He fasted from bad habits for nine months because that’s how long human life develops in the mother’s womb. He repeated it three times until he decided to end them altogether. Jesuit Matej Kasan describes his journey to living a whole
Photo:
Thank you, together we are the strongest. And we can do even more! 💪
A record number of readers supported us in January. Thank you. Together, we are building the strongest conservative newspaper!
Thanks to you, we can continue our mission – to do quality journalistic work and defend a conservative view of the world and the pro-Western direction of Slovakia.
It is not enough to just be against it, we must do more today, because it is also about the future of Slovakia, where we and our children will live well.
It’s not an uncommon experience. A person feels something is missing but can’t name it. They can’t solve it yet. So they start filling the feeling of emptiness or incompleteness with some superficial substitute – for example, excessive work performance or alcohol.
Matej Kasan, a 44-year-old priest from the Society of Jesus, also went through a similar experience. Although it is a sensitive topic, encouraged by those around him, he decided to speak publicly.
He believes his story is proof that God does not leave anyone alone in their problems, and his testimony can be helpful to those who are going through a similarly tricky path.
Help from a psychologist.
Father Matej comes from the Orava village of Vavrečka. There is no shortage of spiritual vocations in the extended family: in addition to him, three uncles became priests (the late Jozef Kasan, Benedictine Vladimír Kasan, and Anton Kasan, who works in Moravia), two cousins (Dávid Sklárčik, chaplain in the parish of Vysoké Tatry, and Marek Poláčik, who works in the Hradec Králové diocese), and cousin Mária Cecília joined the cloistered Dominicans in Rome.
From childhood, he had the example of a large Catholic family and a devoted priestly life before him. He was attracted to both life paths, but gradually, the priestly one increasingly prevailed.
The turning point was the people’s missions led by the Jesuits in their parish. The searching young man was invited to spiritual exercises on vocational discernment with Father Ladislav Šofrank, who would become his spiritual guide in the following period.
After graduating from secondary vocational school in Nižná and a year of employment, during which his spiritual vocation matured, Matej finally joined the Jesuits in 1999. During his religious formation, he spent two years on missions in Kazakhstan and later completed his so-called third probation in Chile.
In 2010, he was ordained a priest; he spent most of his time as a spiritual administrator and later as the director of the Family Assistance Center in Trnava. He is currently serving as the rector of the Church of the Holy Savior in Bratislava for the third year.
“Although I always did everything the way I was taught and to the best of my ability, I constantly experienced a certain incompleteness, disharmony on the physical, spiritual and mental levels. I had no remorse for not doing what I should or for doing too little, I just didn’t do it comprehensively and with ease,” Father Matej reflects on himself years later.
Photo:
When people with similar feelings about life came to him, he didn’t know what to advise them because he wasn’t clear on how to live a qualitatively better life. Over time, he realized that he lacked a deeper connection with himself, ultimately affecting his relationship with God and his religious mission.
He sees his inability to name and express the emotions he was experiencing inside as one of his main problems. “I didn’t know where and in what form to do it. I functioned the way I was raised – I have to fulfill my duties, because I will be rewarded for good deeds and punished for bad ones. That drove me to perform for the sake of merit. But no one was interested in what I was experiencing inside, how I felt, what my needs were, what I enjoyed. And I didn’t know how to express and implement it myself.”
He had struggled with these feelings during his religious formation and spoke openly about them with his superiors. “When they saw that they couldn’t help me on their own, I decided to go to a psychologist, which wasn’t exactly common at the time. I appreciated it all the more that they allowed me to do so.”
A psychologist advised him to work with his emotions based on what he liked and what fulfilled him. So, he started dancing and writing poems.
When asked how the superiors reacted to his request for permission to sign up for a dance course and whether they saw it as the first step towards leaving the monastery, he answers: “The late Father Viliam Karľa told me then: We trust you, we will not prevent you. After all, if you are going to leave, you will leave anyway. But if it is supposed to help you find yourself and stay, and we are going to prevent you from doing so, we will achieve the exact opposite.”
However, Matej not only did not leave, but after a short time, he realized that he felt much better, lived in greater harmony, and could cope with daily duties more efficiently, which his superiors noticed and appreciated. “After all, I still felt that God was touching me with the assurance that He wanted me here and was serious about me, I just needed to find some inner balance,” he explains.
However, anyone thinking this will solve their problems once and for all would be mistaken. Life is too complex and fragile to have simple and permanent solutions.
Getting in touch with yourself
Even though Matej learned to process and express his emotions better over the years, he still felt a sense of incompleteness. “Something was missing and I didn’t know what it was exactly. With one foot I was in a monastery and fulfilling my mission, but with the other I felt like I was somewhere in a family that I had renounced out of love for God, but something still drew me to it. I couldn’t deal with it, it bothered me for years,” he admits.
He gradually began to fill this incompleteness with performance at work, alcohol, smoking, and watching romantic films. “No, it wasn’t that I drank from morning to night. But I liked those evening moments when, after a whole day, I could sit down to a film, roll a cigarette of fragrant tobacco and drink at the same time. It was a time just for me, when I felt that I had established contact with myself. Thanks to alcohol and tobacco, I felt pleasant and relaxed. That’s how I relaxed.”
Gradually, these rituals became an integral part of every evening. He realized that it did not make him free or happy and that it would be best to stop drinking. “But at the same time, I told myself that alcohol was part of life, because so many people drink, that it was a gift from God that should not be rejected, but only used wisely. Although I myself was not able to do that at all.”
Photo:
He finally got to the point where he looked up tests online to see if he was still an alcoholic. “I realized I had this addiction and that I needed to do something about it. But I didn’t know how.”
But again, God’s guidance – and psychology – helped him. “Since I worked at the Family Assistance Center and our Jesuit permanent formation includes continuous education, I did two three-year therapeutic trainings. Both were focused on personal growth in the family and relationships within it. This is where my eyes began to open in a deeper self-knowledge and in getting to know my family and its broader background.”
Matej realized two critical things. The first concerned his father, who had died at a relatively young age before his priestly ordination, which he had been looking forward to. From childhood, he had observed a deeply rooted pattern of behavior in which the reward for a full day’s work was alcohol and television.
The second thing that concerned the mother was the missing relationship bond.
“The Lord God entered this awareness of my previously unknown connections completely, directly and openly. During a pilgrimage in Rome, I felt God’s invitation in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore to fast from alcohol and tobacco. At first, I thought about forty days, but God wanted nine months from me. I realized that this is exactly how long human life develops in the mother’s womb and that God also wants to create something new in me during the nine months. It was so strong that I stopped drinking and smoking from one day to the next,” Matej describes an essential moment in his life.
In addition to fasting, he read a professional publication about the developmental stages of pregnancy, which described the gradual development of the conceived child, as well as the transformations of the mother.
“I started talking to my mother about it, although it was more difficult at first, because we weren’t used to such mutual emotional openness. After all, our parents’ generation was taught only to work hard, they were grateful when their children were healthy and had the basic things for life, there was no talk of any emotional experience and mental health at that time. During this fasting period, mothers with problems during pregnancy also started to approach me to accompany them spiritually, which also strengthened me a lot in my attitude.”
During this time of mutual rapprochement, Matej’s mother was diagnosed with a rapidly progressing cancer – she died just a few days after her son’s nine-month fast ended. “I saw that time together as a huge gift from God for both of us. This experience moved me forward a lot, but it was not yet complete.”
Either – or
After a short time, everything went back to normal – Matej was drinking and smoking in front of the TV every day. “But God visited me again and I repeated this type of fasting again. And then again, three times in total, each time with an interval of two years. I went through a seven-year process, during which I discovered that I have phases when I can go without drinking for a long time, but that when I do drink, I can’t drink in moderation.”
Based on the knowledge gained during therapeutic training, he repeatedly tried to “recode” his inherited relationship with alcohol into a different kind of experience – he went to nature, rode a horse, shot a bow, swam, shared his emotional world with close friends… It was all fine; it helped him maintain inner harmony, but it did not solve his alcohol habit.
“I became increasingly aware that I had a crucial choice: either – or. Either I would continue to drink, even though it no longer pleased me at all, but, on the contrary, was killing me, or I would quit for good and not drink at all.”
As many times before, God stepped into this situation with his invitation. “But this time it’s completely different,” emphasizes Matej, who every year draws a patron saint on the website of the Sisters of Mercy. This was also the case in 2022 when Our Lady of Guadalupe accompanied him.
“On her feast day, December 12, I woke up and gained a strong conviction that she loved me like a mother and longed for my love. This thrilled me so much that I finally stopped drinking and smoking because of her. More than two years have passed since then and I am happy, internally free, I don’t miss it at all.”
Really? I tempt Father Matej with my question. He admits that sometimes he smells good tobacco or quality cognac on the street, which someone opens at a celebration, but he is no longer tempted to taste it. “What would I get from that? A momentary pleasure that would disrupt the harmony that I have been experiencing for two years?” he answers with rhetorical counter-questions.
Photo:
