As Hitler and Stalin rose to power, Our Lord was already offering his mercy for what was about to happen. He was already giving us the doorway to mercy and peace.
In 1931, Jesus began appearing to a young Polish nun, Faustina Kowalska. Over the next seven years, he made several requests – an image, a chaplet, a feast – and attached to those requests powerful promises of mercy. “I am offering people a vessel with which they are to keep coming for graces to the fountain of mercy. That vessel is this image with the signature: Jesus, I trust in You” (Diary of St. Faustina, 327).
It is natural to ask where God was in the middle of the horrors of the death camps, the Gulag, the persecutions, the sufferings. Through the stories of St. Faustina, St. Maximilian Kolbe, Bl. Michael Sopocko, Bl. Jerzy Popiełuszko, and Pope St. John Paul II, we see that no amount of darkness can extinguish the light of Christ, no depth of evil can silence the Gospel.
The story of Poland in the 20th century is the story we all need right now: that God’s grace triumphs; that his mercy is greater than any sin; that the crosses and pain of life are the fires in which greatness is forged.
We can understand these truths without getting on an airplane and traveling to Poland. But pilgrimage can make these mysteries come alive in a new way. Perhaps we need to walk through the grey emptiness of Auschwitz-Birkenau to feel the hollow discomfort of the gravity of sin. Maybe we need to kneel in front of the original Divine Mercy image to be reminded of the loving forgiveness of our perfect Father.
A pilgrimage to these sites allows us to see first-hand the witness of St. Maximilian Kolbe, who even before his heroic gift of self at the death camp was heroically spreading the Gospel at Niepokalanów. It allows us to kneel in front of the famous image of Our Lady of Częstochowa and rededicate our lives to Jesus through her.
A pilgrimage opens our hearts to what God has done and what he is still doing. Our merciful Father, always calling us home.
Come with us! Experience these places for yourself this October.
