Jan Ihnát

* 1950

  • "I would say, I'm kind of a convert. I had such a profound experience at a pilgrimage site when I was eighteen and my life has kind of changed since then. Like, I don't know, we have a lot of drinking alcohol back east, and I was like, 'I'd better not end up drinking like that.' I didn't drink alcohol at all for about twenty years. But then when I was free, like internally, because I saw something of the new life, I was afraid not to fall into these addictions. So that's a joke that's told, that what's the difference between a wedding in the East and a funeral? That there's one less drunk at a funeral. Or that if alcoholism were a religion, Eastern Slovakia would be a place of pilgrimage. So I've been sober for about 20 years. My idea was a holy parish priest of Aryanism. But then gradually I found out that the main thing is not 'not to do it or to do it', but the main thing is love, isn't it."

  • "I thought about it a lot and I concluded that it doesn't matter before God because, before God, small or big love applies. But I don't consider it as some do... I naively assumed that I had experience, that I knew life, that I had worked and so on. Well, but when a person comes to you after fifty years for confession, that's an experience you won't get anywhere. That is, that time was instructive, but it cannot be absolutized, because it is nothing absolutely by itself. That is, some people were in the concentration camp and didn't learn at all, there were people in prison who didn't learn either, because to learn is to be enlightened, to see the thing in a broader context."

  • "The way it was done was that if someone wanted to tell someone something, they either visited in person, or in the extreme case, the telephone was used, but only using code words. But otherwise, everybody had a calendar, it said, 'There's going to be a meeting there and there between Christmas...', and everybody had to make arrangements to go. I think some of the hiding was unnecessary because they had people right in our midst. So they were concerned about it not spreading too much. A few people were...but every one of us, when we joined the Salesians, they told them you have to expect that you might get run over by a car. Nobody knew how the situation would turn out."

  • "In that year of sixty-seven to sixty-eight, it was possible to get some books from Rome, so the world began to open up to me. And then I also listened to the radio Free Europe, right, so I was bred later. Well, and when I got into those circles that were studying secretly, I was staying with the Zideks in Ostrava, for example. Mr Žídek is today a kind of unofficial chairman of political prisoners, Leo Žídek. So, whenever I needed a chat: 'Here are your keys...'. So I thought, 'If he, who was in jail for ten years, is not afraid, why should I be afraid?' Well, so it was like that. You were in it and you had the impression that everybody was against the regime and so on... There was a policy of not being political because you knew there might be people amongst us... Yeah, just the focus here was to do good, to keep the families in their faith, to devote themselves to the youth, and this and that."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Praha, 01.12.2022

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    délka: 01:46:32
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    Praha, 17.01.2023

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  • 3

    Praha, 25.01.2023

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    délka: 01:28:48
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Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

Humility opens us to the mystery and enables us to understand life

Jan Ihnat
Jan Ihnat
zdroj: Archiv pamětníka

Jan Ihnát was born on 25 June 1950 in the village of Slovenská Kajňa to Jan and Helena Ihnát. The family was traditionally Catholic, they went to church regularly, but they did not talk about their faith. At the age of 18, he had an extraordinary spiritual experience that gave his life a new direction. When he was not accepted to the theological faculty after graduation, he entered military basic service. As part of his service, he travelled around northern Moravia and in Ostrava, he met the Salesians, whose spirituality appealed to him. After the end of the war, he moved to Ostrava and in 1975 became a member of an underground Salesian congregation. Salesian priests Josef Kubín and Josef Novosad had a profound influence on his formation. In 1978, he moved to Prague, where he was employed in a company for the construction of collector networks. After work, he participated in the activities of the Salesian community and prepared for the priestly ministry by studying theology. He was secretly ordained a priest by Bishop J. Meisner of Berlin in 1985. As a priest of the hidden church, he was involved in the life of the Salesian family, especially by teaching theology, forming collaborators and organizing the so-called „cottages“ for the children of Christian families. After the Velvet Revolution, he worked in the spiritual administration of the Church of the Holy Cross Na Příkopě. In 2000 he was sent to Rome for a semester of formation studies. Today (2023) he is mainly engaged in formation activities within the Salesian Congregation, translation of spiritual literature and spiritual accompaniment. His great joy is guiding foreigners through Prague.