Poland!

A couple weekends ago was the FUS sponsored pilgrimage to Poland (February 12-15). That weekend was so jam-packed full of blessings that I am still trying to reflect on it all and draw out all of lessons and graces. Poland is truly a holy place, sanctified by the blood of martyrs, and it gave rise to three amazing saints within the last century: St. Maximillian Kolbe, St. Faustina and Pope John Paul II.

Our first stop on the Pilgrimage was at the Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa, Queen of Poland. All three of the Polish powerhouse saints had a strong devotion to Our Lady of Czetochowa, and had made their own pilgrimages here to pray before her miraculous image. Just as a bit of history, the image of Our Lady of Czestochowa has protected Poland by turning back invading armies multiple times. The Polish people have such a devotion to her that they built an entire fortress around the Church that houses the image, a fortress for Our Lady. We arrived early and had time to pray and look around before having Mass in front of the image. It is tradition for pilgrims at the shrine to bring their petitions and pray request to Our Lady by processing around the image on their knees, carrying their list of petitions with them and dropping them in an enclosed box at the end of the procession.

While I was processing around, I carried with me my long list of petitions for family & friends, but at the top of my list was a prayer for a specific person’s conversion, a petition I have been taking to every shrine throughout Europe. While I was processing around the image of Our Lady of Czestochowa, I was deeply moved by Our Lady with concern and care for this persons soul, but I also started having doubts that maybe all of my praying was in vain: What can one person’s prayers do? Is one person praying really enough? I pray for this over and over and over, is this repetition worth anything? After we celebrated Mass before the image, I went up to the Adoration Chapel to pray, and the Lord blew me away by how he touched my heart. Even though Poland is the birthplace of the Divine Mercy image, I just wasn’t expecting to see that image at the Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa. That is exactly what I saw though! There was a giant painting of Jesus’ Divine Mercy on the wall behind the Blessed Sacrament in the adoration chapel. I immediately felt the Lord tell me that I need to trust in His mercy, that I need to lay this friend who I’ve been praying for at His feet. I need to keep praying, but I need to stop worrying about him. I just need to surrender Him to the Lord.

The Lord continued to build on this theme at various shrines throughout Poland. We quickly had to return to the bus to depart for our next stop on the pilgrimage, but tried to stop at the gift store before we left. Beautiful rosaries with the image of Our Lady of Czestochowa were selling for only 2 euro!! We hardly had any time at all and there was only one lady working, so we just formed a big group and pooled money, thinking one person placing the order would be easiest. While the designated student was buying the rosaries, the rest of us ran to the bus to ask them to wait and not leave without us! At the end of the ordeal, I only ended up with one rosary, but I’m just thankful to have that one. Now, I just need to decide whether to keep it for myself or to give it as a gift to someone.

The next stop on the pilgrimage was the concentration camp at Auschwitz. I was anticipating this to be very difficult emotionally, but was surprised to find out different. I have to say that the movies I’ve seen of the Holocaust effect me way more because you actually see the evil. At Auschwitz, though it was sad, the evil was no longer felt. In talking with my friends about our experiences there, we all agreed that visiting Auschwitz gave us motivation to fight for the innocent through the prolife movement. Everyone says, “Remember Auschwitz. Don’t let it happen again,” but it is happening again, and on a horrifically larger scale! I’m in no way trying to diminish was happened at Auschwitz, but we must realize that the evil that happened there didn’t just go away. It has re-manifested itself in a new form. Every day 4,000 babies are brutally killed in the United States alone. Every single day!! Our tour guide at Auschwitz kept stressing how they organized death at Auschwitz, it was a giant killing factory with every little detail sorted out. Welcome to the Aborted States of America…planned parenthood and other abortion clinics are the organized, structured, killing factories today. While at Auschwitz, people kept asking, “How did the people in town not know? How could they go about their lives normally, pretending this wasn’t happening down the street?” Well, I would pose the same question to every American citizen that drives past the planned parenthood death camps where innocent children are being brutally murdered every day. Where is the justice? When will we stand up for what is right? When will we say, “Stop killing just so you may live as you wish!”?

…After Auschwitz, we travelled to Krakow, checked into the hotel and got some rest for the evening. The next day we explored around Krakow. We went to the Cathedral where Pope John Paul II was consecrated Bishop, which also houses the remains of St. Hedwig. We saw the university where both Copernicus and John Paul II (formerly Karol Wojtyla) studied. We saw the trumpeter play from a window at the top of a church steeple. We got a lot of souvenirs really, really cheap. We went for gourmet hot chocolate…I had Rose Milk Chocolate, it smelled

and tasted like roses!

That afternoon, we went to the Shrine of Divine Mercy. I was so overjoyed to be walking the same grounds that St. Faustina walked! We prayed the Divine Mercy Chaplet at 3:00 in the convent chapel. It was led by one of the sisters from St. Faustina’s order. After the chaplet, I venerated a relic from St. Faustina in front of the tomb that has her remains, I wish I could have stayed praying there forever! We then received a beautiful talk on Divine Mercy from one of the other sisters, and had confession and Mass in the new Church there. After Mass, I bought so many religious souvenirs and gifts it is not even funny!! It was so cheap though!!!

Later that evening, which happened to be St. Valentine’s Day, three of my girl friends and I went out on the town together. We had fun being girly-girls, taking black and white pictures in a beautiful, snow-laden park full of trees, light poles and benches. Then we went and had authentic polish cuisine, where we watched a bunch of smelly, not-so-hygienic, but really cute middle aged polish couples dance to awkward polish disco music. It was a Valentines Day that will not soon be forgotten!

The next morning we had Mass at the Cathedral in Krakow and departed for Gaming. Along the way, we stopped at Wadovice, the hometown of Pope John Paul II where he lived until he was 18!! We toured his old family apartment, which in now a museum. We also enjoyed Papa Cakes, a dessert that him and his friends would devour after exams as kids…after he became Pope and told that story, they renamed the dessert in his honor! I spent an eternity praying at different chapels in the Church there, where he was baptized and received his first communion. I had the honor of kissing his baptismal font, a practice one of my professors encouraged us to do as a way to remember our own baptismal promises. After the sweet visit to JPII’s hometown, we departed for Gaming.

Our Lady of Czetochowa, pray for us.
St. Maximillian Kolbe, pray for us.
St. Faustina, pray for us.
Pope John Paul II, pray for us.

Czech It Out! [Prague]

Three weekends ago was our first free weekend to travel that was not a school sponsored trip. As I mentioned in the last blog post, blind obedience was becoming a major theme in my life, and it greatly affected my travel plans! One of my roomates & I ended up forming a travel group with three of our other friends, and we were going to travel to Prague, Czech Republic. We truly were practicing the virtue of blind obedience because we had absolutely no part in the planning, we were just going along for the ride, letting the Lord surprise us with whatever He had planned. Well, He definately surprised us! Midway through the week we discovered that it was going to cost over $100 to get to Prauge because all of the ISE buses were filled up (pretty much half of Franciscan was travelling to Prauge that weekend lol) and we would have to buy point to point train tickets. So, in the course of like two or three days we heard that we might be going to one of the following places instead: Budapest, Hungary; London, England; Graz, Austria. In the meantime, two of the people decided to join another group and we gained one more friend to make a total of four of us. We finally decided that we were going to spend the weekend in Graz. Then, late Wednesday night we heard that all of the hostels in Graz were full, so Graz was off, and to top it off our fourth travel partner backed out. We needed to leave Thursday night or Friday morning to get wherever we were going, but we had no place to go! My roomate and I finally caved with the blind obedience thing...we stayed up until 3:30 AM trying to find places we wanted to go that actually had hostels available. It was a futile effort, as we found absolutely nothing & only kept seeing advertisements for Prauge, which just seemed cruel. We decided to just trust in the Lord again & continue striving for blind obedience...

So, Thursday roles around & its like 11:40 AM...there's 20 minutes until Mass & the two of us are sitting there talking about how we were starting to get really stressed out about the whole blind obedience thing, not knowing where we were possibly going to go the next day. Suddenly, we hear a knock at the door...It's Andrew, our planner, standing there with this huge grin on his face as he says, "I just found the cheap way to Prauge, but we have to leave in 3 hours!" Ahh - there was suddenly this rush of joy & adrenaline, which came in handy as Erica & I only had two hours to pack & run to lunch before we had to be at our next class. I've never packed so fast in my life!!! Anyway, so a few hours pass and we find ourselves running the normally 45 minute walk to the train station, when I normally would have been in my Principles of Biblical Study class...talk about Blind Obedience! That theme continued throughout the whole weekend too, as the cheap way to Prauge is not necessarily the easy way...luckily we ended up in a group of 12 people, because it took like 5 brains put together to figure out the train connections. And, we still missed a train, despite our best efforts at dodging people while running like mad men through the Vienna train station! The beauty of all of this, though, is that Erica and I were peacefully content through the whole thing, laughing everything off and saying "blind obedience, guys...blind obedience!" :) I'm not sure if our travel companions found this entertaining or just plain annoying, haha.

We finally arrived at the Prague train station at 3:30 AM and the entire city was deserted, only a bag lady and a couple shady figures walking around the station. Andrew, Erica and I split off from the rest of the travel group so we could head to our hostel and get a couple hours of shut-eye before starting our exploration of the city. As we were trying to figure out how to leave the train station and get to the hostel, the Lord sent a nice man that smelled like oranges to point us in the direction of the nearest tram stop. We waited for awhile in order to catch the last tram of the night that would take us right near our hotel…but when it came, we were kicked off because we didn’t have tickets and it was not possible to buy them onbard…now we know! So, we had to walk back into the train station and wait for the metro to open at 4:45 AM, but we eventually made it to our hostel.

Our hostel, by the way, was a hidden gem! If you are ever going to Prague, I would highly recommend staying at The Prague Lion. For 10 Euro/night, we had our own mini-apartment that had a kitchen/dining area and a sleeping area. We also pretty much had a private bathroom because there were only two rooms on our floor that had to share the bathroom, and the other one was empty! The best part about it is that it was really clean! I forgot my shower shoes and it didn’t even bother me…it was probably more clean than my bathroom at home.

The city itself is not so clean! The cobblestone streets & sidewalks are literally coated in slippery, black grease. I’m guessing it is probably from all of the vehicles running on diesel. Worse than the slime on the streets, the effects of communism are obviously still felt very strongly in the city. An immense amount of graffiti showed the brokenness of the people and how they have tried to deal with the suffering they endured under Communism. The poor condition of many structural things, such as the pedestrian underpasses, also showed how their economy is still trying to recover from Communism. Despite all of this, Prague was a very beautiful city, both in regards to architecture and ambiance. I think, in a way, what made it so charming was that after finally being able to look past the devastation and suffering, the rich history of the people began to come alive, a history of faith and hope that was truly inspiring.

I even met a future saint while I was in Prague: St. Martin of Czech (well, thats the name my friends and I gave him anyway)! Fr. Martin, the secretary of the Bishop of Prauge, happens to love Franciscan University and has been praying for us every week for 5 years! He heard that several groups of students were coming to the city for the weekend, and he received special permission to hang out with us for the day leading a tour (in fact, the Bishop sent him in his name) & he worked it out to say Holy Mass for us in the Infant of Prauge Church. He was so humble and so holy, and kept telling us to pray to the little big King (the infant of Prague)! We were all so blessed. :)

The train ride home from Prauge was also an interesting experience. We were suppose to leave late Sunday morning, but Erica and I ended up coming back Saturday night with another group of students that also took the train. Right as it was time to go board the train, we discovered that we had the wrong tickets...but thankfully we were able to get them exchanged last minute! Once we got on the train though, all 14 of us had to sit in the aisle of the train for at least 30 minutes. All of the seating cabins had empty seats, but were being hogged by people that were sprawled out sleeping. As we were sitting in the aisle, the police came through and gave us a scare, but then they went and got the conductor who made room for us in the cabins. Erica and I, as well as two other Franciscan students, ended up being smushed in a cabin with a couple from Germany. They were very nice, but took up the entire baggage rack because the man was trying out for the Viennese Orchestra and had two tubas with him! We layed the seats down so that we could all sprawl out, but there were six people and two back packs all trying to squeeze onto what amounted to a double bed. That was interesting and smelly!! I don't think AWKWARD even describes it well enough. Part way through the night as we were trying to sleep, the train started to detach because our car was going to Vienna and other cars were going to Budapest. It was the most creepy feeling every because we started rolling backwards the way we had just come and then it felt like we just stopped and weren't being attached to another train! All of us in our cabin broke out into hysterical laughter and we just couldn't stop...oh what a fun evening it was!

So that, in a nutshell, was my Prague experience.

Following My Shepherd

I've finally found time to update my blog & catch you all up with what's going on over here - Praise be to God!!

So, the Lord has been working beautifully in my life these past few weeks...I don't even know where to start! For the first time in a really, really long time I am peacefully content, not complacent or struggling for understanding or healing, but truly content with what the Lord is doing in my life at this moment. I guess it all started with the women's weekly Bible study led by the T.O.R. Sisters here in Gaming. We are following the Ignatius exercises for praying with Scripture, and each week we are given a grace to pray for and a set of about five passages to read that have a common theme.

God provides for me - this was the theme for the first week, and I was to pray for the grace of a deeper trust in the Father's care for me. In the first reading (Luke 12:22-32), the Lord told me to not be anxious about anything & to not worry...just seek His Kingdom & He would be pleased to give me what I need. The other reading that really touched me from that week was Psalm 23 - The Divine Shepherd.

"The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want; he makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul."

This verse gave me greater insight about myself - something necessary for me to understand the father's care for me. First of all, being called a sheep by the Lord is in no way a flattering complement. Sheep are not the brightest bulbs in the socket, if you know what I'm saying. But listen to this - he makes me lie down in green pastures. Why wouldn't I want to lie down in a green pasture??? Suddenly, the light bulb flickered in this little brain of mine:

I kept struggling to understand why the Lord was leading me down such a path of confusion, marked with contradictary road signs, but He was not the source & reason for my confusion, I was! All along, the Lord has been trying to lead my soul to a lush green pasture, but I am a very stubborn sheep. Instead of submitting my will to His, allowing Him to gently lead my soul, I was bucking Him every step of the way. The confusion was a fruit of my distrust, my constant questioning and trying to figure out the big picture instead of submitting to His will at the present moment. I realized that I don't need to understand why the Lord is urging my soul to do or not do a particular thing at the moment...it will all make sense at the proper time. I just need to trust Him, and humbly follow Him.

While I was singing praise & worship songs in front of the Eucharist a week or so later, the Lord blessed me with a beautiful image of blind obedience that confirmed this message in my heart. I was a blind sheep grazing in a pasture. I was just nibbling the grass and I couldn't see anything around me. Though I could not see if there was impending danger, I did not fear. Though I was doing the most mundane of all things (nibbling on grass), I did not curiously seek to go off and find excitement. Why?? Because I felt the presence of my Shepherd, and I trusted Him. I knew that He truly loved me. He willed my good at all times and would protect me from harm. Most of all, I knew that nibbling the grass in His presence would bring me more happiness than going off to find my own excitement in life.

Since then, blind obedience has been a constant theme in my life. In fact, due to the pursuit of this virtue, I have some very entertaining travel stories to tell, but I'll have to get to that in the next blog post!

God bless!

Skiing the Eastern Alps of Austria

On Friday I successfully skied the Eastern Alps of Austria & I still have the muscle aches two days later to prove it!!!! It was amazing!! Words cannot describe how awesome it was...one of the runs I went on started at the very top of the mountain and had a look out….it was glorious! After seeing that, I totally understand why the Transfiguration took place on a mountaintop! It was so incredible, I wanted to buy a postcard to show the view, but none of the postcards had a picture of the lookout over that mountaintop…I’m guessing a picture just can't capture the glory. It was amazing though, the clouds were way below us and you could just see a few ragged peaks sticking up parallel to us & the sky was beautiful blue even though you couldn’t see that from down on the ground. It was like the view from an airplane but 10 times better. Going down that run from the top was a little intense, but not too bad. There were definitely some steep parts even though it was an easy level run, but there were other flatter parts that allowed you to regain control and compose yourself before the next steep part. I did pretty good skiing, I didn’t go on anything more than a blue (the easy level). But by the end of the night, the blue run from the mountaintop was pretty much a red run with jumps b/c they don’ have any artificial snow, so the snow doesn’t pack down. Instead, when a lot of traffic has been on the run, the snow packs into big, loose piles and ruts. So when you hit them you either wipe out and snow flies everywhere or you do a jump off of them…it was intense but I only wiped out a total of 3 times! I think I did pretty good. =)