Fun and responsibility – a Marienwunder

We drive to the black Madonna of Czestochowa. A pilgrimage site. The picture is from the 14th century at the latest. Probably older. It is said to have protected the Polish population against the crew by the Swedish attackers – or something like that. The Madonna suffered a scar on the left cheek. From this cheek, one says, real blood ran. Since then the Madonna has been worshiped. Paralyzed learned to go again in their face. To see blind people. Children got sterile.

Travel coaches from all over Europe stand in the parking lot in front of the church. Thousands of people gather in front of her. Spirituals in high positions go busy through the crowds, several services take place at the same time. It’s the Whitest Place ever.

Two young women sit in a corner, one blessing the other’s hand in blessing. Almost half of all visitors are nuns. First I try to touch them at the rock tip because it should bring happiness, then I give up. There are just too many. As in the shooting night, after which my neck becomes stiff because I wanted countless wishes, of course from the twentieth wish, of course, highly redundant.

Fun and responsibility

Bahar Kaygusuz

Olga Hohmann does not understand what work is and tries to find out every day. Sitting in her Ortlos Office, she explores her biography and enjoys her own neuroses. All texts on Dasnd.de/hohmann.

We get in the middle of the service, which takes place directly in front of the worshiped icon painting. To protect her, she has been enveloped with a golden protective cover for a few centuries. You can only see the two faces, that of the Madonna and that of the child of Jesus. They are uninvolved over the mass of people.

We sit in the front row, also the only Protestants among Catholics and murmurs on Gibberish, the prayers presented in Polish, I sum the liturgical chants that I do not know. We sit on an island, surrounded by people. There is a passage behind painting. People slide around us around us, hundreds. You do that all day.

We watch the spectacle for the duration of the service, a good hour. Hundreds and hundreds, right around us. They do it with a very different attitude, some with tears in their eyes, others uninvolved, some, especially children, with a slightly annoyed facial expression. Some have difficulty slipping on their knees, kneeling or getting up, some are waiting for some at the end of the sacrifice. Some wear huge flower bouquets, some large wooden crosses that they brought with them, some pray kneeling, slipping, a rosary prayer. Some accept eye contact, others don’t.

The priest does not give us a host at the end of the service. D. is disappointed. We remain unclear how, as a Protestant, remains unclear. Crutches hang on the wall of all those who have learned to walk again in the face of the Madonna.

On the way to the restaurant we walk past the service under the open sky, which includes several thousand prayers. A festival. I only understand here that Catholicism is also a huge sect. Fortunately, her cult leader is not Jesus, but Mary.

Shortly afterwards there is a heavy rain. We flee to a Georgian restaurant. We had expected it to be overcrowded due to the rain, but it remains empty. The food is fantastic, I eat a huge portion of liver. This is good against iron deficiency, I learn. Because the organ is slowly bleeding out. I remember that my mother likes to eat raw liver as a child.

When we leave the restaurant, the rain is over. Everything is like extinct. In the parking lot we find our car, a Subaru Forester, almost no longer. If he was occupied to the last parking lot beforehand, he is now completely empty, a parking desert after the big flood. Even the weather seems biblical here.

On the way I buy a plastic bottle full of holy water as a souvenir or for bad times. I learn that you can only use it if you have not consumed meat or dairy products for three days. Probably the reason that I haven’t used it yet.