Below are some Beautiful videos by Ed Olszewski

Part 1 - The beginning of the Pilgrimage in Niepokalanow

Part 2 - Warsaw - tombs of Blessed Jerzy Popieluszko, a martyr, of Cardinal Wyszynski.

Mass at the Chapel of Mary of Divine Mercy at the Motherhouse of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy.

Part 3 - Vilnius - Home of the Original Divine Mercy Painting

Part 4 -Lichen and St Faustina's Birthplace

Jezu Ufam Tobie

From Stan Siok

As some of you may know, I recently returned from a two week grace-filled pilgrimage to Poland and Lithuania. While in Vilnius Lithuania, our pilgrimage group had the privilege of being able to venerate the original Divine Mercy image. In fact, we were blessed to have Mass said in front of this same image which is housed in the Sanctuary of Divine Mercy in Vilnius (see photos below)

The original image of Divine Mercy was painted by Eugeniusz Kazimirowski under the direction of St. Faustina herself. Fr. Sopocko, who was St. Faustina’s confessor in Vilnius made the arrangements to have this image painted. For more info on this image, please visit: http://www.faustina-message.com/image-merciful-jesus.htm

This original image has a rather tortuous history, and in fact had disappeared for some time after World War II….visit: http://www.faustina-message.com/first-image-merciful-jesus.htm for more info.

Later, I hope to share more info on this pilgrimage

Jezu, ufam Tobie

Stan

Divine Mercy Pilgrimage - Poland 2015

Karen Richard

For Beautiful Slide Show - click here

Transcript of Divine Mercy Pilgrimage - Poland 2015

Divine Mercy Pilgrimage

Poland & Lithuania 2015

May 1, 2015

May 1, 2015

May 2, 2015

May 3, 2015

May 4, 2015

May 5, 2015

May 6, 2015

May 7, 2015

May 8, 2015

May 9, 2015

May 10, 2015

May 11, 2015

May 12, 2015

May 13, 2015

May 14, 2015

Jezu Ufam Tobie

Niepokalanow Monastery

Also called the City of the Immaculate Mother of God was founded in 1927 by a Franciscan Friar by the name of Maximilian Kolbe.

The facility served as a home for the brothers, a minor seminary and a volunteer fire department.

Before the Second World War broke out, it was the largest monastery in the world, housing as many as 760 men.

The Knight of the Immaculate newsletter was also printed here, it had a press run of 750,000 copies a month.

On 17 February 1941, Maximilian Kolbe was arrested by the German Gestapo and held at the Pawiak prison. On 28 May 1941, he was transferred to Auschwitz as prisoner number 16670.

Maximilian Kolbe volunteered to take the place of Franciszek Gajowniczek, who had been selected to be starved to death, after he cried out, "My wife! My children!". Maximilian Kolbe died on August 14, 1941.

Maximilian Kolbe was canonized as a martyr by Pope John Paul II on 10 October 1982.

Warsaw, Poland

Blessed Jerzy Popieluszko

(14 September 1947 – 19 October 1984)

He was a priest who became associated with the opposition Solidarity trade union in communist Poland. He was murdered in 1984 by three agents of the internal intelligence agency, who were shortly thereafter tried and convicted of his murder.

He has been recognized as a martyr by the Roman Catholic Church, and was beatified on 6 June 2010 by Cardinal Angelo Amato on behalf of Pope Benedict XVI.

Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski

(3 August 1901 – 28 May 1981)

He is widely believed to be responsible for the survival of Polish Christianity under communism

.

Motherhouse of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy

Diary [10] - Then I heard these words:

Go at once to Warsaw; you will enter a convent there

.

Diary [14] - With great joy, I went to the chapel and asked Jesus: "Lord of this house, do You accept me? [...] Immediately I heard this voice:

I do accept; you are in My Heart

. When I returned from the chapel, Mother Superior asked first of all, "Well, has the Lord accepted you?" I answered, "Yes." "If the Lord has accepted, [she said] then I also will accept."

Vilnius, Lithuania

Diary [47] - After a while, Jesus said to me,

Paint an image according to the pattern you see, with the signature: Jesus, I trust in You. I desire that this image be venerated, first in your chapel, and [then] throughout the world

.

Diary [48] -

I promise that the soul that will venerate this image will not perish. I also promise victory over

[its]

enemies already here on earth, especially at the hour of death, I Myself will defend it as My own glory.

Diary [313] - Once, when I was visiting the artist [Eugene Kazimirowski] who was painting the image, and saw that it was not as beautiful as Jesus is, I felt very sad about it, but I hid this deep in my heart. [...] I went immediately to the chapel and wept a good deal. I said to the Lord, "Who will paint You as beautiful as You are?" Then I heard these words:

Not in the beauty of the color, nor of the brush lies the greatness of this image, but in My grace

.

Diary [299] - During prayer I heard these words within me:

The two rays denote Blood and Water. The pale ray stands for the Water which makes souls righteous. The red ray stands for the Blood which is the life of souls...

Vilnius, Lithuania

Lichen Stary, Poland

Site of Poland's largest church, Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lichen, completed in 2004, which houses the icon of the Virgin Mary called Our Lady of Sorrows, Queen of Poland (most likely painted in 1772).

According to legend, a Polish soldier (called Thomas Klossowski) was wounded in the Battle of Leipzig in 1813 and had a vision of the Virgin Mary who saved him from death and instructed him to look for the image upon his return to Poland. Klossowski is then said to have looked for and found the image in the woods in Grablin as instructed.

According to oral tradition, in 1850 Klossowski and shepherd Nicholas Sikatka witnessed several apparitions of the Virgin Mary who called for repentance and prayer. In the apparitions, the Virgin reportedly predicted war and a cholera epidemic, but also gave hope. During the cholera plague of 1852, the image became famous for performing miracles.

Czestochowa, Poland

The city is known for the famous Pauline monastery of Jasna Góra, which is the home of the Black Madonna painting, a shrine to the Virgin Mary.

The icon of Our Lady of Częstochowa has been intimately associated with Poland for the past six hundred years. Its history prior to its arrival in Poland is shrouded in numerous legends which trace the icon's origin to St. Luke who painted it on a cedar table top from the house of the Holy Family.

In the painting the Virgin directs attention away from herself, gesturing with her right hand toward Jesus as the source of salvation. In turn, the child extends his right hand toward the viewer in blessing while holding a book of gospels in his left hand.

Krakow, Poland

Krakow, Poland

Day of Rest - Woot Woot!!

Auschwitz, Poland

Zakopane, Poland

Krakow, Poland

Krakow, Poland

Wawel Castle

The Gothic Wawel Castle in Kraków in Poland was built at the request of Casimir III the Great, who reigned from 1333 to 1370. For centuries it was the residence of the kings of Poland.

During the Nazi occupation the castle was the residence of the German governor general, Hans Frank. Polish people managed to remove the most valuable objects, including the tapestries and the “Szczerbiec” coronation sword to Canada, from where they returned as late as 1959-1961. The Castle is now one of the country’s premier art museums.

St. Pope John Paul II Centre - Lagiewniki

The octagonal basement shrine to Saint Pope John Paul II has pictures depicting events from his pontificate, namely his visits to the world’s most famous Marian sanctuaries.

The centerpiece of the shrine is a rather simple marble altar in the middle that contains a phial with the relic of the blood of Saint Pope John Paul II displayed in a glass case.

* Also crashed Cardinal Dziwisz's party today

Drops of blood flowing from the eyes of Our Lady of Calvary were noticed on the painting given to the Bernardine Fathers in 1641. The veneration of the Weeping Madonna quickly became widespread.

Pope John Paul II made several visits to Kalwaria Zebrzydowska on the pilgrimages he made to his homeland Poland. It was at the monastery of Kalwaria Zebrzydowska that Pope John Paul II repeated the words of his motto: "Totus tuus ego sum, et omnia mea tua sunt. Accipio te in mea omnia. Praebe mihi cor tuum, Maria." ("I belong entirely to you, and all that I have is yours. I take you for my all. O Mary, give me your heart").

Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, Poland

Wadowice, Poland

Wadowice, is a city in southern Poland, 50 kilometres from Kraków and has approximately 20,000 inhabitants.

Wadowice is best known for being the birthplace of Saint Pope John Paul II.

Zakopane is located in southernmost Poland near the border with Slovakia. It lies in a valley between the Tatra Mountains and Gubałówka Hill and has an elevation of 800-1,000 meters above sea level.

Devout hiker, Karol Wojtyla (Saint Pope John Paul II) often climbed the trails in the Tatras as a student, teacher and later as a professor of the KUL (Catholic University of Lublin).

The Church of Our Lady of Fatima is a votive offering for saving Saint Pope John Paul II's life after the assassination attempt on 13 May 1981. The building site was blessed in July 1987.

Today the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima is the centre of the devotion to Our Lady of Fatima extending all over Poland and Europe, and a place of unceasing prayer for the intention of the Holy Father.

Meeting with Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz

Cardinal Dziwisz was born on April 27, 1939 and was elevated as Cardinal in 2006.

He was a long-time and influential aide to Pope Saint John Paul II (he was one of the few people mentioned in the Pope's will, where he was thanked for his almost 40 years of service to the Pontiff).

Wieliczka Salt Mine

The mine, built in the 13th century, produced table salt continuously until 2007, as one of the world's oldest salt mines still in operation.

The mine's attractions include dozens of statues and four chapels that have been carved out of the rock salt by the miners.

The Wieliczka mine is often referred to as "the Underground Salt Cathedral of Poland." In 1978 it was placed on the original UNESCO list of the World Heritage Sites. Even the crystals of the chandeliers are made from rock salt that has been dissolved and reconstituted to achieve a clear, glass-like appearance.

Ok...let's go...Two by Two...it's time to bid adieu to your fellow pilgrims and return home to spread the Devotion to The Divine Mercy.

Diary [1075] -

Souls who spread the honor of My mercy I shield through their entire lives as a tender mother her infant, and at the hour of death I will not be a Judge for them, but the Merciful Savior

.

Auschwitz concentration camp was built and operated by the Third Reich (Nazi) during World War II. It consisted of Auschwitz I (the original camp), Auschwitz II–Birkenau (a combination concentration/extermination camp), Auschwitz III–Monowitz (a labor camp to staff an IG Farben factory), and 45 satellite camps.

From early 1942 until late 1944, transport trains delivered Jews to the camp's gas chambers from all over German-occupied Europe, where they were killed with the pesticide Zyklon B. At least 1.1 million prisoners died at Auschwitz, around 90 percent of them Jewish; approximately 1 in 6 Jews killed in the Holocaust died at the camp.

Others deported to Auschwitz included 150,000 Poles, 23,000 Romani and Sinti, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, 400 Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, and tens of thousands of people of diverse nationalities. Many of those not killed in the gas chambers died of starvation, forced labor, infectious diseases, individual executions, and medical experiments.

As Soviet troops approached Auschwitz in January 1945, most of its population was evacuated and sent on a death march. The prisoners remaining at the camp were liberated on January 27, 1945, a day now commemorated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Arrived at Lagiewniki - The Sanctuary of the Divine Mercy - which is situated in buildings of the monastery of the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy. It was founded in 1891 as a foundation for girls and women in need of moral renewal.

The Lord Jesus chose Sr. Faustina as the Apostle and "Secretary" of His Mercy, so that she could tell the world about this great message: Diary [1588] -

In the Old Covenant I sent prophets wielding thunderbolts to My people. Today I am sending you with My mercy to the people of the whole world. I do not want to punish aching mankind, but I desire to heal it, pressing it to My Merciful Heart.

On August 1, 1925, when she was 20 years old, Saint Faustina joined the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in Warsaw, Poland. In the course of the 13 years she spent in the Congregation, she stayed in a number of its houses: in Krakow (the longest), Vilnius, Plock and Warsaw where she worked as a cook, gardener and gatekeeper.

Saint Faustina passed away from tuberculosis at the monastery in Krakow on October 5, 1938, at the age of 33.

Mother of Divine Mercy Shrine - Our Lady of the Gate of Dawn

The painting made in a Northern Renaissance style was completed possibly in the first half of the 17th century, around 1630; the Virgin Mary is depicted without the infant Jesus. She is depicted accordingly to the Immaculate conception iconography, with a golden light aureola, the circle of stars around her head, the half-moon and with her head bowed in veneration

The legend tells that in 1702, when Vilnius was captured by the Swedish army during the Great Northern War, The Our Lady of the Gate of Dawn came to her people's rescue. At dawn, the heavy iron city gates of the Gate of Dawn fell, crushed and killed four Swedish soldiers. After this, the Lithuanian Army successfully counter-attacked near the gate.

Vilnius Cathedral, St. Casimir Church & Russian Orthodox Church

Blessed Father Sopocko and the Kazimierowski home

(Where the original Divine Mercy Image was painted)

Eugene Kazimierowski was the artist who painted the first Image of Divine Mercy (in 1934) which currently hangs in the Shrine of Divine Mercy in Vilnius, Lithuania.

He was commissioned to paint this holy Image by St. Faustina’s spiritual director and confessor Blessed Fr. Michael Sopocko.

Interesting Fact :

Wawel Castle is 7 tram stations (not 5!!) away from Lagiewniki - The Sanctuary of the Divine Mercy

Glogowiec, Poland

Helen Kowalska (Saint Faustina) was born on August, 25, 1905. She was baptised in St. Casimir on August 27, 1905.

At the age of seven [1912], Helen hears for the first time a voice in her soul, calling her to a more perfect way of life.