Last month Barbara Mancikova, a citizen of the Czech Republic, visited Trinidad and Tobago, staying at the Emmaus Retreat Centre, Arima. Fr Urban Hudlin OP, interviewed her on behalf of the Catholic News.

Fr Urban: Barbara what brings you to Trinidad?
Barbara: I have a friend here who invited me. I was interested in the culture of this land and the practice of Christianity here.

Fr Urban: Tell me a bit about the Church in the Czech Republic?
Barbara: There are not many Catholics. I believe about 40% of the population are baptised Catholics but not all practice the religion.

Most people in the Czech Republic have just no religion. We are taught in our schools that everything is evolution. It is all about nature. There is no spiritual world, no soul, no God.

Fr Urban: But how then did you come to faith? How did you learn about God?
Barbara: I think God led me from my childhood, even if I did not know it. I knew that there were people who believed in God, but my parents did not tell me about him. My mother told me there was no God – that she did not believe in him – and I trusted in her.

Fr Urban: But how did you know?
Barbara: I thought about God … if he is and if he isn’t. And I thought it would be nice if he is. And one day, in one specific moment of my life, God just touched me. He himself let me know that he is.

Fr Urban: So there were not many human agents to tell you about God, just something inside of you, something innate, made you aware.
Barbara: I knew about Christianity and its beliefs because our religious culture used to be Christian and so some habits remain … and so I had some knowledge about Christianity – that for Christians God is love.

And then I met a Christian with whom I fell in love and he with me. It was a pure relationship and this experience that I am loved, like that was a gift from God. It changed my life.

Fr Urban: After coming to the realisation that God is love, what did you do?
Barbara: I wanted to meet other people who knew God. I wanted to read books about Catholic saints. I read the Catholic Catechism … one for children, it was so simple in the way it was written, but it helped me to understand a little about the Christian belief and then I decided to visit a church.

It was a Protestant church. What I saw there impressed me because they expressed their faith in the same words as I did … I now knew God; they knew him in the same way as I. The question for me was now which Church because there are many Christian churches so I visited a few more of them.

Fr Urban: So what brought you to Catholicism?
Barbara: I met a Catholic priest who taught me about the Catholic faith. I felt there was something special about him. I believe it was the sacraments. I came to believe in the sacraments and I wanted to be baptised.

Fr Urban Hudlin speaking with Barbara Mancikova

Fr Urban: How then did you come to read the Scriptures?
Barbara: It was when, for the first time, I visited the Protestant Church. The brother there gave me the New Testament. I read it from beginning to end in two months.

Fr Urban: How old were you when you had this tremendous conversion experience?
Barbara: Twenty-one.

Fr Urban: So all of your formative years, right up to young adulthood, you were outside of faith as it were? How did this affect your family life when they discovered you were becoming a Christian believer?
Barbara: They were really surprised but I was an adult so they did not make it a problem. They tried to understand what happened. Maybe they wondered if I was crazy but they could see I was normal … I was not doing crazy things.

Fr Urban: So you started this long journey. Tell me about your background and your education.
Barbara: We have perhaps a little different system. I spent eight years at primary school and then I went to, what we call, “gymnasium” (secondary school) for four years and then I entered ‘higher school’ for three years of study and a half year of praxis. It was a school for training in museums and galleries.

Fr Urban: So art and culture would be your speciality and working with historical documents would be part of your work. Tell me something about your family.
Barbara: I have two elder brothers. I am the only girl. My parents are divorced and my mother is married for the second time.

Fr Urban: I know you are interested in becoming a religious. So while you are here, visiting at Emmaus, you are in an environment that is likely to become very much part of your life. Later this year you plan to enter religious life.

It is one thing to become a Christian and a believer. It is a whole other thing to move into religious life. What made you consider becoming a religious, a Trappist to be exact? What made you think of giving yourself like that to the Lord?
Barbara: For me the two things are not divided because it started in the moment when I came to know the Lord. The knowledge of God changed my life and I wanted to know what to do next. I was 21, so I asked myself, “how shall I live after this experience?”.

Fr Urban: So by this time you would have finished your studies. What happened between then and now?
Barbara: My spiritual life was the most important thing for me from that moment. I wanted to orient my life more closely to the Church. I kept seeking God’s will for my life. Before baptism I worked for half a year in a gift shop at the National Gallery in Prague.

Then, after my baptism I worked in a little private gallery for another six months. After this time I worked with the Sisters of St Charles Borromeo for six years. (This year, 2007 they are marking 170 years since their arrival in Prague.)

Fr Urban: Have you considered joining the Sisters of St Charles? Why the Trappist?
Barbara: I was open to joining that convent, but I did not think God was calling me there. The spirituality is different. But I didn’t want to enter a convent from the beginning. I thought I could just make some rules for myself in the spiritual life.

I wanted to pray when I wanted to pray. I thought it would be impossible for me to follow some rules… but the Lord has been changing me. He gave me the gift of prayer, I believe, and the best I can do for people is to pray for them … more than helping actively, I believe I can do more for them with prayer.

Fr Urban: I see your prayer ministry as transcending time and space. Although you will live within a Trappist monastery, that physically enclosed life will not separate you from the rest of the world. You are going to be working for the transformation of the world through your prayer for the nations.

This is wonderful. When you go back to the Czech Republic, I hope you will maintain a contact with the Church in Trinidad and Tobago, and please pray for us as we pray for you.