Here’s how this week’s arts and culture piece begins:
On a recent trip to the Chicago area, I was able to visit the National Shrine of St. Maximilian Kolbe in Libertyville, Illinois. The shrine comprises the Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament Chapel, a Rosary Garden, and a Conventual Franciscan Friary.
Kolbe (1894-1941) is the Polish priest who offered to take the place of a fellow prisoner condemned to die in the starvation bunker at Auschwitz.
The chapel, open to the public 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, is dedicated to Perpetual Adoration, and has been since 1928 (the original temporary chapel moved to the current site in 1932).
Marytown, as the site is called, serves a broad apostolate—locally, nationally, and internationally—through Eucharistic Adoration, a prison ministry, daily Masses, weekday Confessions, and a retreat program.
READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.
I have stayed at Marytown a few times. It is a very special place. Not terribly far is the National Shrine of St. Therese, also of St. Jude and many beautiful Polish churches.
Oh wow, Sara, I didn’t know there was also a shrine of St. T nearby! My friend and I did have a lovely walk through the grounds of the adjacent Mundelein Seminary…anyway, Marytown, yes, a very holy place….the air was charged…
The National Shrine of Saint Thérèse is at the Carmelite Spiritual Center in Darien, Illinois. My nephew is currently the curator of the museum. https://www.littleflower.org/national-shrine-and-museum-of-st-therese/. I hope you one day have an opportunity to visit the shrine.
Oh that would be incredible to visit the St. Therese Shrine as well–that’s the thing with traveling–huge acceptance of the severe limitations of time, your own strength and reality–grateful for the places I am able to visit and glad that someone else gets to visit the places I’m not able to get to just then. Thanks so much, Ruth Ann and pray for us, Little Flower.
Thank you for this article. The generous heart of such a man…no words for that!
I agree, Ingrid–a sacifice beyond words…and that has borne and continues to bear unimaginable fruit….