My story

As a poet he debuted in 1974 with a collection of poems called Motýlí kolotoč (Butterfly Carrousel). Since then he published hundreds of books, poems, prose, essays, children poems, fairy tales, translations, anthologies of authors for adult people and children…
He also writes lyrics, theatre and radio plays, librettos for musicals, film and TV scripts, scenarios for multimedia projects; moreover, he cooperates with radio and TV, and translates from English. He used to have his own radio programmes and author pages in newspapers. He lives with his wife Maruška, 3 children and their dog, Konor, in Petržalka, a quarter of Bratislava. He has his own website hevi.sk

My story with Christ is quite common, normal, without dramas and without excesses. But a dramatic moment was probably the moment when I first met God.

I was about four years old and still today I can deeply feel those moments of my life. I was lying on my little bed, alone, early in the morning; my parents were somewhere else in our flat. I suddenly realised that God exists.

I got it as clear knowledge, as a message I immediately understood. No human being told me that, no one ordered it to me; it just came reasonably, gently, and quite naturally. God exists – God is my Father – my soul is immortal. Even though I will physically die, the thing that is inside me (i.e. what is “me”) will never ever perish. This knowledge shocked me, because I got scared of eternal existence. (Long years passed by, until I understood that immortal existence, eternal life, out of time, is neither malediction nor punishment, but it is grace).

I lived in a family of believers. I grew up as a Christian. I realised that God exists. Nevertheless, I made many mistakes in my life, a lot of bad acts either intentionally or not intentionally. I fell down on several occasions. But I never ever doubted about that gift I received as a four-year old child - God exists, and He is not only our Creator, but my Creator and Father.

With this knowledge embedded in the quintessence of my personality I lived according to different moods - sometimes free-and-easy, sometimes routinely, sometimes by simply following habits. For long years I was a “Sunday believer”. Once a week to church, once a year to confession.

After my fortieth year of age (I was just waiting for confession – it was Easter) I had a chance for conversion.

What am I doing here? I asked myself deeply into my heart. What am I doing in a multitude of fellow Sunday Christians? I never doubted about the fact that God is my Father and Christ is my Redeemer and my Saviour. Why do I take this certainty so easy and with such little faith? Then I changed. Since then I started not just to consider God as my Father, but also to feel Him as my Father, as a person, as somebody who is not only above me, but also close to me, inside me, besides me... I bring Christ with me and he brings me in His hands (the Cross) and on the Cross (His hands, living body). I understood that my cross, my little, meaningless, and human cross (because of my weakness God doesn't want to give me a bigger cross) is neither punishment nor smacking, but it is grace, gift, blessing, and an opportunity of rendering it to God, day after day.

I never experienced extraordinary ecstatic status or apparitions, but I know that God is always with me and in me; I know that God was with me and that He loved me long time before He created me and put me into this body; He loved me long time before the creation of the Universe. I know that all things that existed, exist, and will exist, were created also because of me, by means of the immense God's love for me and everybody else.

In the last few years, as further knowledge and mystery, I started to perceive the Holy Spirit, not just like the greatest mystery of the Holy Trinity, not just in abstract terms, not just like a painted dove, but like a Person; and the more it appears as non existing, the more it exists.

And I also understood that I am not only a Christian, but also a Christian and a Catholic, member of the universal Church, the intact early Church from the very beginning, fallible in its human members, infallible and eternal in its Divinity – the Divinity that Christ conferred to the Church. I also understood that I willingly acquiesce to the authority and infallibility of the Holy Father; I understood that – together with Christ – we have a mother in the Holy Virgin Mary. I understood that we are not just friends of our Lord Jesus (as He told us through His own words in His Testament), but we are also His brothers, through the Virgin Mary and our Heavenly Father. So Jesus is not only my Redeemer and Saviour, but also my brother.

With this knowledge, with this certainty, which is much more than mere abstract faith, I am daily fighting with my weakness and imperfection; everyday I fall down, but I also fall on my knees; everyday I learn to forgive my neighbours and those I hurt; everyday I call my Father, but I also give Him my silence and calm, stammered words that are not capable of expressing everything I know inside me.