Missionary Meditation July 2008

Where heaven and earth meet

We were taught that God can be found everywhere but it seems there are special places where it is easier to be touched by the divine presence. On my recent trip to Poland I had the chance to visit several sacred places where God seems to speak directly to the heart.

Do they have something in common? Is there a secret to the holy ground of shrines?

From the trip to Poland I mention three locations. Markowice, a small village somewhere between Poznan and Warsaw, gathers people around the sacred image of Our Lady. It is also the place from where Blessed Joseph Cebula, our Oblate martyr was led to his imprisonment which ended in his death at Mauthausen. In Gdansk on the Baltic Sea we are not really ministering at a shrine but our St. Joseph’s church in the inner city has a story to tell from the time when communism arrived there in 1945. The church was burnt down then and with it a hundred faithful. St. Joseph’s has been rebuilt since and the adjacent chapel offers now a space for Eucharistic adoration and the sacrament of reconciliation, and does so for 12 continuous hours a day, 365 days a year. I was asked by the Oblates: is there any other place on earth where we are offering a similar service? Please let me know if you have an answer! The Shrine of Koden, finally, is situated on the border with Belarus; it is historically the second Marian Shrine in Poland after Czestochowa. People flock to it in large numbers especially during summer time.

Ministering at shrines is something the Oblates have done from the beginning. Our second community was the one of Our Lady of Laus, and we have continued with similar work in many countries. This year we can be proud of our presence in Lourdes as the sanctuary celebrates its 150^th anniversary.

What is the secret of these sacred spaces? Let me submit that there are at least two elements that need to come together. The first is that the place must have a story to tell. Sometimes oral traditions or facts of history play a role, sometimes men and women or even children have experienced God and his saints personally in a special way and have left us a message on their behalf. The second element is that those who minister at the shrine dedicate themselves wholeheartedly. When pilgrims are well received and accompanied, the sacred space comes alive and dispenses its spiritual riches.

Shrines can be compared to a work of art as they lock together something material with something that goes beyond it. In this they are similar to the sacraments. Heaven and earth come together through the mediation of tangible things, sometimes in relation to dramatic events of history, sometimes through a person graced by God. Especially in a time and age when people respect very much the secularity of the world and tend to secularize even what should remain sacred, holy spaces need to be kept open. It seems that the Oblates have received a special charism for it.