They spent nine days traversing a nation whose faith inspired resiliency for centuries.
About four dozen Catholics from the Diocese of Harrisburg joined Bishop Timothy Senior in flying from Washington, D.C., to Warsaw, expecting encounters of faithful meaning while eating plenty of pierogi and stuffed cabbage over nine days as pilgrims in Poland from August 25 to September 2.
While many came back a few pounds heavier, they were deepened in their devotion to Christ through a land where Catholicism is interwoven into so many aspects of daily life, and changed by events and experiences that still bring them to tearful thanksgiving, all for different but God-filled reasons.
“For me, this trip was very spiritual. It was also very deeply personal for me. All four of my grandparents were born in Poland. They had come to the United States before the Holocaust,” said Jane Hungarter, who attends St. Leo the Great Parish in Rohrerstown.
“To finally stand in their homeland, walk its streets, visit its churches, experience its traditions and see the country they once called home, it filled my heart in a way I didn’t quite expect.”
Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Harrisburg organized the pilgrimage.
The first few days sandwiched journeys filled with the story of Our Lady of Czestochowa between visits to the sites which launched devotion to the Divine Mercy. The pilgrims visited the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in Warsaw, a site which Nazi Germany nearly obliterated during World War II.
St. Maria Faustina Kowalska entered that convent when she was 20 years old, six years before Jesus appeared to her to call the world to receive his unlimited forgiveness and grace.
The pilgrims also traveled to Kraków to visit St. Faustina’s tomb and the congregation’s monastery there, along with one of the sites where Jesus appeared to her.
“Divine Mercy has changed my life. ‘Jesus, I trust in you’ has gotten me through lots and lots of difficult, difficult times,” said Linda Chambers, who attends Holy Name of Jesus Parish in Harrisburg.
“It was the dream of a lifetime, and it came true.”
She said Bishop Senior celebrated Mass at the Sisters’ Warsaw convent, as the congregation offered the Harrisburg pilgrims their chapel for the afternoon.
Then came Chambers’ moment of a lifetime.
“3 p.m. rolled around, and we got to say the Divine Mercy Chaplet in that chapel,” said Chambers, whose devotion helped her through the loss of her husband and a head-on collision that she said should have killed her.
“It couldn’t be better than that to be so connected to the source of all that grace and mercy [and] that brought tears to my eyes,” she said.
Resiliency through suffering and tears has been a lifelong theme of the Polish people, one which Our Lady of Czestochowa and the original artwork of the Black Madonna by St. Luke has lived out in the nation’s history after it was brought to the land.
The Harrisburg pilgrims experienced that original artwork at the Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa in the Jasna Góra Monastery, a view of the scarred Virgin Mary which inspired the nation to overcome countless conflicts from the Swedish invasion in the 17th century to Napoleon, World Wars I and II and the Soviet Bloc takeover during the Cold War.
“It’s really important to focus on the resilience of the Polish people. Poland has really endured unimaginable loss, destruction, hardship,” said Hungarter. “Its people rebuilt, persevered.”
Poland had to rebuild its infrastructure and its psyche from the horrors of the Nazi occupation, which included concentration camps that led to the deaths of six million Jews and millions of others as part of a genocidal campaign. The pilgrims encountered the stark horror of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the prison camp near the town of Oświęcim where more than one million were killed.
“When you see those stacks of several hundred thousand children’s shoes, probably ages 10 and less, knowing that they basically faced the same system of justice or lack thereof, it’s very difficult to imagine that,” said Brian Hungarter, who also belongs to St. Leo the Great.
The pilgrims saw the location where St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish Franciscan friar, died to save another prisoner during World War II, and a permanent memorial candle in his honor.
Wadowice’s own St. John Paul II survived World War II and became pope during the Cold War, one which he helped end through his works of faith and diplomacy.
Pilgrims encountered his story through trips to both his birthplace and baptism locale and the Zakopane resort where he often retreated into nature on the mountain area’s trails and ski slopes. They also experienced so many of the faith-filled sites like Our Lady of Czestochowa and those of St. Faustina, whom he canonized during his papacy, while also visiting many churches named after the saint.
“The Polish people just love him,” said Cindy Spinelli, who attends St. Francis Xavier Parish in Gettysburg.
“It was just amazing how people were so drawn and so proud of him that they just talked about him all over. These basilicas and chapels were very magnificent. They were really beautiful all over.”
“It’s just pretty amazing how his story is the country’s story,” said her husband, John Spinelli. “The people lived the same journey he did, and to this day are incredibly proud of how he did and how this country is doing.”
That resilient faith and pride wrote the story that four dozen Pennsylvanians took in as they encountered God’s handiwork within an entire nation. They returned with a filled soul, deeper devotion and a lifetime of memories.
All that, plus all the different types of pierogi from blueberry to pork, that more than filled their bellies.
(Jay Sorgi is a freelance reporter for The Catholic Witness. Photos courtesy of Jane Hungarter and Tara Benkovic, Director of Development for Catholic Charities.)
By Jay Sorgi, The Catholic Witness
