Peace! This summer Sr. Jess had the opportunity to travel to Poland for World Youth Day, thanks to some generous benefactors. Please enjoy her reflections on the incredible experience!
This summer, I was gifted the opportunity to go to Poland for World Youth Day. The three words that will help me distill this beautiful trip are gift, gesture, and trust.
Gift: The whole pilgrimage was a gift! First, I spent a few relaxed and grace-filled days being the little adopted nun, daughter, and older sister of the Polish-American family that brought me to their family’s native home south of Krakow. The following week, I was hosted by two Resurrection Sisters in Krakow that could not have been more hospitable. My ethnic heritage is Polish, so this trip was a fulfillment of childhood dreams to see the land and faith that lies within my American family and identity. Every day, I woke up with a simple smile for God, saying, “thank you—today is a gift!”. Not only a gift for me, World Youth Day (all seven days of events, and all the pilgrimages leading up to and following it), is a gift to the Church and the world. The Father’s love, Jesus’ healing hand, and the Spirit’s fire were so tangible on the streets and in the smiles of HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of youth and young-at-heart gathered together in Poland.
Gesture: What a beautiful GESTURE of MERCY—that Pope Francis chose Krakow to be the home of World Youth Day 2016. Krakow is near the site of the Auschwitz concentration camps where the evil mass-murder of nearly 2 million Jews, Poles, and others took place during WWII. And in face of evil, see what MERCY God offers: first, the Saints, for Krakow is the seat of those Saints of Mercy, Pope John Paul II, Sr. Faustina, and Fr. Maximillian Maria Kolbe. The same Krakow was to be the site of World Youth Day 2016, during the Year of Mercy, where many (young) people would come to know God’s merciful touch through encounter with Him: in the sacraments, in their peers from countries all over the world, in the countless priests, religious, and consecrated walking the streets with them… In this one place, in this last century—we can see God’s gesture of MERCY that gives life, beauty, and healing. How EPIC!
Trust: I knew that this pilgrimage was supposed to be a lesson in trust. I consider myself pretty Type-A and a problem-solver type (ask my sisters), and yet my itinerary never had more than a few hours’ insight and I only had a few words of “polite” Polish to get by with. Yet, I was not traveling on my own initiative—this was God’s gift of an adventure to me. Example: the sisters with whom I stayed spoke less English than my Polish—yet with gestures of smiles and more (and more and more) food, a little help from Google translate, and persons who could translate that would sometimes help out, great charity and gratitude was communicated successfully.
So many stories to tell…I will let the pictures tell a few more. Please know of my prayers for you, in the city of Mercy… ~ Sr. Jess
