I am back rejuvenated and full of blessings with many adventures to tell. This trip was so compacted with activity and I was a bit disappointed because I prefer leisurely trips where perhaps I don’t see all the sites, but the ones that I do I enjoy to the max. The first day was a bit of a blur with so many things on the agenda, but slowly the trip got a little more relaxed. My favorite time was my days in Poland. Kraków is beautiful and not completely polluted by tourists, touring the city and driving through the naturally rich country was a dream. Getting to visit the place where Saint John Paul II attended seminary, was ordained and later lived as a cardinal was surreal. Then getting to tour the Wawel Cathedral (the place where he celebrated his first Mass) was like stepping back in history. A few days later we continued to step into the saint’s life by touring Wadowice, the city that watched him grow. I knew some details about his life, but by visiting these holy sites I learned so much more about him and the new information made me understand and love him more. I didn’t know that Saint John Paul II lived next door to the parish he attended. His house (now a museum) is still next door to the Basilica of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The tour begins in the room where he was born and takes us through a progressive walk into his life, death and sanctification. To be in the bedroom where he was born, the same room he would later share with his dad was unreal. As I was trying to get myself to believe where I was my eyes fell on an a framed image of a guardian angel - the same image that used to hang in my bedroom as a child! I was hoping to find a reproduction of the painting but was unsuccessful.
House he lived as a priest.
His parish growing up.
The baptismal font where he was baptized.
In another room there’s a picture of him as a child the day he celebrated his First Holy Communion and he looks extremely sad, since only three months before the picture was snapped his mother passed away. He was just a boy. After his mom died his dad took him and his brother to the parish next door, he pointed to an image of the Virgin Mary and told both of them, “She’s your Mother now.” Now I understand why he had such a strong devotion to Mary, so much so that during his assassination attempt he attributed Mary’s intercession to his fast recovery. That’s getting ahead of the story though. Three years after losing his Mother he lost his brother – these losses were deep wounds that slowly directed his life towards the priesthood. However, it wasn’t until his father died that he finally gave up on his dreams of acting and poetry to enter the seminary. His life was marked by loss, but his faith unwavered finding refuge and strength only in God.
Pictures inside his childhood home.
He as a babe with his mom.
When we got to the room depicting his funeral the lump in my throat gave way and I had to try really hard not to sob. Such a life of a saint! The thing that caused the tears to come was learning that he (like me) felt that God came to him in the wind. Every time he prayed and most needed to know God was listening, to know that God was with him he felt the caresses of the wind! In fact, when he died it is recorded that during the funeral mass there was a presence of wind, but a nice, warm wind. A wind that closed the Lectionary that was placed on his coffin marking the end of his life on earth and his beginning in heaven. SMILE Later when I visited his home parish and got to celebrate Mass in the place were he and his family were parishioners I just couldn't believe God’s providence. There I was in the same place where a saint of my time was born! Seriously just writing about it makes me want to cry again!
This spot in a Franciscan parish is were he often came to pray.
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