REV. JACEK CHODZYNSKI, OCD -RESIDENT

I was born in Cracow, Poland, on November 12, 1962. My parents were Thaddeus and Leokadia. My Dad was an economist and Mom a teacher. I write, “was”, because both of them were called by God from this life several years ago, and I hope that the Good Lord has prepared a place for them in his Heavenly Kingdom. I have one sister, Dorothy, and a brother-in-law, Mark. They still live and work in Cracow. My childhood home was very close to the Discalced Carmelite Fathers’ Monastery/Seminary on Rakowicka Street. Perhaps that is why, when I was 7 years old, my Dad brought me to their Church to sign me up as an altar boy. I can say, then, that I have known the Discalced Carmelites from my childhood, and – perhaps – my vocation to the Religious Life and Priesthood began back then. I have known our Pastor here at Saint Camillus, Fr. Waclaw Lech, OCD, from that time (about 1970), in which he was still a seminarian in Cracow.

I attended both grade and high school in Cracow. On June 19, 1981, I entered the Carmelite Novitiate in Czerna, a village near Cracow. I received the Carmelite habit on July 11, 1981, and professed my first Religious Vows on July 11, 1982, also in Czerna. From August 1982 until August 1984, I studied philosophy at the Carmelite Seminary in Poznan. Then I went to the Carmelite Seminary in Cracow to study theology. On June 1, 1988, I was Ordained to the Priesthood in Czerna by Bishop Casimir Gorni. After my Ordination, I was assigned to our Monastery in Zawoja for two years, then to Czerna for three years. In June of 1993, I was chosen to be Provincial Bursar, a post which I held for 15 years. I arrived in Chicago on June 29, 2008, to help here at the Parish of Saint Camillus.