"I am fire", the life of Fr. Henry, is a film that makes you want to seize the days for God

On April 15, 2021, the priest of the Servants of the Home of the Mother Henry Kowalczyk, Father Henry, died in an accident. He had been 22 years consecrated, almost 13 years as a priestand was well known in Spain and the United States for his generous availability in retreats and meetings with young people, especially on dates such as Holy Week, when many priests are more closely linked to their parishes and brotherhoods and it is difficult to find confessors and companions.

Now, Servants HM Films is releasing the film I Am Fire, the story of Father Henry's conversion and service.

The first third of the film explains how he went from a mundane life, far removed from God, to developing a passion for God, and then for evangelism.

The rest of the film shows us carefully what his life of service and apostolate was like, with young people, with the sick as a hospital chaplain and in retreats and meetings.

Trailer of the film (the complete film can be seen at the end of this article)

An unforeseen death... but with a history

The feeling that the viewer has at the end is that life must be lived with joy and intensity, but dedicating it to the important things (God, love, service to others), because our days on earth are limited and the end can come at any time. The viewer will wonder if he is making the most of the days that God grants us.

There is something peculiar about the death of Father Henryk that forces us to stop and think about the most serious things. Was it a banal, absurd death? Or is there something sublime about it? Does that matter, if in the end it is the entrance to Heaven, to God?

Henry always had epileptic seizures, and in Spain, as he grew up, they became worse, more aggressive. He could fall to the ground and violently hit something hard. It had happened to him before: in a fit he lost consciousness, fell and broke his jaw.

The doctors managed it and he was preaching with humor now, with a smile with missing teeth, with a new diction that added to his American accent. With his broken smile he made jokes about being handsome.

Then he encouraged what was important: "Young people, be holy!" He did it with sympathy and also with demand, confident that God gives grace and strength.

A reflection on the time we are given

In April he was serving for a few days as chaplain to the Discalced Carmelite nuns of Amposta (Tarragona). With the confinement of the coronavirus, the nuns lacked a priest. Henry went to attend to them. He was staying in an attached house and there he suffered the final attack: the blow to the head when he fell caused his death. Perhaps without the pandemic and its confinements it would have happened elsewhere, in another service.

The film suggests that being overworked may have been related to the escalation of attacks. He did not reduce his work pace, he went where a priest was needed, with the sick, with the young, in health pastoral talks... He lived for 20 years in Spain, 10 of them as priest. And 6 of them in the Hospital Clínico Universitario. Is it better to burn quickly or little by little?

His conversion story had been told by himself on the Cambio de Agujas program on HM TV, but in this film he expands on it with interviews and statements from his family in the US, the parish priest of his childhood and his friends there, who confirm everything.

His parents were devout Catholics and went to Mass every Sunday, bringing their child, the youngest of the family. His mother also came during the week. The parson asked the young Henry if he was thinking of becoming a priest, but he said no.

Later, in adolescence and youth, he drifted away from the faith. "I just wanted to fill myself with pleasures." Most of all he liked rock and bars. Black clothes, waist-length hair... his mother suffered a lot from that.

A dream and a message repeated on TV

At the age of 22, his father died. Those days he stopped in front of a church, looked at a statue of the Virgin, and for the first time stopped to think: "What am I doing with my life? And if I die, a bit of purgatory and Heaven? Lord... how do you see me?"

That night he dreamed that he was given grades in a bulletin that measured his virtues... "and I didn't have good grades."

Shortly thereafter, she sat down in front of the TV with her mother, who was watching Mother Angelica on EWTN. Mother Angelica spoke of meaningless lives, without motivation... and Henry thought: "well it's true."

And later a priest on EWTN looked into the camera and pointing his finger told viewers: "if you don't change your life, you're going to hell." Another day, he came back to turn on the TV, and "the same priest, with the same finger and the same message: if you don't change your life, you will go to hell" reappeared.

"At that moment it touched my heart and I fell to the ground, crying like a baby, like a great grace. I turned off the TV, I was crying and I was saying: God, are you talking to me? I was like the repentant sinner, with all her long hair over her face, crying", she recalls.

Break with what trapped him

He felt soon after that God was asking him to get rid of his records by Metallica and other rock groups. "He had posters and good records, he could have sold them," says his brother. But God was telling Henry, "you know these records are crap, with bad messages, tear them up and throw them away." And he started to break one record, then another... "And I ripped all my CDs, very happy, full of joy, full of the Lord, of happiness... I'm free now!", Henry later recalled with humor.

Father's brother Henry remembers breaking all his heavy rock CDs and cassettes

The film continues recounting his studies, which cost him a lot -a bad student, and in a foreign language and culture, in Spain-, his vocation and his life as a priest and preacher, with testimonies from people who remember him gratefully, helping them in crisis of faith or family life.

You can see here, free and complete, I am Fire, the story of Fr. Henry and his joyful passion for God and evangelization