GRECCIO, Italy (OSV News) \u2014 Eight centuries ago, St. Francis of Assisi came to this hillside village to demonstrate to the world that God chose to be born among the poor, staging the first Nativity scene in a cave outside the town of Greccio.<\/p>\n
Today, that same Franciscan vision has drawn a Polish priest and his community to Greccio, leaving them to pray for a Christmas miracle to realize their dream of having a retreat house for the poor in a place where God asked St. Francis to renew his church.<\/p>\n
For almost 30 years, Father Miroslaw Tosza, a priest of the Diocese of Sosnowiec in southern Poland, has lived in the Betlejem (Bethlehem) community in Jaworzno, a house shared by people who have lost jobs, families, homes, health, sobriety, and, very often, trust in anyone at all. Now, he dreams of establishing a retreat house for the poor in Greccio.<\/p>\n
He insists the idea of the original Betlejem house was not really his. \u201cThe impulse? I simply keep trusting that the impulse came from above,\u201d he told OSV News. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t just an idea. I received a kind of vocation within a vocation.\u201d<\/p>\n
A double adoration in Paris<\/p>\n
As a young priest in Paris, he spent some time with the Monastic Fraternity of Jerusalem community. Once he returned from overnight adoration, only to realize at 4 a.m. that he had no key. As he waited under an archway, a homeless woman with a child appeared at the monastery door.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, the whole situation was irrational \u2026 like an apparition,\u201d he remembered. \u201cLater I read it as a double adoration \u2026 first Christ in the Eucharist, and then the same Christ at the door of the monastery. It\u2019s the same presence.\u201d<\/p>\n
At that moment, he said, it became the theological root of what came later: one Christ present both on the altar and in the poor.<\/p>\n
Back home in Jaworzno, a town that is part of the industrial pattern of southern Poland\u2019s Silesia region, on February 14, 1996, \u201con Valentine\u2019s Day,\u201d he noted, he stopped by his home parish for coffee. The pastor told him the city wanted to give away an abandoned school for charitable work. \u201cDo you have an idea what we could establish there?\u201d the pastor asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cI came to see the school,\u201d Father Tosza recalled. \u201cIt was in total ruin,\u201d he said, feeling at the same time it was precisely \u201cthe place God was sending me to.\u201d<\/p>\n
He moved in and immediately invited others. \u201cFrom the beginning, the intention for the house was that we would not do something for the poor, but together with them,\u201d he said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t wait until the house was ready. We entered the former school as it was and tried to renovate it together with the poor.\u201d<\/p>\n
A name inspired by the first adoration<\/p>\n
The name came later, inspired by Bethlehem and the first adoration of Christ. \u201cGod chose the poor as the first ones who were to welcome him here,\u201d he explained. \u201cIt all came together, that in Bethlehem the poor come to the poor. It\u2019s about an encounter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the years, he said, the name became a kind of script for their life. \u201cThe longer the name stayed with us, the more we discovered that \u2026 we find in it a whole program of life for us. We established a little slogan: \u2018Bethlehem, a place that changes you.’\u201d<\/p>\n
At the heart of the Betlejem community is reciprocity. \u201cReciprocity is at the heart of the Gospel,\u201d Father Tosza said. \u201cThe new thing in the New Testament \u2026 is, \u2018Love one another as I have loved you.’\u201d<\/p>\n
And he is blunt about a common sin we commit toward the poor: \u201cIt is the notion that they have nothing to give,\u201d he said. \u201cPope Francis often said: there is no one so rich that they need nothing, and no one so poor that they have nothing to give. A person wakes up to life when they discover that someone needs them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Betlejem is not an institution, Father Tosza said, but a house. \u201cWhat makes us different is that we have managed to create a house in which the poor \u2026 do not feel ashamed to say they live in Bethlehem. They say their real names \u2026 show their faces without shame.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stories of transformation and healing<\/p>\n
He recalls one man, Lukasz, a well-known massage therapist who fell into alcoholism, arriving at their house on the feast of Corpus Christi.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis wife brought him here with a suitcase \u2026 She had kicked him out of the house. So we had a Corpus Christi at the door.\u201d<\/p>\n
The man stayed five months, began therapy, and stopped drinking. \u201cThe beautiful thing is that he wasn\u2019t ashamed that he lived here,\u201d the priest said. By now, he is \u201creunited with his wife\u201d and returns from time to time to finish tasks he once promised to do. He shows up \u201csimply because he said he would.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beauty itself, Father Tosza believes, is part of the healing. Over time, the Betlejem house has developed a vivid artistic style, bright colors, and mosaics, following the style of the famed Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928-2000).<\/p>\n
\u201cWe discovered how important creativity is \u2026 to create works we are proud of \u2026 truly beautiful and original in themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many who arrive at Betlejem have lost almost everything, \u201chouse, family ties, money, health, respect, freedom, sobriety,\u201d he said. Some come with nothing but a plastic bag.<\/p>\n
Art, Father Tosza said, \u201chelps us discover that we are made by the creator of all creation.\u201d<\/p>\n
That, he said, applies equally to homelessness. \u201cHomeless people are often reduced to one dimension, their material needs. \u2026 But a person can have a roof over their head and still be lonely and homeless in their heart.\u201d<\/p>\n
A community that gathers on Sundays<\/p>\n
The town has been gathering around the Betlejem community for three decades now. While 15 people live in the house, three Sunday Masses draw about 300 people, including around 30 homeless people living outside the community. Afterward, residents serve Sunday lunch to their guests.<\/p>\n
Father Tosza\u2019s vision now stretches beyond Jaworzno. In Greccio, the \u201csecond Bethlehem,\u201d where St. Francis created the first Nativity scene, the community purchased an old hotel and stone house for a retreat center.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe felt a call to create a kind of sister house there,\u201d Father Tosza said.<\/p>\n
The project, however, has put the original community under financial strain. \u201cWe never had big money, but we never had big debts either,\u201d he said. Now a second loan installment is due in the summer of 2026.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome people are convinced we must have some secret source of money \u2026 but we really don\u2019t. We live from the work of our own hands, like art, \u201cand from donations,\u201d Father Tosza said.<\/p>\n
If the community cannot raise the needed funds, it may lose the house in Greccio.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve already allowed myself to face the possibility that maybe we will have to go through some humiliation \u2026 unless something happens,\u201d Father Tosza told OSV News, hoping deep in his heart a miracle donor arrives to make Betlejem\u2019s mission cross borders and concluding: \u201cPeople wake up to life when they discover they are needed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
Katarzyna Szalajko writes for OSV News from Warsaw, Poland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GRECCIO, Italy (OSV News) \u2014 Eight centuries ago, St. Francis of Assisi came to this hillside village to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,35272,10926,5527,30298,22186,12146,36964,6271,30951,19766],"class_list":{"0":"post-70226","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bethlehem","8":"tag-bethlehem","9":"tag-bethlehem-headlines","10":"tag-bethlehem-news","11":"tag-catholic","12":"tag-catholic-church","13":"tag-christmas","14":"tag-christmas-celebration","15":"tag-christmas-eve","16":"tag-homeless","17":"tag-homeless-people","18":"tag-italy","19":"tag-nativity","20":"tag-poland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}