Pilgrimages have always been an important part of the Catholic tradition and remind us that in this life our journey’s end is not found on a map but lies beyond. So it was a joy and blessing to be able to accompany 46 people from our diocese to Poland and the Czech Republic for a portion of their pilgrimage, which also took them to Germany. I also had the double blessing of visiting the Polish homeland of my mother’s parents as well as my father’s family, who came from Bohemia in the present day Czech Republic. I am grateful to Sister Albertine Paulus, RSM, for helping to coordinate this and all aspects of our pilgrimage.
One of the first highlights of our pilgrimage was our visit to the monastery of Jasna Góra, where the icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa is enshrined. As I said in my last column, I am especially drawn to this image of Our Lady holding the child Jesus. Eastern Catholics have a term for icons in which Mary points to Jesus, as she does in this icon, that means “one who shows the way.” I think of this when I hear the motherly voice of my GPS, who directs me along my travels, especially where the roads are unfamiliar.
When Pope John Paul II visited this shrine, he used to say, “I have come to listen to the heartbeat of my Mother.” If we stay close to the heartbeat of our Mother, we will never lose our way.
Pilgrimages not only help to reorient our steps toward the infinite but also help us to re-consecrate places of horrible desecration and sin. One such place, which John Paul II called the “Golgotha of the contemporary world,” was the Auschwitz death camp. The joyful mood of our pilgrimage quickly became somber and silent as the ordinary sites along our route of travel gave way to the entrance of Auschwitz, where more than 1.1 million people perished during the Holocaust.
As we made our solemn procession through the camp, we paused where saint and martyr Father Maximilian Kolbe willingly took the place of one of 10 men condemned to death by starvation. Knowing their great fear, St. Maximilian wanted to accompany them in their final journey to “show them the way” he had learned from his Mother, whom he called the Immaculata. In the starvation bunker with the other condemned men, he preached his finest homily during the liturgy of his martyrdom.
As we departed this place of such extraordinary suffering and death, I was struck by how quickly its barbed-wire confines faded from view as we again returned to ordinary surroundings. But isn’t it often true that evil lies alongside the ordinary and frequently goes unnoticed or ignored?
Isn’t this the familiar story of the beaten and stripped man, left half dead and ignored along the roadside of history, as in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37)?
Just think about how many drive by one of our abortion clinics in Knoxville every day without realizing the evil occurring there or maybe choosing not to notice.
And what about the many other terrible wrongs, such as slavery and the long struggle to obtain civil rights, the injustices against Native Americans, and the mean-spirited bashing of immigrants, to whom we all bear a particular resemblance as we journey to our true homeland?
After such an emotional experience in Auschwitz, we visited the birthplace of John Paul II in Wadowice. A personal blessing for me was to be able to lower my pectoral cross into the waters of the baptismal font of the church where John Paul II had been baptized. But the highlight of our pilgrimage was our visit to an orphanage run by religious sisters in the building that had once been John Paul II’s preschool. As the children, some of whom were physically or mentally handicapped, broke into the traditional Polish children’s songs my mom and her sisters used to sing, I was overwhelmed by these orphans’ simple joy.
Another blessing for me occurred during our visit to Kraków, when I was able to meet with Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, Archbishop of Kraków, who had been Pope John Paul II’s personal secretary before and after his election to the papacy. After John Paul II’s death, he wrote of his experiences in the book A Life with Karol (Doubleday, 2008). It is a fascinating story of a man and pope who stayed close to his Mother’s heartbeat and followed Our Lord to his true homeland and ours.
While in Kraków, we also visited the church where St. Faustina is buried. As many of you know, my episcopal motto is Iesu confido in te: “Jesus, I trust in you,” the words Jesus directed St. Faustina to have written beneath the image of his Divine Mercy.
These words are so important to recall because we are all foreigners traveling on a road where the only passport of real value is the love of the Good Samaritan and the one language we need to know is the language of faith.
