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Through My Eyes

Through My Eyes

Author: Kasia Yoko
Date: 2014-08-22
It was great week! The cool weather made it the perfect time to reflect and start thinking of Spring Cleaning.

I am also counting the days to seeing my son again after two long months, and welcoming my mom back after almost five months of absence.

I am starting to prepare menus

My mom has been missing South Africa literally from the moment she landed in Poland - she says she no longer belongs there - even though all her siblings and school friends are still there, she regards South Africa as her home. It's amazing how grateful we become for the bounties of this country when we leave.

Recently my Mother visited her favourite holy place of Kalwaria, it is close to our home and my mother makes a pilgrimage there at least once a year.

She goes there to cry and she cries at the feet of the Virgin Mary. Afterwards she wrote me a long SMS telling me how she fought her way to the top of the queue to reach the holy painting.

I can understand how my mother is drawn to this image. It was on the 3rd of May 1641, that Matka Boska Kalwaryjska cried tears of blood. It is said that when in 1672 the Turkish invaded the town, they decided to make a stable out of the Franciscan Church. They destroyed most of the holy relics but could not destroy the painting as it kept reappearing.

The word kalwaria (calvary) has the same meaning in Latin as the Greek word golgothaÑtorment or suffering, a term invariably associated with the Passion of Christ. In the Middle Ages the focus of Christian theology was slowly but consistently shifted from the mystery of the resurrection to contemplation of the saviour's blood sacrifice. An external expression of this theological change was an increasingly strong cult of Christ's Passion, a development that in Poland coincided with the Counter Reformation.

It was at this time that the service of the Way of the Cross was born, manifested in the founding of sites called Calvaries and Golgothas, sites where this special service could be held. They included sculptures, paintings and architecture, facilitating a sombre, religious experience of the holy elements during the service.

The architectural and landscape complex of Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, is unique both on a European and global scale, and was entered onto the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1999.

In 1979 Pope John Paul II elevated the church to the status of a Minor Basilica. In 1641, a painting of Mary, based on a well-known painting from the town of Myslenice, was brought to the church, donated to the monastery by Stanis?aw Paszkowski, who reported seeing tears of blood on Mary's face. Two hundred years after the painting was moved to the chapel, in 1867, Albin Dunajewski, Bishop of Cracow, crowned the painting.

I love so many things about my mother; she is such an inspiration. I love her undying faith and her ability to believe regardless. It is one of her traits, which I would like to inherit.

"All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become." By BUDDHA