Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope and Saint John Paul II, was born and grew up in the town of Wadowice, Poland. His family lived in a second-floor apartment that stood next to the Church of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In fact, he was born in a room in that apartment.
The windows of that room, and other windows in the apartment, look across an alley to the church, which was the family’s church, of course. And on the wall of the church, visible from within the apartment of the Wojtyla family, was and is a simple astronomical instrument — a sundial, inscribed with the Polish inscription, “Czas Ucieka Wiecznosc Czeka”; “Time Flies, Eternity Waits”.
Of course people do not think of sundials as astronomical instruments. We think of them as simple time-keeping devices. However, sundials show the position of the sun in the sky. The position of the sun is an astronomical measurement. Therefore, a sundial is an astronomical instrument. With a sundial you can not only note the time, but you can also track the sun’s more complex motions through the sky — the motions that produce the analemma (click here for a recent post on that). Young Karol could do all that, if he was so inclined. And since he saw the sundial all the time, and he was a pretty sharp guy, chances are he did notice more in the sundial than just the time of day.
The sundial is popular. Reproductions of it can be found in various places, such as in the apartment itself, but also including within the Church (now Basilica) of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. As I was walking through the church, which is quite cool, I looked up and noticed a clock. The clock was made to look like the sundial, and was even inscribed with “Czas Ucieka Wiecznosc Czeka”; “Time Flies, Eternity Waits”.
