Homily | August 31, 2026 | Poland’s Witness To Christ Crucified | (Episode 253)

Well, we've arrived in Poland for our parish pilgrimage, and there's something rather extraordinary about hearing these readings here in Poland.

We've come here as pilgrims, and throughout this week and most of next week we'll visit places that have witnessed to some of the most darkest moments of human history, but also some of the most extraordinary expressions of Christian faith.

And perhaps that gives us a question to carry from the very beginning.

What allows faith to survive when everything else around it changes?

Well, Saint Paul gives us his answer today.

He says, For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

Paul was an educated man, he knew how to argue.

He knew the intellectual world of his time, but he had discovered that Christianity ultimately does not rest upon cleverness.

It rests upon a person, Jesus Christ.

And not merely Christ triumphant, but Christ crucified.

That matters enormously here in Poland because the faith of this country was not forged in comfort.

It was tested by occupation, war, Nazism, communism, persecution, and enormous loss.

Powerful forces tried to tell the Polish people who they were, and what they could believe and whether God had any place in their future.

And yet the faith survived.

Why?

Well, because for generations Christianity was not simply an ornament attached to Polish culture, became the place where suffering could be understood through the cross.

And perhaps nobody embodied that more powerfully in the modern era than Carol Votiwa.

Because before the world knew him as Pope John Paul II, he knew occupation and forced labor.

He lost his mother, his brother, and his father while still a young man.

He prepared for the priesthood clandestinely under Nazi occupation.

He learned very early on that history can strip almost everything away from you, but there's something the world cannot take unless you surrender it to yourself faith.

That's why his famous words be not afraid carried such power.

They were not the words of a comfortable man offering religious optimism.

They came from someone who had seen what fear could do in a person and to a nation.

And that brings us to the gospel.

Jesus returns home to Nazareth, and at first everyone is impressed.

They marvel at his words.

They're proud of this hometown boy.

But then Jesus challenges them.

He reminds them that God's grace cannot be possessed, controlled, or reduced to something comfortable.

And suddenly admiration becomes anger.

The very same people who were amazed by Jesus are ready now to throw him off a cliff.

But there's a warning there for us.

You see, we can love Christianity when Christianity confirms us.

We can love the gospel when the gospel comforts us.

We can love Jesus when Jesus blesses the life we have decided to live.

But what happens when Jesus challenges us?

And perhaps that's one of the great questions facing Poland today.

For generations the challenge was obvious.

How do we keep the faith when someone is trying to take it away from us?

Today the danger may be much more subtle.

How do we keep the faith when nobody has to take it away because we slowly stop needing it?

Prosperity is good, freedom is good, economic opportunities are good, but prosperity brings its own spiritual temptation.

We begin believing that because we have more we need God bless.

Consumption replaces contemplation.

Comfort replaces sacrifice, and Christianity can remain culturally present while becoming spiritually irrelevant.

The churches remain, the crosses remain, the traditions remain, but the living encounter with Jesus Christ quietly disappears.

And this is not simply Poland's problem.

It's ours.

That's why we have come here as pilgrims rather than tourists.

You see, a tourist asks, What am I going to see?

A pilgrim asks, What is God trying to show me?

A tourist will collect photographs.

A pilgrim allows himself to be changed.

So during these days as we walk through Krakow and through the holy places of this land, perhaps the question is not simply what happened here.

The question is what God wants to happen in us.

Saint Paul gives us the foundation, Jesus Christ and him crucified.

Because wealth cannot save us, politics cannot save us, culture cannot save us, even religious nostalgia cannot save us.

Only Jesus Christ can save us.

And perhaps Poland still has something important to teach the world.

A nation that remembers what it costs to preserve its soil must be careful not to surrender that soul once life becomes comfortable.

We need to hear the same warning.

Our faith may never be outlawed.

No one may close our churches, our danger may be quieter.

We could simply become too comfortable to need God.

So as we begin this pilgrimage, let's ask one for one grace that we do not simply visit holy places, that these holy places visit something inside of us.

That somewhere along this journey Christ challenges us, unsettles us, and reminds us who we are.

Because the deepest questions of this pilgrimage is not simply what will Poland remember?

The deeper question is what will we remember and what we what will we allow God to change in us?

Because if we return home with only photographs, we've been tourists.

But if we return home knowing more deeply Jesus Christ and Him crucified, then we will have truly become pilgrims.

Amen.