Back from Poland

Hello All!! Poland was a beautiful country, we saw so much in so little time. Thursday night we drove through the night to find ourselves at the Shrine of Our Lady of Czestehowa, which is a beautiful image of Our Lady done by the evangelist Luke. My roommate had something very insightful to say about our Lady, that Our Lord came to this earth fully dependent on His mother, resting in her amrs as an infant and in death He is again laid in the arms of Our Lady. In the same way, we are to entrust ourselves to Our Lady in imitation of Christ, what better way to glorify Him than to give ourselves to the same tender and loving mother that He gave himself to as a man. We were able to have mass there and it was such a privilege. In leaving a little old nun, who I could not understand, handed me a stack of prayer cards with a huge smile on her face at seeing a group of young people celebrating the most holy eucharist with great faith. It was beautiful.

Following that we made our way to Auschwitz. Honestly I feel a bit emotionally numb because it was a lot to take it. It is so incomprehensible to my own experience that even being there was hard to imagine. It was difficult to not think of it as some staged museum, but the place where so many people suffered and died. Various things made many impressions on me, but something significant was that the prisoners built the very buildings that contained them and looking at them you can tell. These bricks were laid by the very hands they were meant to contain. Going through we saw various exhibitions of the items of the prisoners and before going in I was not sure how I'd react, but I found myself surprised by hope. To think that everything, everything, every single hair on their body could be stripped of them, yet the Nazi could not take away one thing, one's inner self. That had to be given away by the person. No matter what torture or circumstance a person can still choose their attitude and the option to love. THis is seen in the lives of so many, among them St. Maximilian Kolbe who was an amazing witness to the power of love. He loved his fellow prisoners unconditionally despite the circumstances and for them he gave his life. He took the place of a man who was arbitrarily chosen to starve to death because some prisoners had escaped. THis man ended up surviving the camp and was able to see Kolbe canonized. Further, Kolbe, after being in the starvation cell for over a week was still alive and by his great love was converting prisoners and officers. He did not die of starvation because after many days of his singing and praise and people converting their hearts to the love of Christ, he received a fatal injection in the heart.

I actually have to go, but I have many other reflections about Poland...for another time. It is midterm week and crunch time!!! I send much love