Martin Richard Macek
* 1967
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"So I wanted to take away what is nonsensical there again. In the past, for example, one had to pray what was ordered, and if that wasn't enough, one had to do it in the evening. That is to say, in the evening - in the morning. Absolute nonsense. The texts correspond to the time of day. And I say to everybody, 'When you're in the department, that's the mission. He's communicating with the person within the framework of that spirituality or that work that he's chosen. That's the most beautiful prayer - to communicate with someone who can no longer. And I don't have to have a breviary or a rosary to do it.'"
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"I have experienced the upbringing, as far as the order is concerned, of the old time when I was brought up by those old brothers. And we must remember that the old brothers did not have the experience of a religious community. Because they were dispersed, especially the priests, that is, they didn't know much of the religious life. I had the opportunity to compare then in Austria, I was in Austria and Germany for five years afterwards, where those religious communities have been functioning continuously and where the order as such has been maintained for decades. Here it wasn't. And the older brothers wanted to build on the forties and fifties, and they applied it to the nineties, and that was a problem."
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"The turning point, as you asked, we didn't understand until... we were also on duty and we had a radio secretly - there were more things being done secretly - to the service then, when the boys brought the radio. And when Kubišová started singing. And I won't forget that, that was... I know it like today. Kubišová started singing, and we ran out of the guard, like out of the building, it was a kind of a booth, there was a kind of a square in the middle, and the guys who were guarding the gate ran out there. It was snowing that day. And we started snowfighting. Normally we... it made you feel a kind of freedom after that year, announced by Marta Kubišová. That's why I had such a warm relationship with Marta Kubišová all the time."
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Celé nahrávky
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Brno, 01.01.2019
(audio)
délka: 02:02:10
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.
The most beautiful prayer is to help the ones in need
Martin Richard Macek is the Prior of the Convent of the Brothers of Mercy in Brno. He was born on 21 December 1967 in Prague in a religious family. He grew up in Hostivař and then in the Old Town of Prague. After graduating from the Secondary School of Mechanical Engineering in 1988, he enlisted in the army and lived through the Velvet Revolution. The conscripts lacked information, and the turning point came on 21 November, when they heard Marta Kubišová singing on Wenceslas Square from a banned radio station. After returning to civilian life, the idea of joining the Order matured in him and in 1994 he began to care for physically and mentally disabled boys at the Holy Family Home. At the same time he visited the Brothers of Mercy in Brno, i.e. the lay religious of the Hospitaller Order of St. John of God. In January 1996 he was sent by the Order to Austria for formation. He went through the novitiate in Graz, and took his first vows in 1999. After a further year in Reims, Germany, he returned permanently to the Brno brothers. After 2007, when he became the superior of the Brno monastery and the provincial of the Order, he tried to adapt the operation of the convent to the new times.