An experience opposite to war

An invitation for you 🇵🇱

Sisters,

We’re all on pilgrimage.

As Zac Davis writes in America, “Our very lives are a pilgrimage. Our homes are in this world, but we are only here temporarily. Even within our four walls and our hometowns, we are guests on this Earth.”

But I wanted to extend an invitation to you to strike out on a pilgrimage with 30 of your new friends: come join the New Feminism Pilgrimage to Poland this October. Registration closes in two short months on June 30. Come worship in the hometown of Saint John Paul the Great on his feast day, view the Divine Mercy image with your own eyes, keep solemn presence at the place where St. Maximilian Kolbe and St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (aka Edith Stein) were martyred, and come experience this beautiful country.

I know that it’s a lot of money, and a lot of time off work. I know that you have a lot going on, some more obvious, tangible things like work deadlines and sick children and some harder heart-things that you’re wrestling with. Some things you bring up to Jesus in prayer and wonder if he can handle. I know that many of us open the news and shudder at stories of girls being kidnapped and brutalized and oppressed, girls across the world and girls down the street. And here I am, inviting you to places with gift shops and beer.

So…why?

Why go on pilgrimage when you can google photos of the Divine Mercy image? Why go on pilgrimage when you’re going to have to return to your shitty, soul-draining job? Why go on pilgrimage when the church is a broken institution that covers up sexual abuse? Why go on pilgrimage when you could go to Disney World instead? Why go on pilgrimage when it won’t end the war in Ukraine or give workers just wages or put a stop to the death penalty?

Because to do things in defiance to war and evil is to demonstrate a belief in Christ. Not in some kind of attempt at impression but in a tangible act of faith.

In Wendell Berry’s Hannah Coulter, Hannah and Nathan believe “there can be places in this world, and in human hearts too, that are opposite to war. There is a kind of life that is opposite to war, so far as this world allows it to be.”

We need to craft a life that is opposite to war. A place that has awareness of it and fights to end it, a place that looks evil in the eye and confronts it, but a place that is at its core built on the foundation of Christ’s love and not the devil’s sorrow.

To give in to the impulse of despair is to give into Satan, sister. Strong words, but I’m saying ‘em. And as my friend Alissa Molina says, “not today and not tomorrow either.”

We can advocate for an end to violence against girls and women WHILE celebrating the joyful resurrection of Christ, the fulfillment of his promises, the love that flows out of his very being. In fact, we must. That’s the only true thing to do.

I want to invite you to Poland not because it will solve all your problems, or the problems of the world. Newsflash: it won’t. I want to invite you to Poland because there have been times in my life where my belief in Christ was strengthened through a tangible yes, through a physical encounter, through seeing and touching and tasting and feeling.

Also, because it’s going to be really freaking cool.

Our itinerary:

Day 1: Explore Old Town, ditch the jet lag + get to know one another!

Day 2: Visit the Warsaw Uprising Museum to learn about the history of the city, as well as a museum focused on Fr. Jerzy Popieluszko, who was murdered by communist agents. We then visit the Niepokalanow Sanctuary and the Franciscan Monastery linked with St. Maximilian Maria Raymond Kolbe and travel to Czestochowa.

Day 3: Visit the Jasna Gora Monastery where we see the Treasury, the Knight’s Hall, the Refectory, the Basilica of the Holy Cross, and the Nativity of the Virgin Mary. The highlight of our visit will be a viewing of the famous icon of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa to which miraculous powers are attributed!

Day 4: St. John Paul the Great loved the mountains, so we swing by Zakopane for the Sanctuary of the Holy Virgin of Fatima, a chapel constructed in 1999 in gratitude for his assassination attempt before going on a cable car ride through the Tatra Mountains.

Day 5: We visit the famous chapel of St. Kinga and the underground world of chapels carved from salt in Wieliczka. We then travel to Krakow for the second half of our time together.

Day 6: A free day in Krakow to pray, rejuvenate, and explore one of Poland’s coolest cities.

Day 7: A short drive from Krakow brings us to Wadowice, JP2’s hometown, on his feast day. We’ll be able to see his childhood home, which is now a museum, as well as his favorite church—the Church of the Presentation of the Virgin Mary.

Day 8: Again, a short drive from Krakow will bring us to Auschwitz, the infamous concentration camp where 2 canonized saints were put to death. We’ll pay our respects to St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross and St. Maximilian Kolbe and receive a solemn tour of this historic site.

Day 9: We head to the Divine Mercy Center to see the famous Divine Mercy image and pray at St. Faustina’s former convent and tomb.

Day 10: Return home

Take some time to pray, request your PTO, and figure out if your mother-in-law can hang with your kids for a few days. Then hurry up + register, because time is running out (not in a sleazy salesperson way…I mean, we literally need to buy the group plane tickets so time is actually running out.)

See you in Warsaw!

In Him Through Her,

Claire