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.

As a young boy attending the church and school of the Epiphany of Our Lord in South St. Louis, I still recall the ceremonies and processions, with the statue of Mary and everyone singing the hymn, “Bring Flowers of the Fairest,” with its refrain, “O Mary, we crown thee with blossoms today! Queen of the Angels, Queen of the May . . .”

All this came back to me again this past week as part of a pilgrimage to Poland’s famous shrine, Jasna Gora (literally, “bright mount”), where the icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa is enshrined. Icons are one of the great gifts of our faith and proclaim in line and color what Scripture communicates by words.

I have always been drawn to this image of Our Heavenly Mother holding the child Jesus. The reason for this attraction has little to do with the artistic quality of the image.

The dark facial features of Mary in this icon have caused many to refer to her as the “Black Madonna of Czestochowa.” Her right cheek was scarred by the desecration of an invading soldier’s sword nearly 600 years ago, leaving two deep furrows that almost give the appearance of tears. Though her expression looks like one of sorrow, she seems to beckon those who contemplate her gaze to make a complete offering of themselves to her. But she seems especially to desire our hardships and sorrows, which she takes and hides within her dark blue robe patterned with golden flowers.

Having then purified our offering with her maternal tears and care, she seems to offer, with a gesture of her right hand, everything to Christ. In turn, with his right hand raised, Christ seems to bless the offering from his mother, while embracing the Book of Gospels in the other.

When Pope John Paul II made his first visit to Poland after being elected pope, he returned to Jasna Gora to thank Our Lady of Czestochowa and to remind his countrymen and the entire world of Mary’s maternal love and care for each one of us. He reminded them of the birth of the Church at Pentecost in the Upper Room, where the Apostles had gathered in prayer with Mary. He reminded them that the Church is our spiritual Mother in the likeness of the one who is also the Mother of God. And finally he called us to consecrate ourselves to her and often to visit that Upper Room of prayer with Mary.

In contemplating this icon, which meant so much to Pope John Paul II, we can better appreciate his apostolic motto, Totus tuus, which is the beginning of the prayer of St. Louis De Montfort: “I am all yours, and all that I have belongs to you, O most loving Jesus, through Mary, your most holy Mother.”

But any discussion of the Blessed Mother would be incomplete if we failed to mention the importance of the rosary, the great school of Mary, through which we contemplate with her the face of Christ.

To highlight but one of the mysteries of the rosary—the finding of Jesus in the temple—we learn something of the broader maternal vocation of Mary in the reply of Jesus to his mother: “Why did you search for me? Did you not know I had to be in my Father’s house?” (Luke 2:49).

Jesus was where he was supposed to be—in his Father’s house. But as Mother of the Church, Mary goes in search of each of her children wounded by sin in order to help lead them to the Father’s house, most especially when they have lost their way in life and despair of hope.

As we approach the great Solemnity of Pentecost, let us recall and heed the words of Mary at the wedding feast at Cana: “Do whatever he tells you” (John 2:5).