Marian Helper • Winter 2022-23 • Marian.org 17 Kor. She taught me about the rich Jewish tradition of Warsaw and Kraków, the tragedy of the ghettos, and the Nazis’ “Final Solution.” After being tortured at Auschwitz by the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, later in life she chose to free herself from bitterness by forgiving all her persecutors. My next trip to Poland was during the Jubilee Year of Mercy, called by Pope Francis for 2016. During that year I wrote a Bible study entitled Divine Mercy, presented 30 parish missions on the theme of God’s mercy, and finally led a pilgrimage of eager Catholics to explore the sites in Poland associated with some of the merciful 20thcentury saints: Faustina, Kolbe, and John Paul. Now I regularly lead groups on pilgrimage through Poland, each time being enriched by more places, history, and sanctity in this fascinating land. And this year, as the culmination of my biblical study on mercy and my travels through Poland, I’ve written a book, The Way of Mercy: Pilgrimage in Catholic Poland (Marian Press, 2022). I know that for many reasons people are unable to travel on a physical tour of Poland, but everyone can take an armchair pilgrimage through the cities, churches, and shrines of Poland, and so explore the rich tradition of mercy and sanctity with which this land is blessed. A nation of saints Pilgrimage is a unique kind of travel: it requires eyes open to new sights and a heart open to being changed. Whether you are an adventurous traveler (preparing for a physical journey to Poland), or an imaginative traveler (visualizing the places of this land from an armchair), the experience of pilgrimage is transformative. The goal of pilgrimage is to allow the saints, shrines, and prayer to deepen your faith and form you more fully into disciples of Jesus. Poland is the ideal land for learning the art of pilgrimage. Its history and culture is deeply religious; it is filled with memories of some of the Church’s best-known saints; and famous churches and beautiful shrines cover the landscape. The sacramental imagination distinctive to Catholicism allows us to experience God’s invisible, immaterial, and universal presence through the visible, material, and particular places. Through the lives of the saints and events of sacred history, certain places have come to be viewed as holy sites where the veil between Heaven and earth is particularly translucent. Increasingly, more and more pilgrims from throughout the world are discovering Poland as the ideal place for a transforming encounter with God. As I’ve explored Catholic Poland, I’ve come to realize that the climactic events of the last century were only possible because of the rich Christian tradition of over a thousand years in Poland. The patron saints of Poland, like St. Wojciech, St. Stanisław, and St. Jadwiga, are the sturdy pillars supporting the Church of Poland through the ages. On the shoulders of these faithful giants, the Polish saints of our era stand. They are some of the earliest of that remarkable cloud of witnesses — the martyrs, bishops, confessors, and holy ones — that has sustained the faith of Poland throughout its history. Likewise, I’ve discovered other saints, perhaps less well known than the most ancient and the most recent. I realize that there could never have been a Cardinal Wojtyła without a Cardinal Wyszynski, fortifying the church as it passed through the fire of totalitarian rule. The inspiring insights of St. Faustina in the 20th century flowed from the beautiful compassion for the poor exhibited by St. Albert Chmielowski in the 19th century. And Poland became a free country again at the end of the 20th century, not only because of the witness of Pope John Paul II, but also because of the martyrdom of Blessed Jerzy Popiełuszko. All of these heroic saints are strands of the golden thread of Divine Mercy woven through the fabric of Poland’s history. The Kanonicza Street residence of Karol Wojtyła, priest and professor, in Krakow, 1952-1967. Poland is the ideal place for a transforming encounter with God.
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