Today he shares with us and with our audience this letter that his father wrote to him to accompany him on the day of his ordination as a deacon on his way to becoming a priest.
His ordination as a deacon took place in the midst of the coronavirus wave and Braňo Borovský was not able to accompany his son in person. Braňo knows that the testimony of his father in communist Czechoslovakia enriches those who know him and his words can help many new young people who feel the call of God's vocation.
My dear son Branislav:
On December 12, 2020, 37 years have passed since I was imprisoned in the Polish city Nowy Sacz. At that time I was a 20-year-old university student. I was imprisoned for smuggling religious literature along with two other friends.. We were smuggling from Poland to Czechoslovakia. Those were the years of the communist regime when it was forbidden to buy this kind of literature in bookstores.
My imprisonment in Poland coincided with the time of martial law. Therefore, my colleagues and I were threatened with a prison sentence ranging from 15 to 20 years. During the investigations, the military investigators beat, threatened and humiliated us in many ways. I spent three months alone in a cell measuring 2 by 3 square meters. During the day and night I had a light always on in the cell. I was not allowed to sleep or rest. I could not speak out loud. I had to be silent at all times. In the cell the temperature was sometimes extremely cold and at other times it was unbearably hot. On one occasion, during the night, a completely drunk soldier pointed his pistol at me: he was the prison warden and intended to kill me. He wanted to take revenge on me, because he claimed that because he had to watch over me he could not go on vacation.
After a few months I was deported to the largest prison in Poland, which was located in the city of Tarnov. The humiliations and beatings continued. I was in prison with a psychically deranged prisoner, a fighter by profession, who collaborated with the communist policemen: he attacked us prisoners for no reason, beat us and terrorized us.
I was psychically shattered to the point that I began to spin my head around, wondering if my life had any meaning. I came to consider that, given the opportunity, I would end my life.....
...It was as if a thick rope, made up of many fine threads, gradually began to unravel. until there was only one last thread holding my life together. That last thread was faith in God. I had given up hope that my situation would change. And yet, God knew he had it all in his hands. Although I understood this reality - that God is in all these events - only after many years... At that time I felt a great abandonment, I thought that God had hidden himself somewhere.. But, once again, after many years I understood that at that time the exact opposite was true: I have never been so close to God as I was then.
Prior to my incarceration I had seriously thought about the possibility of having priestly vocation. However, the communists tore this vocation from my heart. I thought that the priesthood had also come to an end in my life. But - as the years have gone by - I see it in a different light.
It was in God's plan for me to experience the fall of the communist regime and the recovery of civil and religious liberties.
It was in God's plans for me to marry your mother and for God to bless us with eight children.
Your vocation was also in God's plans. This Saturday, November 21, 2020 you will receive the diaconate along with other of your friends on your path to the priesthood.
Although the situation of the pandemic caused by the coronavirus does not allow us to physically participate together in this important moment for you and all our family, I realize that God in his providence has everything firmly in his hands.
I want to assure you that on the day you receive the grace of the diaconate we all commend you even more especially and we thank God for your vocation.
I end with my favorite Latin phrase: Gutta cavat lapidem non vi sed seape cadendo. The drop makes the hole in the rock not by its strength, but by its constancy.
In Bratislava, November 17, 2020, anniversary of the Velvet Revolution.
You can also read more of the testimony of Braňo Borovský and others like him, collected by Religión en Libertad magazine in 2011 in the article. "Prepare yourself, and prepare your children, for a communist regime: learn from this documentary."
