Being less than three months away from my wedding, I had no business jetting off to Europe in July 2016.
However, I had the privilege, with many others, of attending World Youth Day that summer. And with the city of Krakow hosting the event that year, I was drawn to the country of some of my favorite saints, who share my Polish roots: Pope St. John Paul II, St. Maximilian Kolbe, St. Faustina, St. Jadwiga and St. Edith Stein.
The Catholic faith is built on the wisdom that the human person is tactile; we are a people who desire to use our senses. I loved walking the streets where Pope St. John Paul II was a young priest, visiting the town where he was born, praying before his blood-stained cassock at the Divine Mercy Shrine, and hearing the same trumpet call from the bell tower of St. Mary’s Basilica that he heard many decades ago.
Yet the most memorable part of the pilgrimage was sunrise Mass celebrated by another pontiff, Pope Francis. After a 7-mile hike and an overnight camp, pilgrims were greeted by the beaming Holy Father proclaiming, “Dear young people, you have come to Krakow to meet Jesus.” Pope Francis went on to preach on the theme of mercy, urging us: “People may laugh at you because you believe in the gentle and unassuming power of mercy. But do not be afraid. Think of the motto of these days: ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy’ (Mt 5:7).”
God is always waiting
This particular World Youth Day coincided with the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, which the pope had surprised everyone by calling for the year before. Held in the home of St. Faustina, visionary of Divine Mercy, it was instrumental in conveying to a rising generation the field-hospital nature of the Church so central to Pope Francis’ vision.
“God is waiting for you! God is a Father and he is always waiting for us!” he told the 2.5 million young people gathered there, urging us to seek mercy in the concrete form of confession. “It is so wonderful to feel the merciful embrace of the Father in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, to discover that the confessional is a place of mercy, and to allow ourselves to be touched by the merciful love of the Lord who always forgives us!”
A continuous thread
This message of mercy formed a continuous thread throughout Pope Francis’ papacy. And indeed, the message of seeking to understand one another, to extend a hand of mercy and to learn to accept mercy ourselves is one that the world desperately needs.
On the eve of entering my vocation to married life, it was a message that I desperately needed, too. And I can tell you that the message is one I still need on a regular basis in my hidden life as a mom of six little ones. Don’t we all need a reminder to soften our hearts and see the humanity in the other that God has placed in our midst?
As all World Youth Days surely are, being surrounded by thousands upon thousands of other young Catholics in that field in Krakow was a beautiful experience of the universal Church. It’s one thing to imagine the expansiveness of the Church, another to witness it. It was an experience that counteracted the loneliness of modern life — another of Pope Francis’ themes — and it was a bit of what I imagine heaven to be like. It was also a tangible expression of the youth of the Church, a Church committed to modeling mercy to our hardened world.
The Holy Spirit chose Pope Francis as the herald of this message; I will always remember him as the pope of mercy.
