MOTHER OF GOD OF CONSOLATION

Day 211: December 09

Mother of God of Consolation, Krakow, Poland



Poland was going through an extremely difficult phase: the economic system was in ruins, the country had been heavily depopulated and was exhausted by a long period of wars. King Casimir III of Poland in 1349 killed the bishop's messenger who communicated the excommunication because of the public immorality of his customs. He had a hole cut in the ice of the Vistula River, the longest in Poland, and there he had the messenger thrown, so that he drowned in its icy waters.

Repentant of that extreme gesture, Casimiro began a journey of conversion that earned him the title of "Great". He was the only king to be given this title in all of Polish history. He built numerous castles, reconstituted the Polish army, and reformed private and criminal law. Casimir was also responsible for the foundation of the University of Kraków, the first in northern Europe, although his death interrupted its development. The real flowering of this institution took place with his successors.

In the city of Kazimierz, to which he gave his name in 1335, he founded the Augustinian Church of St Catherine of Alexandria. Construction began in 1363 and took almost a century to complete, although a series of unfortunate events such as earthquakes, floods, fires, as well as invasions, put a strain on the building and meant that it needed continuous renovation work.

Inside this church, now elevated to a basilica, is a chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Consolation, where you can admire a 15th-century fresco, almost miraculously saved from the cloister. The fresco depicts the Virgin Mary with long blond hair, a gold damask dress and a blue cloak embellished with roses. The Mother of God rests her feet on a crescent moon, holding a naked baby Jesus in her arms, between St Augustine and St Nicholas of Tolentino. Around her figure are smaller panels illustrating her miracles. This is the patronal chapel of the Archconfraternity of the Matka Boża Pocieszenia: (Our Lady of Consolation).

By the time of King Casimir III's death, the kingdom had almost doubled in size (mainly through the annexation of vast territories of today's Ukraine), prosperous growth was taking place, wealth was increasing and there were encouraging prospects for the future.

In 1950, during the communist hegemony, the Polish Augustinians were forced to disband, only to return only in 1989, where in St Caterina they began yet another restoration of the buildings that in the meantime had undergone further deterioration.

On December 9, 2000, Pope John Paul II together with Cardinal Franciszek Macharski, Archbishop of Krakow, crowned the image of the Mother of God of the Consolation of St. Catherine.

His brotherhood celebrates the feast of this image on September 4.


St Justin Russolillo Writes...

"Doing everything with Mary means keeping her ever in mind as a model to imitate and always looking to her to discover how to behave in every situation, never leave her, but, like little children, always walk beside her so that we may be constantly sustained by her and immediately raised up should we fall."

(Ascension, trans. Louis Caputo, Vocationist Fathers, Newark, 1997, p. 423)

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