With the strength of faith

It was a visit full of symbolic gestures. A pilgrim in Poland, following in the footsteps of John Paul II, Benedict XVI stopped to commemorate the heroes of the insurrection of the Ghetto and of the Warsaw Rising in 1944, monuments of the tragic history of the Polish capital. Then the masses in Pilsudski Square and in Blonie Park in Krakow, the visits to the sanctuaries of Jasna Góra at Czestochowa and of the Divine Mercy at Krakow, the homage to the birthplace of his predecessor, Wadowice, and the entrance on foot to the concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Ever since his arrival in Poland on 25 May, the Pope established an extraordinary rapport with the Polish institutions, with the clergy, with his Christian brothers of other confessions, with religious, with seminarians, with the representatives of the movements and of consecrated life, with the young, and also thanks to his gestures of affection for the survivors of the Nazi death camps. We present a brief chronicle of the Pope’s visit (cf. SIR Europe 38/2006). PILGRIMS IN HISTORY . “Together with you I wish to raise a hymn of gratitude to Providence, which has permitted me to be with you as a pilgrim today”: Benedict XVI chose to use the same words that had been pronounced by John Paul II 27 years ago during his first pastoral visit to Poland. Benedict did so during mass in the historic Pilsudski Square in Warsaw on the morning of 26 May, before a throng of 300,000 people who defied the cold and the driving rain to be there with the Pope. Those who received Communion from the hands of Benedict XVI also included the mother of Father Popieluszko, murdered by the Communist secret police in 1984. “Twenty-seven years ago – said the Pope – in this place, John Paul said: Poland has become in our time a land of particularly responsible witness. I beg you, cultivate this rich heritage of faith transmitted to you by previous generations, the heritage of the thought and of the service of that great Pole, John Paul II. Remain strong in the faith. Hand it down to your children. Bear witness to the grace you have received so abundantly through the Holy Spirit in your history”. And it was just in reflecting on history that Benedict had, on the previous day, 25 May, recurred to the theme of the Church’s examination of conscience for the errors of the past. “Beware – he had said on meeting the clergy – of the claim of arrogantly setting yourself up as judges of past generations, who lived in other times and in other circumstances. You need humble sincerity not to deny the sins of the past, but nor should you indulge in facile accusations in the absence of real proofs or by ignoring the different conditions of those times. In asking forgiveness for the evil committed in the past, we must also recall the good that was done…”. TO SEMINARIANS, RELIGIOUS AND THE MOVEMENTS. “We must devote diligent care to the development of our faith, so that it really pervades all our attitudes, thoughts, actions and intentions”: that was the Pope’s recommendation to men and women religious, seminarians and representatives of the movements and of consecrated life, whom he met at Jasna Gora. “Faith has a place not only in states of mind and in religious experiences, but first of all in thought and action, in daily work, in the struggle against our weaknesses, in community life and in apostolate, since only faith can ensure that our life be really imbued with the power of God himself. Faith can always bring us back to God, even when our sin does us harm”. At the centre of the address of Benedict XVI – pronounced before his transfer from the sanctuary where the Black Madonna is venerated at Czestochowa to Krakow – was the Virgin Mary, who “with feminine delicacy supported the faith of Peter and the Apostles in the Cenacle, and now supports my faith and your faith”. “Preserve in your heart the primacy of your consecrated life”, Benedict exclaimed, exhorting the religious to keep alive the “enthusiasm” of their novitiate and never “lose their original zeal”. Benedict also had words of encouragement for seminarians: “The world and the Church have a need for priests, for holy priests”, and words of advice for the movements: “Believe in the grace of God that accompanies you; bring it into the living fabric of the Church and in a particular way wherever the priest, the male or female religious cannot reach…”. IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF JOHN PAUL II. The third Polish day (27 May) of Benedict XVI began with memories of John Paul II. It was spent in the town of Wadowice where Karol Wojtyla was born. There the Pope also met the civic population in Rynek Square. “I have arrived with great emotion in the birthplace of my great predecessor, the Servant of God John Paul II, in the city of his childhood and youth – said Benedict XVI -. I wished to stop on my journey just here, at Wadowice, in the places where his faith was born and matured, to pray together with you; I pray that he may soon be elevated to the glory of the altars”. In particular the Pope recalled that John Paul II, when he referred to the years of his childhood, often recurred to the baptismal font. On the road to Krakow, the Pope stopped at the tomb of St. Faustina Kowalska in the Sanctuary of the Divine Mercy, where some 800 invalids awaited him. “You, dear invalids, are the most united to the cross of Christ and the most eloquent witnesses of God’s mercy… It’s you who, saying in the silence of your heart: “Jesus, I trust in you”, teach us that there is no deeper faith, no more fervent hope, and no more ardent love than the faith, hope and love of those who in their distress place themselves in the safe hands of God”. THE HOUSE, THE ROCK AND THE YOUNG. “Don’t be afraid of building your house on the rock which is Christ. Don’t let yourselves be paralysed by the fear of failure. Don’t be discouraged by the experience of thwarted desires or vanished dreams. Don’t be afraid of building your life on Christ!”, said Benedict to the young. His meeting with Polish youth, in Blonie Park at Krakow, was a long and passionate exhortation to them to build their own house on the rock that is Jesus, because “God the Creator, who imbues the heart of a young person with an immense yearning for happiness, will not abandon him in the arduous construction of the house we call life”. “Building on the rock, said the Pope, in his address to the young, means “building on Christ and with Christ, on a foundation that is called crucified love. Have nostalgia for Christ, as the foundation of life! For he who rests everything on the crucified love of the Word that became flesh cannot lose”. If in the construction of your house you should meet those who despise the foundation on which you are building it, don’t be discouraged! A strong faith must go through trials. A living faith must always grow… Christ is fully conscious also of everything that may reduce to ruins the happiness of man. So don’t be surprised by setbacks, whatever they be! Don’t be discouraged! Having built on the rock means being able to count of the consciousness that in difficult moments there is a strength inside you on which you can reply”. Benedict also addressed the young on the following day, Sunday 28 May, during the recitation of the Regina Caeli: “Yesterday you brought me as a gift the book of testimonials: ‘I don’t take drugs, I’m drug-free’. I ask you as a father: be faithful to these words. What’s at stake here is your life and your freedom. Don’t let yourself be enslaved by the illusions of this world”. THE EXERTION OF WAYFARERS. We are wayfarers on this earth: that’s the message that Benedict XVI entrusted to the Polish people at the final mass of his visit to the land of John Paul II. “The fundamental truth about the life and destiny of man” is enclosed in the reply to the question contained in the Acts of the Apostles, when Jesus ascended to heaven: “Why do you stand looking into heaven?” (1:11). “The question – explained the Pope – refers to two attitudes connected with two realities in which the life of man is inscribed: that of earth and that of heaven. On the one hand, “we are on the earth”, here “we try to do good in the extensive fields of our daily existence, both in the material and in the spiritual sphere; in mutual relationships, in the building up of the human community, and in culture”. “It’s here, on earth, “we experience the exertion of wayfarers travelling towards our goal along tortuous paths, amid hesitations, tensions and uncertainties, but also in the profound conviction that sooner or later this journey will come to an end”. The earth, however, is not our final destination. “We are called, while we remain on earth, to fix our gaze on heaven, and to focus our attention, our thoughts and our heart on the ineffable mystery of God”. THE HORROR OF Auschwitz-Birkenau . “To speak in this place of horror, in this place where unprecedented mass crimes were committed against God and man is almost impossible”, said Benedict XVI, indeed “particularly difficult and harrowing for a Christian, for a Pope who comes from Germany”: so Benedict XVI began his address in memory of the victims of the concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he went before his return to the Vatican. Faced by “the endless line of those who suffered and were put to death here”, what prevails is an “attitude of silence”. “Yet our silence becomes in turn a plea for forgiveness and reconciliation, a plea to the living God never to let this happen again”. Just as John Paul II visited the same camp on 7 June 1979, as a “son of the Polish people”, so Benedict XVI felt it his duty to go: a duty “before the truth and the just due to all who suffered here, a duty before God, for me to come here as the successor of John Paul II and as a son of the German people”: a son of that people – continued Benedict XVI – over which a gang of criminals rose to power by false promises of future greatness and the recovery of the nation’s honour, prominence and prosperity, but also through terror and intimidation, with the result that our people was used and abused as a tool of their craze for destruction and power”. Just before the Pope’s address, in which Benedict XVI twice cited the Shoah , prayers in various languages were recited, while the chief rabbi of Poland Michael Schudrich, who had been assaulted in Warsaw a few hours beforehand, sang the Kaddish, the Hebrew song of the dead. THE MANDATE . “I wish to conclude this visit of mine with the words of the apostle Paul that have accompanied my pilgrimage in the land of Poland: ‘Be watchful, stand firm in your faith, be courageous, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love” (1 Cor !6:13).