Pain, embarrassment on the way to see Our Lady of Czestochowa

When I announced that I wished to learn Polish, Polish friends assured me that this was impractical, impossible and stupid. Then they rallied round to help. As a result, I am able to navigate Polish shops and restaurants (“And my husband would like a large beer”) although not the regional bus system, as I suspected even before a pilgrimage to Częstochowa.

Częstochowa is a town in southern Poland, famous for the Black Madonna in Jasna Góra, its Paulist monastery. The Black Madonna of Częstochowa is an icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary holding the Infant Jesus. In the icon, she gestures to her Son, and He blesses the viewer. Unlike any other, this Madonna has three violent scars torn along the right side of her face.

The icon was brought to Jasna Góra in 1382, but its origins are shrouded in legend. One delightful story is that it was originally painted by St. Luke on the Holy Family’s own table top. The scars are attributed to an attack on the monastery in the 1400s by Hussites, followers of the religious reformer Jan Huss. In one account, a robber stabbed the Madonna twice in the face and, as he struck her a third time, he fell to the ground in a fatal agony.

Our Lady of Częstochowa is also credited with the lifting of the siege of Jasna Góra in 1655 during the Swedish invasion that devastated Poland. As thanksgiving, the king of Poland proclaimed Mary Queen of Poland by crowning the Black Madonna. Today the Black Madonna is a symbol of, and beloved object of, Polish Catholic devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Over the centuries there have been countless Polish pilgrimages to the icon and now, thanks to contemporary transportation, Catholics come from all over the world to visit the Black Madonna.

I hope the majority does not attempt to arrange its trip in pidgin-Polish at the Kraków Głowny bus station.

“Does Madam speak English?” I asked in pidgin-Polish.

“Only a little,” said the ticketseller in Polish.

“Okay,” I said. “My husband and I would like to go to Częstochowa today.”

The ticket-seller responded to this news in rapid Polish.

“Excuse me,” I said meekly, and incidentally przepraszam is very difficult to say, “I don’t understand.”

The ticket-seller sighed and wrote 11:20 on a piece of paper.

“Yes, please. Two.”

The price seemed suspiciously small.

“And we also wish to return to Kraków today.”

“Only one way,” said the lady in English, and in my cowardice, I did not ask why.

The queue outside the bus astonished us, for it was so big, so youthful and so pushy. When the door opened a hundred twentysomethings with baggage and a nun attempted to get on all at once. But those who had not yet bought tickets were expelled with shouts, and so my husband and I pushed forward and won seats. I felt sorry for those who stood for two hours, and impressed by their devotion to Our Lady of Częstochowa until we reached a town called Zawiercie where most of the young people got out. A traffic jam just outside Częstochowa led those remaining to whip out their phones to apologize to parents for lateness.

Two hours later we arrived in Częstochowa with a poor opinion of the highway and the startling realization that pilgrimage sites are not just pilgrimage sites but thriving communities with lives of their own. Seeing “Częstochowa” blazed across a car dealership made me blink. (Does Lourdes…?) The bus station, incidentally, is not within sight of Jasna Góra.

“Does Madam speak English?”

“Przepraszam, nie.”

“Dobrze. My husband and I would like to return to Kraków today.”

“There’s no bus.”

“There’s no bus!?”

Fortunately, a trip to the adjacent train station revealed that there was a train, at least as far as Katowice, where we could transfer, so we walked to Jasna Góra secure in the knowledge we would not have to sleep in it. It was four in the afternoon and growing dark. A long avenue reached forward and embraced the monastery, and we hurried along it, hoping we would be in time to see the icon.

The silence and emptiness of the grounds outside the monastery surprised me. Although it was the end of October, I expected large crowds of other pilgrims. Instead, a statue of Cardinal Wyszyński knelt alone in the chilly dusk. We navigated the complex and found ourselves in a huge basilica just as a voice began to say Mass in a large chapel to the left. We looked in and saw, over the high altar, the famous Black Madonna of Częstochowa.

We stood with the little congregation and prayed as well as we could with the Polish Mass. All the pains and embarrassments of the journey were worth being there. Indeed, they were something to offer in thanksgiving.