Wyznanie wiary

Wyznanie wiary, the Creed, is a repeated prayer whose words move between liturgical recitation, childhood memory, and personal discipline. In Stefania’s scenes, it is not merely a statement of belief: its Polish phrasing accompanies an episode of concealed, tangible secrecy, while a priest later assigns its repetition as penance intended to help her forgive and seek forgiveness from Adèle.

The prayer and its versions

The Creed appears in Polish as a declaration of belief in one God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son. Its clauses affirm Christ as God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten rather than created and of one substance with the Father. The prayer’s formal language gives Stefania a sequence of words that can be repeated, but the surrounding scenes show that recitation does not keep her thoughts within the boundaries of doctrine.

The text distinguishes the Polish prayer from another version known as the Symbol of Faith. A note explains that these are the two versions of the Creed used in the Greek Catholic Church and the Roman Catholic Church. When the priest tells Stefania to recite Wyznanie wiary twenty times that day, she asks why he does not prescribe the Symbol of Faith instead. Her question makes the naming distinction explicit; the supplied scene does not turn it into a theological explanation, but places the two forms side by side within her exchange with him.

Recitation interrupted by memory

Before the prayer becomes an assigned penance, its words surface amid Stefania’s recollection of games with Adèle. Instead of prayers, she hears the little songs that accompanied those games, while Sister Apollinaria watches her sternly and is described as capable of hurting her by shoving her. The Creed begins to run through this remembered scene alongside the songs, not in place of the emotional world they evoke. Religious language and childhood play occupy the same mental space, but do not resolve into one another.

As Stefania recites successive fragments of the Polish text, she feels something hot and luminous hidden in the pocket at her chest. Her clasped hands, joined as if in prayer, touch its hard surface; she describes the secret as heavy and solid. The prayer’s repeated words coincide with the bodily awareness of an object she is concealing, and the recitation makes her feel intensely warm and happy. The sequence gives the Creed a private, sensory setting: its doctrinal words continue while Stefania attends to a secret that is physically present, rather than openly explained in these passages.

Sister Apollinaria then grips Stefania by the shoulders and shakes her. In the upheaval of the scene, Stefania imagines the surrounding heads, the icon of the Virgin and child, and the image of a moustached uhlan with his sabre swinging about. Her heart seems to escape her chest and rise toward the sky; the Catholic schoolgirls respond with wonder at what they perceive as a divine miracle. The episode places prayer beside a scene interpreted by its witnesses as miraculous, without establishing that the Creed itself caused what they see. The words of belief, the hidden object, and the observers’ religious interpretation remain linked by the scene’s juxtaposition, not by a confirmed explanation.

Penance, forgiveness, and conscience

Later, in a conversation with a priest, Stefania says that she is a great sinner and cannot tell him everything at once. He prescribes twenty recitations of Wyznanie wiary for that day. She asks whether she might recite the Symbol of Faith instead, and he answers that perhaps the prayer will help her find a way to forgive her sister Adèle and the strength to ask Adèle for forgiveness. The instruction thus connects the Creed to a specific relationship and a reciprocal task: not simply confessing sin, but forgiving and requesting forgiveness.

The priest’s response is gentle in manner, and his eyes seem so kind and benevolent that Stefania cannot bring herself to rebel against words she considers unjust. The scene leaves the source and full content of her grievance unstated, while showing the practical effect of his counsel: she receives a repeated prayer as a discipline directed toward reconciliation, even though she does not simply accept his judgment. The Creed therefore operates here both as a prescribed religious act and as a test of how far obedience can carry her toward forgiveness.

Elsewhere, Stefania’s religious distress is shaped by the rules governing confession. She asks why a priest cannot hear her confession outside a church, arguing that a sinner, a priest, and God are present. He replies that he cannot perform confession outside a church, and that she cannot enter because the church is in a prison; she collapses into tears. This exchange does not concern the Creed directly, but clarifies the institutional setting in which prayer and confession acquire force: religious practice is not only inward belief, but also depends on prescribed forms and access to consecrated space.

A prayer among competing sacred worlds

The Creed’s different versions sit within a world where religious words, objects, and practices belong to distinct communities. Accounts elsewhere describe the disappearance of Jewish sacred objects, including a silver etrog container at the Old Synagogue in Chortkiv and a Kiddush cup, Hanukkah lamp, and Torah pointer from the synagogue at Brody. These reports make sacred objects markers of communal religious life, rather than interchangeable ornaments. The Creed’s distinction between Greek Catholic and Roman Catholic forms similarly locates a prayer within specific traditions, even as Stefania experiences its words in highly personal circumstances.

The distinction also resonates with the story’s broader attention to how people encounter sacred signs. Josef studies the records of those said to have received grace or witnessed miracles before the tender Virgin icon in Stanislaviv, while Stefania’s classmates interpret her sudden, startling episode through the language of divine wonder. These scenes do not provide a single ruling on faith or miracle. Instead, they show belief taking shape through records, ritual speech, sacred images, and the interpretations of witnesses. Against that range of religious practice, the Creed becomes a compact but revealing presence: a communal formula Stefania repeats, questions, remembers, and is asked to use in the difficult work of restoring her bond with Adèle.