Going out to meet Christ

KRAKÓW – CZĘSTOCHOWA (140 KM) – 19 TO 31 JULY 2022

In July 2022 I was lucky enough to travel to Poland with the parish of Sant Mateu de la Guineueta.

Our first stop was Kraków. From there we walked through the beautiful Polish countryside until we reached the shrine of Jasna Góra, popularly known as Częstochowa, in the heart of the country. It is the Polish people’s “Montserrat”, a magnificent shrine where the icon of Our Lady of Częstochowa, patroness of Poland, is venerated.

The aim of our pilgrimage, of course, was to meet Christ and walk at his side through experiencing and learning about the Polish spirituality of St Maximilian Kolbe, St Faustina and, naturally, the great John Paul II. This contact with such a rich spirituality enriched us enormously, and I am sure that the visits to Wadowice, Auschwitz, Kalwaria and the shrine of Divine Mercy, which were incredibly edifying, have borne much fruit in us.

I have to say that the five-day march on the tarmac was a catechesis of life, with its joys, its hardships, its pains, its moments of friendship and companionship… As always, how good it is to walk together to meet Christ!

Personally, I would like to tell you how kind, self-sacrificing and charitable the Poles who welcomed us into their homes in Wieliczka were. I was in a group of ten boys who stayed in a house with a big garden. The family who hosted us was made up of a married couple, their two children and the cheerful grandmother, who so generously got up at five in the morning to serve us a hearty breakfast. The amazed comments you could hear among us were “I’ve never eaten so well”, “I’ve never seen so much food in one place!”, and so on. We were surprised to feel so welcomed and looked after by our Slavic hosts.

In conclusion, it was one of the most beautiful pilgrimages I have ever made, very well organised by the parish and by the diocese of Kraków, which helped us so much, and, above all, very good for the spirit.