During my junior year of college, I studied abroad in a university program based in Gaming, Austria (about two hours from Vienna). Students attended classes Monday through Thursday, then traveled every weekend throughout the patchwork of Western Europe. Riding those night trains with my closest friends brought us even closer, and encountering so many sacred, beautiful, and historic places deeply impacted me. As I prayed in the footsteps of saints and spent hours of contemplation walking ancient cobblestones and bridges, my interior life flourished.
In February 2001, we traveled to Poland. Yes—it was absolutely freezing. We hired a driver whose phone number had been passed on by students who had gone before us. He chauffered us to sites around and near Krakow. I'll be honest: after months of our Austrian campus serving endless rolls and sauerkraut for breakfast, at first my favorite part of Poland was the availability of scrambled eggs.
We toured the childhood home of St John Paul II at Wadowice. I remember that it reminded me of the tiny shotgun doubles that populate New Orleans. At that time, I had not yet really heard of Theology of the Body. Little did I know that someday I would author an entire curriculum adapting it for young people. Crazy!
We visited the memorial and museum now housed in the former Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Even now, I find it emotional and impossible to articulate the experience of touring the bunkers, the execution wall, the gas chambers, and the crematorium.
St Maximilian Kolbe died in the starvation bunker of cell 18. Something about seeing and touching these places makes the realities, the history, the people more present.
At the Jasna Gora Monastery and Shrine, we venerated the icon of the Black Madonna (Our Lady of Częstochowa), which dates to the 14th century and has been associated with many miracles over the centuries. A local Confirmation retreat was happening the same day we visited, with a crowd of rowdy, restless teenagers packed inside—but at least the crowd helped warm up the space!
I can't remember the order of our itinerary, but one morning during our trip we attended a pre-sunrise Mass at the convent where St Faustina Kowalska received the Divine Mercy visions.
The sisters currently living there did not speak English, but welcomed us with radiant joy and even took us to explore Faustina's former bedroom!
When my friends suggested Poland as our weekend trip, I didn't have any idea that it held so many sacred places. I wrote in my journal: "This is the coldest place I have ever been to." And: "In Poland, the world wakes wrapped in cotton, swaddled by layered purity—even the shadows are soft and rest lightly."
Until we meet again, Poland, dziękuję for all you shared with me.
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