Deacon Janusz Mocarski

Deacon Janusz Mocarski was born in 1977 in Białystok, Poland and grew up in Knyszyn, a small town in northeastern Poland, the fourth of five children of Stanisław and Wanda. His father was the organist for his Catholic parish, so the Church was always part of his life. He became an altar server when he was seven. During high school he was active in the youth program, helping to organize prayer groups and foot pilgrimages to local Marian shrines.

“I grew up with devotion to the Blessed Mother,” he said. “Maybe I wasn’t conscious of it growing up. As a kid you don’t understand, but we prayed daily. Each evening we would kneel down together as a family. Part of that prayer would be a decade of the rosary. That was part of my family life which I now treasure very much and I now realize was one of the small factors that contributed to my vocation.”

It wasn’t until he was about 24, nearing the end of his studies at the Catholic University of Lublin (where Pope John Paul II taught for nearly 25 years) that he began seriously thinking of priesthood.

“This university, the people I met there as well as the courses I took, significantly influenced my intellectual and spiritual development. I have to admit that definitely it was the work of the Holy Spirit who led me to that place and then miraculously guided me on the path to a deeper spiritual life,” he said.
While he pursued his advanced degree in pedagogy, the young man realized “there was something else in the back of my mind. I was searching for this deeper relationship. I was praying and I was asking for God’s will.”

Among his classmates were a Salesian nun and a priest. “Both of them helped me see the Church with different eyes. They helped me to understand myself and see that God’s will is good and that a normal person can do God’s work. Their presence, their acceptance, their love, their enthusiasm for loving people — that inspired me. What they showed was real love.”

Pope John Paul II was a huge source of inspiration to Deacon Mocarski as well as many young men in Poland. “His attitude and shepherding style and his writings, which I discovered during university, inspired me very, very much to pursue the religious vocation of priesthood,” he said.

Deacon Mocarski said it was a “missionary spirit” and “providence” that brought him to Long Island. “When I was discerning, I was thinking of going abroad since we had enough priests (in Poland) and I always had a kind of missionary spirit,” he said.

Two of his siblings live in Chicago and he had visited there a number of times. After his graduation in 2002, he returned to Chicago, working in construction and as a waiter. “Both jobs, as well as living with other immigrants, many of them illegal, taught me a respect for human labor,” he said. He returned to Poland and took a job as a social worker at a Białystok orphanage while he continued to pray for guidance as he discerned his call.

A friend introduced him to a priest from their hometown who was now serving in America: Father Andrejz Zglejszewski, director of worship for the Rockville Centre diocese. “He invited me to the diocese,” said Deacon Mocarski, who began to correspond with Father Zglejszewski and Father Thomas Coogan, then vocations director for Rockville Centre.

“Once I got in contact with this diocese, everything worked easily. That was because it was probably God’s will,” he said.

His parents are very happy about his decision to enter the priesthood. “They always wanted a priest in the family,” he said. “The tough thing was that I was leaving the country. It was difficult and it still is. I call them quite often, but it is not the same as being there.” His parents are planning to attend his ordination.

Although he had been in the United States before entering the seminary, he always stayed in Polish communities. “The seminary was a different world,” he said. “The language was the biggest barrier in the beginning.” He started learning English while at the university, but he points out there is a big difference between speaking the language and studying at the graduate level in that language.

He was grateful for his pastoral year at St. William the Abbott, Seaford. “It was my first full immersion in an American parish. I come from a foreign culture. I value that I could see that I can serve here, that I have something to offer here.”

Deacon Mocarski is tri-lingual and feels it was providential that he spent three months as an exchange student in Seville, Spain and studied Spanish at the university, since he needs to know Spanish to minister on Long Island.
“There is such a variety of culture here, it is hard to say what I value or treasure the most,” he said of his new home. He loves the proximity to the ocean and although he doesn’t like swimming pools, enjoys the opportunity to swim in the bays and ocean whenever possible. He also enjoys hiking, soccer and bike riding.

As he looks forward to his ordination, Deacon Mocarski said, “I’m open to anything. I’m just going to respond to the needs of the time. We’ll see what’s going to happen.” He has enjoyed working with the youth at St. William the Abbott and visiting the elderly Polish sisters at St. Joseph’s Home in Huntington and acknowledges there is a great need for serving all age groups.

“What I hope to do is put emphasis as much as I can on confessions, moral life and catechesis of people who don’t understand the simple principals of the Catholic faith,” he said.

To help in his task he will rely on the same prayers and devotions he learned in childhood. “I pray the rosary at least once a day. I cannot survive one day without the Blessed Mother.”