My experience of Magis concluded first with a concert at a church in Piotrków Trybunalski where my experiment, along with one other singing group and then a dancing one, performed with the band Mocni i Docnu (Strong in the Spirit). It was so much fun and the church was filled with Polish folks and the spirit of love was so radiant in the praise and worship. Then, we pilgrims moved onto Czestachova where we made a small pilgrimage to Jasna Gora, a beautiful and enormous monastery that holds the painting of Our Lady of Czestachova (Also known as “Black Madonna”). That was a very surreal experience. At one point in the evening I was sitting alone on the grass in front of the monastery after most people had gone inside for a prayer vigil. I was just singing to myself the song “He Loves Us” when a boy who I thought couldn’t hear me started singing with me. He didn’t make eye contact with me but just began singing the song too and we finished it together and that made me feel so special and so touched!! He shared that he was from Singapore and invited me inside to the vigil – what a kind lad. It is moments like this..
After our last Mass, all of the pilgrims proceeded to board trains to Kraków, where we would meet Papa Francesco!! (OKay, so no one actually met him, but it’s probably the closest I’ll ever get!). We stuffed onto the trains like a sleeping bag into its case, and that was the start to a week of adventure, anxiety, crowds, sweatiness, stickiness, crowds, hunger, laughter, uncertainty beyond compare, and may I mention more crowds!! There are much to many details to include about World Youth Day (in Polish it is Światowych Dni Młodzieży) but the only way to imagine it is to truly experience it. For me, much of the time was spent in disbelief and awe, and so I can’t imagine trying to explain these abstract and emotional experiences.. To be a witness to ~3 million Catholics & Christians from almost all of the countries in the world come together in one beautiful city and country and celebrate the Eucharist together is, well, you can imagine that I struggle to find words to adequately say anything about the experience at all.
We stayed the nights at a school about a two hour train ride outside of Kraków sleeping on a gymnasium floor – it was a wonderful and humbling experience. I did not experience the discomfort of this pilgrimage in a negative way; I actually really enjoyed the simple living and not having so many choices to make. Each evening there were fun activities happening in the square, but we usually had to run to the station to catch the train back to our host parish. The train station experiences were nothing short of intense – folks had to push and shove to get on, and the schedule as well as the duration of the trains would vary. It created a lot of anxiety and stress in many people, but I think strengthened my understanding of pilgrimage. This is only my one perspective though, and I am sure the situation was either smoother or more difficult for other folks around the city!
On the last day, we were celebrating Mass at Campus Misericordiae (Field of Mercy) where we had just slept the night before. It was not very hot, but because the sun was showing no mercy, there were pilgrims all around us dropping from heat exhaustion (I don’t joke – we saw at least five people get carried off in stretchers because they were no longer coherent). I decided during the Eucharist to walk around with an umbrella and hold it over people who were waiting in lines to receive (they were everywhere) and it was so nice to be able to offer some kind of refuge even for just a moment, and also to hear the many thank yous that came through in a variety of languages. I thought it was so much fun to go around even though I may have only helped these people for 10 seconds.. The sun had nothing on me!! Little moments like these throughout the week really stuck out as unifying, especially among such diverse crowds where often times the only form of communication is through eyes and smiles and silly hand gestures.
Maybe it is important to ask, how have I changed because of this experience? Yes the details are so important, but if I am not a different person than I was before, it was quite a waste of time (right??). The trick is that though I know I am different, it is so difficult to put how I feel or what I’ve experienced into words. I can say I’ve learned so much, though.
The world is massive, but it is also small. I am careful to draw generalizations about a human experience because we each experience humanity through our identities. However, we really are interconnected, interdependent. It is quite frankly the most profoundly beautiful realization to come in contact with.
