Love for the faithful is the best method

Mons Ivan Mustać

First Mass motto: "Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act" (Ps 37:5)

Don Ivan was a person who showed me fatherly care – on the one hand sometimes strict in his guidance, and on the other full of a love through which I could see the God who loves me. My image of the Church was Don Ivan, through whom God showed himself to me as a good Father, and Jesus Christ as the good shepherd.

Šime Ćurko

Ines Grbić summed up the person of Mons Ivan Mustać: "Mons Ivan Mustać, or simply Don Ivica, was a charismatic person who, wherever he was, left his mark and gave himself without reserve. He had grown so close to people that we regarded him as one of us; to many he was like a member of the family. His humanity was original, genuine, wholesome. Liberating and enriching, so that life, by passing through him, became deeper, nobler, more beautiful. Easy-going, natural, unaffected. A person you could confide in, who could understand you. His priesthood was without complexes, given in service, in reaching the soul entrusted to him or the one standing before him as a priest. He was a union of an idea and its realisation. A visionary and a realist. He left nothing to chance or circumstance – a practical man, one who got things done; and that is how he was in the priesthood too. He combined in himself the human dimension, open to God and sanctifying, with the divine. Through the river of his dynamic life flowed the proclamation of the Gospel (kerygma), service to God and to people (diakonia), and communion (koinonia)."

Don Ivica received life through his parents, Zdenko and Anka. His father was a seaman and he missed him greatly during his childhood. He, as the eldest child, together with his brother Mario and his sister Marija, was raised by their mother, who took them to church constantly: "During primary school, I don't think there was a single day I wasn't at Holy Mass. I have felt the call to the priesthood for as long as I can remember – from about the age of five. I never told anyone, but carried it hidden in my heart. In the seventh grade I told the parish priest."

He spent four joyful years at the Zmajević Seminary, where the then rector, Mons. Ivan Prenđa, cared for the seminarians like a father. He spent his years of theological study at the seminary in Zagreb: "In the summer of 1976 I went through an existential crisis, a crisis of vocation. At that time I was searching for God in an existential way, seeking someone to help me discover his face. I was crying out for sincere prayer. How does one meet the living God? The formation I received at the seminary wasn't enough for me at that time. That summer something significant happened in my life. The priests were holding a retreat at the seminary in Zadar, just before the start of the school year. The leader was Professor Tomislav Ivančić. Although as a seminarian I had no right to attend that retreat, I listened to it from the back row, like the tax collector in the Temple. At that retreat heaven opened for me – an experience of God's love. We then formed a small prayer community at the seminary."

He was ordained a priest in the Cathedral of St Anastasia in Zadar on 29 June 1980: "No one in the world was happier than I was on the day of my priestly ordination. For the whole of the previous year I had felt the wonderful presence of the Holy Spirit. That was my last year living in Zagreb. Wonderful. I think I prayed constantly." His first Mass motto was: "Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act" (Ps 37:5)

As a young priest he brought the experience of Professor Ivančić's evangelisation seminars back to his own diocese: "Straight away, together with a few other priests, I began holding such seminars in our parishes. I was carried by that fellowship among priests, by shared prayer. The seminars in Polača, Škabrnja and Galovac were unforgettable. I could write a book about it. Archbishop Marijan Oblak supported us in this."

In the autumn of 1980 he was appointed parish priest of Polača: " …indescribable joy in me. I was overflowing with joy. For me, Polača was the Vatican. I lived modestly, but contentedly. I came to love it more than my own Privlaka. Later I was given the parishes of Pristeg and Radošinovac. Those were the parishes of my youth, of my newly-ordained enthusiasm. There I learned that love for the faithful is the best pastoral method. I could get angry at certain things, I could be demanding, but my parishioners knew that I loved them immensely."

Sunday was the happiest day of his week: "That's when I see my faithful in church. On Sundays I like not to leave the parish, to be present, to visit someone. My whole life I have prepared for Sunday Mass. I have never simply 'gone through the motions' at Holy Mass. Professor Duda taught me to read the following Sunday's readings starting from Monday. I did that regularly. My parishioners know that I enjoy preaching. That's where I feel most like a priest. And in the confessional too. In recent years I have heard confessions every day, and I find that beautiful."

In 1982 Archbishop Oblak wanted to send him to study in Rome: "I opposed that and didn't go. Now I don't know whether I did the right thing. I think that, through our superiors, God asks us to carry out his will. At that moment I refused God's will."

In 1990, at the start of the Homeland War, he was appointed parish priest of Benkovac, Korlat and Raštević: "I went to Benkovac voluntarily. I told the coadjutor archbishop, Ivan Prenđa, to tell Archbishop Oblak that I was going to Benkovac. Many years later I learned that Archbishop Oblak wept at that news. I stayed in Benkovac for a year, because on 6 September 1991 I had to leave the parish. By then the parishioners had already gone. A harsh war had begun. I was content in Benkovac too. I remember the generosity of those people in that difficult time."

He remained their parish priest (1990–1996) even in exile. On Sunday mornings he would celebrate Mass at the Punta Skala hotel, where displaced persons were housed, and in the afternoon at the parish church in Petrčane, for those displaced who were housed at the Pinija hotel. He was especially moved whenever he saw that the faithful found it harder to bear the destruction of their church than the loss of their own home. For six months he also ran the diocesan Caritas warehouse at the port of Gaženica, with which he remained closely connected for the rest of his life. As a young priest he was called in for questioning by the communist militia (the "police" of the time) on a number of occasions. After Operation Storm, his police file from Benkovac was brought to him.

His pastoral ministry in that hostile environment toughened him and bound him closely to those people: "When he spoke about the things he wanted to undertake as a priest for the good of his parishioners, when I listened to the noble intentions and the mental and spiritual dedication with which he analysed and explained what needed to be done, arguing cause and effect, there were several times I felt the need to tell him he sounded 'naïve'. Innocent. The measure, depth and breadth with which he gave of himself was incomparable to the usual way priests understand and go about things, so that at times he seemed to me like a 'romantic' priest who simply could not distance himself from the ideal of the priesthood. He didn't know what it meant not to give himself. Not to burn himself out. Not to want, self-sacrificingly, the best for God's glory and the good of souls – so that our joy might be complete, as Christ himself desires," Ines Grbić testifies of him.

In 1992 he became administrator of the parish of the Assumption of Our Lady – Belafuža and Bokanjac – in Zadar: "I never had a parish like Belafuža. In the almost ten years I spent there, so much happened. Belafuža is unrepeatable; everything I had ever dreamed of as a priest, parish priest and pastor was fulfilled at Belafuža. Such a parish has not happened to me before, nor will it happen again in that way. It was a grace that I arrived precisely at that time, and many priests never experience what I experienced at Belafuža. I do not suffer from frustration and a sense of failure as a priest precisely because of my experience at Belafuža, and I look back on those nine years of service in that parish with gratitude to God. That experience will never fade from my life, especially now when, on pilgrimages, I see the third generation – children who were born as the fruit of that work and evangelisation. To see families with many children, and then young people who have answered the call to consecrated life…"

Šime Ćurko, a parishioner of Belafuža, a sports journalist from Zadar and the father of many children, testifies to his extraordinary love for young people: "It was March 1992, a Friday, the Way of the Cross in the church at Belafuža. That was when I first met Mons. Ivan Mustać. Besides at the celebration of the Eucharist, we met often at various gatherings of children and young people. From those early years I especially remember the 1994 Catechism Olympiad, which we won, and our prize was tickets for seats beside the stage for St John Paul II's first visit to Zagreb in September 1994. Don Ivan worked tirelessly on every front. His greatest commitment was demanded by the building of the new parish church, yet his engagement with such a major project never kept him from his many pastoral activities in the parish.

Don Ivan was a person who showed me fatherly care – on the one hand sometimes strict in his guidance, and on the other full of a love through which I could see the God who loves me. My image of the Church was Don Ivan, through whom God showed himself to me as a good Father, and Jesus Christ as the good shepherd.

Many young people from my generation found their place in the parish thanks to him. We saw each other every day, and the great event that entered my life through Don Ivan's openness to the new evangelisation was the catechesis of the Neocatechumenal Way, which I began attending in January 1997. I especially remember World Youth Day in Paris in 1997, one of the many pilgrimages we went on together. What drew me to Don Ivan was his care for people, his desire for encounter, for conversation.

Of course, I also remember him through the joking around, the jokes that made us laugh until we cried, and his passion for sport, basketball especially. I can't forget the time he rang the church bells at ten in the evening after Zadar beat Cibona in Zagreb, our trip to Medjugorje in 1996 when he knew the address and house number of every one of us on the bus by heart, or the time in Vienna in 2005 when he refused to sleep in a bed at the parish house and stayed with us in sleeping bags on the floor.

He was with us in rain and sunshine, in the bora and the sirocco, even when he was vicar general and his office opened every door to him. In short, he was one of us – both friend and pastor, both father and brother. Don Ivan tended to react on the spot, and he himself pointed out that in this he sometimes went too far, and even made mistakes; he was a spontaneous and very open man, who loved the Church immensely, our Archdiocese of Zadar especially. He saw in the new evangelisation the foundation of the Church's future, which is also what drew me to that reality. Although in the nine years of his service at Belafuža I also grew emotionally attached to him, after leaving the parish he never interfered in any decisions that, by virtue of his office, were no longer his to make. Once, when I asked him something after he was no longer parish priest of Belafuža, he answered me in a single sentence: "Listen to your parish priest and you won't go wrong." Although he worked hard for young people and children, which is what his parishioners particularly remember him for, he used to say that the world rests on the young, but stands on the old.

For a long time I thought I knew Don Ivan well, and then in May 2018 we had a long conversation for a book published to mark the 50th anniversary of the Belafuža parish. That was when I learned details of his life that, until then, I had not known. I believe, therefore, that time will go on revealing the great spiritual legacy of Don Ivan, a tireless evangeliser who gave his life so that the Good News might reach every person.

He always found time for everyone. "I have become convinced that people outside the Church are very sensitive to the Church's love. I see this at funerals, where I always want to say something to people who don't go to church," he said recently in an interview.

With a great sense of humour himself, he brought great joy and cheerfulness into personal relationships and everyday encounters. He used to say that communion with the bishop and with fellow priests, and his readiness to serve the Church, had never left him since his first Mass, and he stressed that the best method in approaching people was love and ardour. That was indeed a great characteristic of Don Ivan, who always emphasised: "The Church is like a Mother who embraces even her children who are struggling. That is a sign that the Church has love for every person."

God revealed to him the ideas of Pope John Paul II, whom Don Ivica particularly loved, studied and followed on his travels around the world, with regard to the parish: "He used to say that the parish is the basic cell of the Church, but that the times have come for the structure of the parish to change. Given the size of a parish, especially in a city, it is actually a community of communities, not some faceless mass where nobody knows anybody. Every parish priest is a father; a father can give advice, he cannot force anyone into anything. A father advises us on what is best for him, he cannot force it, he advises what is best for the child. We live in a secularised age where people are truly searching, because they are seeking God in their own way. The message of the Gospel is always the same, Jesus Christ is always the same. But the new evangelisation calls for a new way, a new ardour, to reach contemporary man in the situation in which he lives.

In this world the Church needs to speak prophetically. The Church therefore goes out into the streets, goes in among the young, among alcoholics, among those who take drugs. I think that, on the one hand, those young people who gather on the waterfront on Fridays are protesting – protesting against their parents, against society, and even against the Church. We used to send young people to talk with them, to say something to them about Jesus Christ, to show them that they can find meaning in the Church. Only when the Church speaks seriously about marriage, when the Church goes out into the street, when the Church touches the concrete problems of marriage, family, childbearing, upbringing, death, illness, only then is the Church truly a Mother who cares for all her children. We believe that Christians belong out in the street.

What matters today? The Church today needs to tell contemporary man the Good News of God's love for the poor, God's love for sinners – that God loves man as he is, that he loves the young and the old alike. To hear one word: that Jesus Christ has conquered sin, that he has conquered death, that eternal life exists, that there is a meaning to life, that no one truly enjoys tasting sin, that no one enjoys doing evil, but rather that man feels good when he does good. What matters more than anything is that the Church today, in the contemporary world, needs to evangelise, needs to proclaim – that is the most important thing. Whether or not someone joins a particular movement is secondary. The primary goal is to introduce the adult person to the faith. Whether we are Christians is seen in whether families are open to life. Where families are open to life, there will be doctors, professors, engineers, priests, religious – every kind of vocation society needs."

 

To be continued…