Death Out Of Love

Christ on the Cross, Eugene Delacroix, 1853

Today the Church celebrates the feast of Saint Maximilian Mary Kolbe, who was canonized by Saint John Paul II in 1982.

A Polish Franciscan with a deep devotion to Mary, Kolbe gave his own life for a fellow prisoner at the Auschwitz extermination camp, taking on the man's punishment of death by starvation because he had a wife and children. Not only this, but the saint also gave life to others in the camp, reminding them of their dignity as persons and that hope was not yet lost. Kolbe is particularly remembered for leading the nine others condemned to starvation in Marian hymns and the Rosary as they awaited their death.

St. John Paul II had a deep devotion to Maximilian Kolbe, and his sacrifice in the heart of darkness gave the late Holy Father much hope as he discerned his own vocation in war torn Poland. Kolbe’s Christ-like gift of self stood as a model of priesthood for him, and the Franciscan's hope in the midst of hatred inspired a renewed respect for the dignity of the human person in a place and a time in which it seemed to have been forgotten.

The Assistant Pastor

Baptizing an infant (Adam Bujak)

On this day in 1948, Father Wojtyła arrived at his first parish in Niegowić, Poland. Here the future Pope found himself fifteen miles east of Krakow, at the Church of the Assumption of Our Lady.

Upon reaching the parish boundaries, Saint John Paul II knelt and kissed the ground, which is something that he learned from the story of St. John Vianney. Wojtyła continued to perform this gesture as he encountered new places throughout his life.

The parishioners he served were poor farmers, and Fr. Wojtyła himself had no electricity or running water. He lived with few and well-worn belongings, which garnered respect from the community he served. Parishioners provided some material things for him, but he was known to give even those things away to others in need. 

As assistant pastor, the great saint was asked to provide religious education to young children. He often celebrated Mass, and like John Vianney, he saw himself as a "prisoner of the confessional." According to papal historian George Weigel, St. John Paul II understood the confessional to be the place "where priests encountered their people in the depths of their humanity, helping the person on the other side of the confessional screen to enter more deeply into the Christian drama of his or her own unique life. If priests stopped doing this, they’d become office managers or bureaucrats" (Witness to Hope, 92).

A Second World Youth Day For Poland

Saint John Paul II greets young people at the 1993 World Youth Day in Denver
(CNS photo / Joe Rimkus Jr.) 

The young faithful of Poland celebrated with joy when Pope Francis announced that the 31^st World Youth Day would be held in Krakow. During the late summer months of 2016, thousands of young people will gather in Saint John Paul II’s beloved country in order to celebrate the Love that they all share.

Did you know that this will be the second time that World Youth Day is celebrated in Poland? The 6^th World Youth Day was hosted in Czestochowa, Poland back in 1991.

Led by the theme, “You have received a spirit of sonship” (Rom 8:15), Saint John Paul II said Mass for thousands of youth there on the solemnity of the Assumption. He noted the presence of those from eastern Europe, “a great gift of the Holy Spirit” after the fall of Communism (Weigel, Witness to Hope, 650-651). The patron saint of World Youth Days challenged those and others to work towards building a civilization of love.

In his message for the 6th World Youth Day, St. John Paul II said:

‘Young people, do not be afraid to be holy!’ Fly high, be among those whose goals are worthy of sons and daughters of God. Glorify God in your lives!

Let us join the sainted pontiff in praying for all of those young people preparing for the 31^st World Youth Day in Krakow, that they may glorify God with each day of their lives.

Light In Darkness

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

-1 John:5

The first part of our new exhibit, A Gift of Love: The Life of Saint John Paul II, can be surprising for some of our visitors. Saint John Paul II was a great lover of humanity, even though, as our exhibit shows, he experienced humanity at some of its darkest hours.

As a child, John Paul II was known as Karol Wojtyła. Born in Wadowice, Poland in 1920, young Karol lost both of his parents and his two siblings by the time he was 21. Amidst the losses he suffered, Karol grew up in a world in which his faith, his culture, and his freedom were all under attack. The Nazis occupied his country until he reached adulthood. Once they were defeated, the Soviet Union took over.

Throughout this time, Wojtyła flourished. Studious, athletic, and artistic, he did not allow outside forces to quell the love inside of him.  Sustained by his family, friends, and faith, he instead lived as a light to others. The shadows of the 20^th century did not keep him from his vocation to the priesthood, they did not keep him from nourishing his flock in Poland, nor did they keep him from bringing his love for the human person to the Second Vatican Council.

In Defense Of The Cross

In an article published by Columbia Magazine this past spring, Krzysztof Mazur wrote about the town of Nowa Huta, or “The New Steel Mill,” built by the communists in Poland after World War II. This was a town for workers, intended to make communism more attractive. Polish religiosity and culture were left out.

Catholic residents of Nowa Huta desperately wanted to build a church, but the authorities wouldn’t allow it. Town leaders eventually permitted believers to build a cross in the city square. This cross became the place of worship for the people there. Christians gathered at the cross for prayers, and Mass was said there on occasion. 

In 1960, four years after the cross was built, the authorities in Nowa Huta decided that it was time to take it down and build a school in its place. On April 27, workers and guards arrived in the city square to tear down the cross. As Mazur recounts, the people put up a fight:

A group of women saw what was happening and equipped themselves with shopping carts, brooms, bricks and bottles. A short time later, when a shift at the steel mill was let out, more than a thousand men started making their way toward the cross carrying shovels, pickaxes and other tools. In a spontaneous act of civil disobedience, 5,000 workers and citizens suddenly gathered in the square.

The protests came to a violent end, but the cross was allowed to remain in its place. Saint John Paul II, who was serving as an auxiliary bishop at the time, provided much religious support for people struggling in Nowa Huta. One way was by organizing midnight Masses under the cross each Christmas eve. 

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! 

Let Your Spirit Descend

On this Pentecost Sunday, we remember St. John Paul II’s famous prayer in Victory Square:

Let your Spirit descend.
Let your Spirit descend.
and renew the face of the earth,
the face of this land.

The Spirit did indeed listen to the great saint’s prayer, and we ask that He continue to descend upon the Church today, especially on her mission for the new evangelization.

St. John Paul II, Pray for Us!

We Want God

On June 2, 1979, the Pope arrived in Poland. What followed will never be forgotten by those who witnessed it.

He knelt and kissed the ground, the dull gray tarmac of the airport outside Warsaw. At the same moment, the silent churches of Poland began to ring their bells. The Pope traveled by motorcade from the airport to the Old City of Warsaw.

The government had feared thousands or even tens of thousands would line the streets.

They were wrong.

By the end of the day, counting the people lining the streets and highways plus those massed outside Warsaw and then inside it—all of them cheering and throwing flowers and applauding and holding signs and singing—more than a million people had come.

                 

In Victory Square in the Old City the Pope said a Mass. Communist officials watched from the windows of nearby hotels. The Pope gave what George Weigel called the greatest sermon of his life.

Why, he asked, had God lifted a Pole to the papacy? Perhaps it was because of how Poland had suffered for centuries, and through the twentieth century it had become “the land of particularly responsible witness” to God. The people of Poland, he suggested, had been chosen for a great role, to humbly but surely understand that they were the repository of a special “witness of His cross and resurrection.” He asked then if the people of Poland accepted the obligations of such a role in history. He asked if they were capable of accepting it.

The crowd responded with thunder.

The World’s Biggest Statue of Blessed John Paul II

While we are very content with our statue of Blessed John Paul II here at the Shrine, we can’t help but be impressed by the size of the statue being installed in Poland this week.

Workers are currently putting the finishing touches on 45-foot tall, white fiberglass statue of our beloved pontiff, who is already towering over the southern town of Czestochowa. See this site for some pictures of this massive work of art.

Lesek Lyson, who is funding the project, said that the statue “should make everyone stop and think about life.”

One thing is for sure: the outstretched arms of Blessed John Paul II will never be forgotten in Czestochowa. 

Theatre of the Living Word

Stealing quietly through Kraków’s blacked-out streets, the audience and the actors who would perform for them arrived at an apartment in the city’s Dębniki district, across the frozen Vistula River from ancient Wawel Castle. It was the 1,181^st evening in the long, dark night of the Polish soul, and they took great care to avoid the armed patrols that enforced the Nazi Occupation’s curfew. For what they were doing was an act of defiance that, detected, would have sent everyone involved to the death camps. This particular night, November 28, 1942, the Rhapsodic Theatre, an avant-garde troupe committed to a “theatre of the living word” without props or elaborate costumes, was performing an adaptation of Adam Mickiewicz’s epic poem Pan Tadeusz, a classic of the Polish Romantic tradition.

                 

The apartment blinds were drawn; the lights were lowered; a clandestine act of cultural resistance began. It did not go unchallenged. During the performance, Nazi megaphones outside began blaring the news of another victory by the invincible Wehrmacht. To some in the audience, that rasping, intrusive propaganda, interrupting a brief respite from the terrors of life in occupied Poland, seemed an apt metaphor for the hopelessness of their situation.

The twenty-two-year-old actor then speaking, an underground seminary student named Karol Wojtyła, paid no attention whatsoever to the racket outside. Unfazed, he continued his recitation as if the harsh static of the principalities and powers of the age simply did not exist…

                -an excerpt from George Weigel’s Witness to Hope, 1.

Poland honors the Pope and the President

Polish officials unveiled a statue of Blessed John Paul II and former U.S. President Ronald Reagan on Saturday, honoring the two men who are widely credited for the fall of communism 23 years ago. The statue, inspired by a photograph taken during the late pontiff’s 1987 visit to the United States, was unveiled in Gdansk, the birthplace of Poland’s anti-communist struggle—the Solidarity movement.

Both Blessed John Paul II and President Reagan agreed that communism is rooted in evil and that it leads to major violations of human dignity. The statue will forever stand as a reminder of their united fight against this evil, and of their love and support for Poland.

The Third Glorious Mystery: The Descent of the Holy Spirit

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance (Acts 2:1-4).

On this day the Church celebrates Pentecost. This is the day when the Holy Spirit came down upon the Apostles, giving them the gifts of wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. They were given everything necessary in order to fulfill Jesus’ commands.

Blessed John Paul II reflected upon the descent of the Holy Spirit during his 1979 Mass at Victory Square in Poland:

The liturgy of the evening of Saturday the Vigil of Pentecost takes us to the Upper Room in Jerusalem, where the Apostles, gathered around Mary the Mother of Christ, were on the following day to receive the Holy Spirit. They were to receive the Spirit obtained for them by Christ through the Cross, in order that through the power of this Spirit they might fulfil his command: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you" (Mt 28:19-20). Before Christ the Lord left the world, he transmitted to the Apostles with these words his last recommendation, his "missionary mandate".

In the face of a Communist regime which worked tirelessly to take God out of the Poland’s past, present, and future, Blessed John Paul II then fearlessly called for a “second baptism”—a baptism that would change the history of the twentieth century and eventually lead to the fall of Communism: