Divine Mercy: Poland Pilgrimage

Our last big trip of the school year took us to Poland with this semester's student body.  It was an exhausting, amazing trip - filled with the Lord's Divine Mercy.

We left Gaming at 8pm and arrived in Czestochowa, Poland at 5:30am.  We made our way over to Jasna Gora Monastery as the sun came up.

At 6am, we watched as the icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa was unveiled.  The unveiling happens each morning at this time - with trumpets and drums playing and everyone kneeling and praying.  The icon of Our Lady, the Black Madonna, is intimately associated with Poland.  Prayers to Our Lady of Czestochowa, "Queen of Poland," have been credited for the victory of Poland over many attackers the past 600 years.  1.5 million people gathered around her at the announcement of the Nazi defeat.

From Czestochowa we went to Auschwitz-Birenau, the largest of the Nazi concentration and death camps.  During World War II, more than 1 million people lost their lives at Auschwitz.  

We first toured Auschwitz I.  The picture below shows the main gate with this infamous inscription, "Arbeit Macht Frei," (Work Makes You Free).  To see the victims' remains - their hair, shoes, bags, and most prized personal possessions they carried - is sickening.  We watched the movie Conspiracy on the bus ride to Auschwitz, which recreates the Conference where the Nazi "Final Solution" phase of the Holocaust was devised.  Watching the movie it's difficult to think that this really happened...and then walking around where it happened....it's still just too much to wrap one's head around.

We saw the starvation chamber where St. Maximilian Kolbe surrender his life so that another might live.  Kolbe had volunteered to take the place of one of 10 men - a husband and father - who had been condemned to death as punishment for the escape of another prisoner.  The men were shoved into these tiny cells with no food or water.  Despite eminent death, Fr. Kolbe encouraged his fellow men, leading them in hymns and prayers.  After all of the other prisoners lost the strength to stand, Kolbe was seen kneeling or standing, smiling cheerfully at the SS men who were overseeing his death.  After two weeks in starvation chamber, in which time Kolbe witnessed the passing of the other 9 prisoners, Kolbe was still alive.  A soldier injected his vein with carbolic acid and he died at age 47, a martyr of charity.  The heroism of Fr. Kolbe went echoing through Auschwitz.  In that desert of hatred, he had sown love.

The man who Kolbe saved survived Auschwitz and lived to be 95 years old.

From Auschwitz I we were bused about 10 minutes away to Auschwitz II, located in Birkenau.  The trains would stop here and the "selection" would take place separating women, children, elderly, and the rest away from the "able-bodied".  The majority of Auschwitz victims died at Birkenau.  It could hold 90,000 prisoners, and housed the "bathhouses" where countless people were gassed to death, and crematory ovens where bodies were burned.

After walking 1km down the center of camp, along the railroad tracks, we all gathered and prayed the Divine Mercy Chaplet for all those involved in the atrocities here.  It was very moving to hear everyone's voice call out to God "have mercy on us and on the whole world."

From Auschwitz we went to Krakow.  The next morning, after a much needed sleep in a bed, we headed into Krakow for a tour of the city.  In the afternoon we all went to the Shrine of Divine Mercy.  The basilica is huge and was complete in 2002. 

Here's our image of Divine Mercy as described by St. Faustina -- it's the one we received last semester here in Austria (thus "Jesus, I trust in you" is written in German).

The Divine Mercy Shrine is very new because faced with ever-growing numbers of pilgrims the Bishop of Krakow needed to build the church.  We had Mass next door at St. Faustina's convent chapel - where she is buried.  Her room is right outside the chapel.  Here we were blessed to say the Divine Mercy Chaplet, have Mass, and Consecrate Ourselves to Divine Mercy.  The 33 days leading up to our pilgrimage we prayed as we read Fr. Gaitley's new book 33 Days to Merciful Love.  The day we were there was April 30, the 16th anniversary of St. Faustina's canonization.  

The following day we had the morning in Krakow.  Here we visited:

The "dragon" at the Wawel Royal Castle.

Wawel Cathedral - where St. Stanislav, Poland's patron saint, is buried.

The town square for kielbasa, pierogis, shopping, and dancing.

We saw Jagiellonian University where St. John Paul II went to school.  And the "Pope's window" where he stayed after becoming Pope and returning to the city where he had lived.  We watched the movie Karol: A Man Who Became Pope on our bus ride and it was incredible -- telling the amazing story of JPII beginning with his time growing up in Poland.

Our last stop before returning to Gaming, was Wadowice, Poland - where JPII was born and lived from 1920-1938.  We visited the church of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary where Karol Wojtyla (now St. JPII) was baptized, confirmed, served as an altar boy, and prayed daily before the miraculous picture of Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

Ellie & Francis' first Franciscan Dance....dancing with the other students in the square outside the church.

The font where JPII was baptized.

The picture of Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

The "Cream Cake Statue" of JPII outside the church.  The statue got this nickname when JPII visited Wadowice in 1992 - he sat near to this spot and reminisced about his early life in the town.  He mentioned how he and his friends would enjoy kremowki (cream cakes) which they bought at a store nearby.  The statue shows the Pope in a familiar pose, with his crook in one hand, and his free hand raised in blessing...or pointing to the kremowka shop?!  :)

Our last stop was indeed to buy a cream cake....and we've got to agree with the Pope (not just because we're Catholic ;) - those cakes are good!  

Saint Pope John Paul II, pray for us!

Saint Faustina, pray for us!

Saint Maximilian Kolbe, pray for us!