, but their reception can be divided into three categories:
I sit down, look around the room, and feel how in some homes the tension reaches its peak. The hosts wait for what I will say, and I do not want this to be a mere formality. The pastoral visit should not be a "box ticked off the programme": it is a meeting. A real meeting. And that is my approach. Which is why the pastoral visit sometimes takes me rather a long while.
The tendencies vary. In one home the parents joyfully tell me about their children's successes, and in another someone receives me in silence, eyes lowered. There are places where the conversation flows very naturally: they ask me about life in the parish, they tell me about their own affairs. And there are also homes where complete silence reigns, as if the host feared that one word too many would make the pastoral visit last longer than it should. Once I took part in a conversation that looked like a game of "yes and no". Has this year been going well? "Yes." Is everything to your liking in our parish? "Yes." "And perhaps you would like to join one of the parish groups?" "No." I sensed that the pastoral visit at this gentleman's home had, in recent years, lasted five minutes at most. Prayer included. I decided I would give him the pastoral visit of a lifetime. In such moments my inner actor takes the stage and, as in the case of this gentleman, talks for a good 20 minutes. I think he remembered that pastoral visit for a long time. And who knows, maybe next year, out of boredom, remembering that "chatterbox" of a priest, he will actually want to talk?
But what moves me most are the moments when someone suddenly, without warning, begins to speak about something important. About difficulties, about loneliness, about a faith that once was but got lost somewhere. Or about not remembering when they last spoke with God. And then I know that I am here for something more than just sprinkling the flat with holy water and chatting about the weather and about how our ski jumpers are doing this year.
There are also homes where I walk up to the door, ring the bell, wait… and nothing. The door does not open. Maybe no one was home, or maybe… they simply did not want to? An elderly gentleman once admitted to me that for several years he had not opened the door to priests, because he was simply afraid: not of God, but of the conversation. "What would I say? That I've lost my way? That I don't know if I still believe?"
I also remember a family that received me for the first time in ten years. At the door, the mother said to me: "We didn't have the courage before, because lately things have been complicated between us and the Lord our God." I went in, blessed the home, we prayed, and I left a holy card on the table. I said only one sentence: "You don't have to be perfect to come back to God." I can still see their faces before my eyes… I understood then what great value this meeting has.
Sometimes, returning to the presbytery after a whole day of the pastoral visit, my heart full of human stories, I think to myself: "This is not just some 'parish duty'." Because it is something more. The pastoral visit is a reminder that faith does not take place only within the walls of the church. That Christ comes to people precisely in their homes, in the everyday mess, in the kitchen smelling of soup, in the living room where the Christmas tree stands, and children run barefoot across the carpet. In a conversation, in a glance, in a handshake at parting. In everything and everywhere.
And you know what? Sometimes God reveals himself most in those homes that are not perfectly prepared, where the children forgot to cross themselves, and the dog spent the entire visit trying to pull off my shoe. Because in those imperfect, ordinary moments there is something remarkably true. And if, along the way, I managed not to flood the carpet with holy water and no one asked me reproachfully, "Why do priests drive cars instead of riding a donkey like the Lord Jesus?", then it really was a good day.
The pastoral visit teaches me one thing: God comes to people in every situation, whether in a flat smelling of cake or in one where the dog has just stolen my aspergillum and a child proudly announces that "this man must be a full-time Santa".
Fr Adam Płonka
The pastoral visit is a peculiar rollercoaster of emotions. Some await the priest with joy, others hide in panic behind the curtain or the door, and all you can hear from behind it is "shhh, he'll go away in a minute", while still others suddenly remember that today, of all days, they must do some very important shopping at the discount store, because after all, eggs are on sale. And I do not blame them: it is not an everyday occurrence that a priest with an aspergillum and altar servers suddenly appears on the doorstep.
I always admire the remarkable phenomenon of this season: the pastoral visit is the only event in the year that makes the general cleaning in some homes reach the level of a complete renovation of the flat. Sometimes all that is missing is the renovation crew walking out of the building. I enter and immediately feel the freshness: the furniture gleams, the floor shines, and the air smells of detergents. I would not be surprised if some people varnished the parquet. Though there are also those wonderful places that have not been aired for several days, with the radiator turned up to "5". All out of concern, of course: so that the priest does not freeze in the flat, since he is coming in from outside, surely chilled to the bone. So you sit there in your coat and scarf, in a home where it is about 30 degrees. Not only do you get a conversation, you get a free sauna as well. What a life!
But this is only a cover. Entering, I see something more. The tense faces of the hosts: because "what will the priest say?", because "is everything arranged properly?", because "will the children know how to pray the Our Father?". And the children? They often look at me the way they look at a teacher during a surprise quiz, and nervously whisper to their parents: "Mum, is he going to ask questions?", "Is he going to check our notebooks?"
But the most spectacular reactions come from the four-legged residents of the homes. I do not know what dogs are told about priests, but their reception can be divided into three categories:
- "Oh, a new friend!" The animal immediately lands on my cassock, or sometimes under the cassock (treating it like a kennel), licking my face and wagging its tail so hard that at times it threatens to knock over the candle on the table (a true story! I took part in a situation where the tablecloth caught fire during a pastoral visit, because the host's little dog decided that the candle standing on the table was in its way).
- "Intruder! Alarm! Notify NATO!" Here comes the howling, the barking, and the chase after my trouser leg, and once it even happened that a dog treated me like… a fire hydrant.
- "I'd better pretend I'm not here." This type of dog hides under the table and pretends that if it does not look at me, then I cannot see it either. Quite like some members of the household.
I sit down, look around the room, and feel how in some homes the tension reaches its peak. The hosts wait for what I will say, and I do not want this to be a mere formality. The pastoral visit should not be a "box ticked off the programme": it is a meeting. A real meeting. And that is my approach. Which is why the pastoral visit sometimes takes me rather a long while.
The tendencies vary. In one home the parents joyfully tell me about their children's successes, and in another someone receives me in silence, eyes lowered. There are places where the conversation flows very naturally: they ask me about life in the parish, they tell me about their own affairs. And there are also homes where complete silence reigns, as if the host feared that one word too many would make the pastoral visit last longer than it should. Once I took part in a conversation that looked like a game of "yes and no". Has this year been going well? "Yes." Is everything to your liking in our parish? "Yes." "And perhaps you would like to join one of the parish groups?" "No." I sensed that the pastoral visit at this gentleman's home had, in recent years, lasted five minutes at most. Prayer included. I decided I would give him the pastoral visit of a lifetime. In such moments my inner actor takes the stage and, as in the case of this gentleman, talks for a good 20 minutes. I think he remembered that pastoral visit for a long time. And who knows, maybe next year, out of boredom, remembering that "chatterbox" of a priest, he will actually want to talk?
But what moves me most are the moments when someone suddenly, without warning, begins to speak about something important. About difficulties, about loneliness, about a faith that once was but got lost somewhere. Or about not remembering when they last spoke with God. And then I know that I am here for something more than just sprinkling the flat with holy water and chatting about the weather and about how our ski jumpers are doing this year.
There are also homes where I walk up to the door, ring the bell, wait… and nothing. The door does not open. Maybe no one was home, or maybe… they simply did not want to? An elderly gentleman once admitted to me that for several years he had not opened the door to priests, because he was simply afraid: not of God, but of the conversation. "What would I say? That I've lost my way? That I don't know if I still believe?"
I also remember a family that received me for the first time in ten years. At the door, the mother said to me: "We didn't have the courage before, because lately things have been complicated between us and the Lord our God." I went in, blessed the home, we prayed, and I left a holy card on the table. I said only one sentence: "You don't have to be perfect to come back to God." I can still see their faces before my eyes… I understood then what great value this meeting has.
Sometimes, returning to the presbytery after a whole day of the pastoral visit, my heart full of human stories, I think to myself: "This is not just some 'parish duty'." Because it is something more. The pastoral visit is a reminder that faith does not take place only within the walls of the church. That Christ comes to people precisely in their homes, in the everyday mess, in the kitchen smelling of soup, in the living room where the Christmas tree stands, and children run barefoot across the carpet. In a conversation, in a glance, in a handshake at parting. In everything and everywhere.
And you know what? Sometimes God reveals himself most in those homes that are not perfectly prepared, where the children forgot to cross themselves, and the dog spent the entire visit trying to pull off my shoe. Because in those imperfect, ordinary moments there is something remarkably true. And if, along the way, I managed not to flood the carpet with holy water and no one asked me reproachfully, "Why do priests drive cars instead of riding a donkey like the Lord Jesus?", then it really was a good day.
The pastoral visit teaches me one thing: God comes to people in every situation, whether in a flat smelling of cake or in one where the dog has just stolen my aspergillum and a child proudly announces that "this man must be a full-time Santa".
Fr Adam Płonka
