I wake up at about 7am and on mornings like we've had recently - grey and rainy - I think I am lucky to work in a windowless studio. The weather here is very difficult for the Polish people because we have four distinct seasons in Poland and the cold is more predictable.
When it rains, it rains hard, but then there are blue skies again, not like here where it can be rainy, dull and miserable for four or five weeks. We can't do anything about it so I accept it. I miss the gold Polish autumn - the yellow leaves and the bright, sunny days and warm weather, with some melancholy that winter is coming.
At 7.30am, I have Mass with my community, the Divine Word Missionaries, in our chapel in Maynooth. Sometimes we have students attending Mass too.
Non-nationals from many countries come to live in our hostel and study English - about 80 for our 10-week course in summer and about 20 during the winter. Then we have a social breakfast together in the dining room - students and priests. I am 34 years old and the youngest of the 14 priests and brothers. The eldest is in his 90s.
I love talking with the other missionaries, who have lived all over the world. The older priests can be very generous, sharing their experiences as well as their mistakes, so that if I listen, I hope in future I will not make the same mistakes. Every day, someone teaches me something that I will keep inside me for life.
In a small, intimate community like ours, there is always someone to talk to. We are social animals. There are days when I feel it is difficult to be a celibate priest without wife and family, but it's nothing unusual in our society. Loads of people who are not priests have the same problem.
The young Polish people who have come to live in Ireland miss their families, especially at Christmas, which is a terribly sad time for them because nothing can replace family. Once a month, I say Mass in Polish for a good crowd of mainly young people at St Cronan's Parish in Swords, Co Dublin, where they tell me how happy they are to be able to pray in Polish and sing in Polish. For just one hour, we are all in Poland. I also hear confessions in Polish. For me, this is a matter of listening.
The majority of the Polish young people who have come here are really good people and well-skilled, but there's no job market in Poland. The Irish, I think, have a history and a mentality that is very similar and I think that is why the Polish feel somehow at home here. I call it "the communist syndrome" - for 50 years or so, we did not feel at home in our own country.
The Irish will always say hello, especially when I visit the west of Ireland, and this attitude teaches me a lot and helps me. In the summer, I conducted a double wedding for two young Polish couples on Tory Island - it was wonderful. Polish singing and dancing, Irish singing and dancing - a true blend of two cultures.
After breakfast, I am in the studio by 9am. I am a video editor with Kairos, which produces religious programming as well as corporate videos. This year we produced a 12-part series for RTÉ, Mono, about the new multi-cultural Ireland.
Tomorrow, the President, Mary McAleese, will launch our DVD production about suicide prevention.
Today I am preparing a new Angelus for RTÉ television and getting courses ready for the students. For the Angelus, I choose pictures from our archive and sometimes shoot new material, if necessary. I am also preparing for the recording of a Mass for RTÉ, which we do once a month.
In general, we are too busy in our society to stop and talk, or to appreciate what is around us. We live in a popcorn, fast-food and Hollywood society, but I think that there are deeper levels in most people. I have learned a lot from the deep connection between Irish Christianity, history and nature. In Poland, ours is more a Marian spirituality.
In the evenings, I dine with my order and the students, and if the weather is good, I cycle. I'm into watching football and occasionally I'll go with a friend for a pint in Maynooth.
How well do I know Ireland? A wise, old missionary once said to me: "After you are in a foreign country two or three years, you think you know everything about it. After five to 10 years you realise that what you had known before was not true and after 15-20 years you realise that you know nothing."
In conversation with Kate Holmquist
