Our Lady of Czestochowa, Pray for Us!

Cardinal Dolan stops at an icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa while touring through our permanent exhibit last year. 

Faithful Daughter of the Eternal Father, Temple of the Love that embraces heaven and earth, I entrust to you the service of the Church in the world, a world which so needs love. Mother of God, Mother of the only-begotten Son who gave us as the principle of life the new commandment of love, help us to become builders of a united world, in which peace triumphs over war, and the civilization of death is replaced by love for life.

…Mother of Unity and Peace, strengthen the bond of communion within the Church of your Son, enliven ecumenical efforts so that all Christians, by the power of the Holy Spirit, may become one family of sisters and brothers of Jesus Christ, the one Savior of the world yesterday, today and for ever (cf. Heb. 13:8).

Virgin Mother of God, help us to enter the Third Millennium of Christianity through the holy door of faith, hope and love.

O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary, accept our trust, strengthen it in our hearts and present it before the face of the one God in the Holy Trinity. Amen.

-Saint John Paul II, Visit to the Shrine of Our Lady of Jasna Gora, 1997

The Polish Devotion to St. John Paul II

In my spirit, I embrace the whole of my beloved Homeland. I rejoice in its successes, in its positive aspirations and in its courageous undertakings. 

-St. John Paul II, 2002 Apostolic Voyage to Poland

St. John Paul II carried a special devotion to his homeland and her saints. It comes as no surprise, then, that the Polish people carry a special devotion to the recently canonized pontiff as well. This blog post captures the love of the Polish people for John Paul II, and explains why this love is different from the affection we have for him here in the Americas.

Our Lady of Częstochowa, Pray for Us! 

Mary Mother of God, Mother of Peace

This jeweled icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa was donated to the
Blessed John Paul II Shrine by the Jane and Edward Bleka Family Foundation. 

On this Octave Day of Christmas, the Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God. We also celebrate the World Day of Peace (see Pope Benedict XVI’s 2013 message here).

Let us meditate on Blessed John Paul II’s first homily for this most sacred of days:

Today the church particularly venerates the Motherhood of Mary.  This is, as it were, a last message of the octave of Christmas. Birth always speaks of the Begetter, of her who gives life, of her who gives man to the world. The first day of the New Year is Mother's day.

We see her then—as in so many pictures and sculptures—with the Child in her arms, with the Child at her breast. The Mother, she who begot and fed the Son of God. The Mother of Christ. There is no image that is better known and that speaks in a more simple way of the mystery of the Lord's birth than that of the Mother with Jesus in her arms. Is not this image, perhaps, the source of our extraordinary confidence? Is it not just this image that allows us to live in the circle of all the mysteries of our faith, and, while contemplating them as "divine," to consider them at the same time so "human"?

But there is yet another image of the Mother with her Son in her arms. It is in this basilica: it is "la Pietà:" Mary with Jesus taken from the Cross; with Jesus who died before her eyes, on Mount Golgotha, and who after death returns to those arms on which he was offered as Saviour of the world at Bethlehem.