A group of people dressed for a mountain expedition surrounds a roadside chapel with a bow. Wooden Christ, carved in a relief by a local artist according to the laws of folk art, stands before Pilate's court. The priest in the sports jacket, from which the shirt with the collar stands, reads the reflections of the first station. In the distance, under the peaks of Bieszczady, there is simply a characteristic, frayed fog.
This could be described as an example of a scene from the Bieszczady Way of the Cross, which on Saturday 1 April again passed through any of the most beautiful Polish mountains. For me the most beautiful – due to its own. Even though I come back here as a parent of this land, not a lost tourist, even though I know local names, trails, roads and people, I always perceive these mountains differently. It's all over again. To be with them is like to pray – it is not adequate to “take away” her once. It's an experience that needs to be repeated all the time.
Follow the Cross
The past of the Bieszczady Way of the Cross dates back to the early 1980s and the “Carnaval of Solidarity”. It was then, decades before the utmost Way of the Cross, that among the activists “S” from the area of the Przemysl diocese the thought of moving the service of the Cross outside the church building was born, the experience of considering the Passion of the Lord besides in its physical dimension. And what place would be better for this than the band having – even today, and not until then – the opinion of the “wildest mountains in Poland”?
The thought was set in 1979 at the initiative of Fr Franciszek Rząsa, the first cross on Tarnica (the present one, dating back to 2000, modelled on the 1 from Giewont, is already the 3rd 1 standing there). Thus the highest highest of Bieszczady became for 1 day in the year symbolically Golgota, to which his modern disciples entered after Christ on Good Friday. The Bieszczady Way of the Cross became more and more popular with each year, and the photographs of the buds frequently wandering in the metre snow, which inactive lies advanced in the mountains at this time of year, awakened my top admiration from the child.
Initially, the local service gained a peculiar popularity in the second decade of our century, erstwhile on the wave of the utmost Way of the Cross, more interest in various “radical” spiritual practices began. In Bieszczady, pilgrimages from all sides of Poland began to arrive on Good Friday. Unfortunately, next to those who sincerely search God in prayer, there were besides “emotion seekers”. The year 2016 turned out to be the year erstwhile more than 5 1000 people participated in the Bieszczady Way of the Cross. Some, ignoring the organizers' requests, stepped off the trail, trampling a unique European plant and acting loudly. He protested national park and GOPR.
Therefore, from the following year, in agreement with Bieszczady National Park and Border Guard, the way of the Cross Road to the Bukowska Pass was redirected. It was an excellent decision. Thanks to the little “visible” goal, the number of participants has decreased respective times, but those who truly care about quietness and prayer remain. Along the red way leading from Volosaty to the Bukowska Pass, fourteen wooden stations of the Way of the Cross were set up, and the first service dedicated to the fresh way was a wooden cross set on the pass itself. The tradition of BDK is well and gathers respective 100 people all year wanting to experience a fresh experience of faith.
At the end of the world
This experience begins just before the Way of the Cross. From my family's Lower Injection – the only reasonably well-connected place in the territory – only 2 buses a day go to Volosata, and it is the only way to get there by public transport. There's not much chance of coming back without your own car either. To feel this insecurity and toil, even though a tiny 1 must be taken to attend this service. This is completely different from the Way of the Cross in a warm church.
So I'm waiting for my first course before 8:00 in the morning. From my schedule, I know I'm gonna be a fewer minutes late for Mass before I go on the trail, but I have no another option. erstwhile the bus yet arrives, it has an additional ten-minute delay. Eh, I've had adequate of the charms of public communication in tiny towns... Through Black and Lutowiska we are heading further south. The old autosan shakes unforgivingly on the white-eyed serpentine, and the wind whistles through the leaky windows. It's so cold inside, I don't even take my coat off. There's a young couple from Sanoka on the Cross Road with me. After an hour's journey, we arrive 10 after nine.
Fortunately for us, Mass at the church in Volosaty besides starts late. It is presided over by Father Peter of the Tourist Ministry of Przemysl Archdiocese. From a distance, I hear characteristic, industrial singing: pulling vowels and replacing “o” with “u”, the remainder of the pre-war Lvov's bean. I join the song to the entrance, jumping through a mud trap that lurked at me in front of a wooden bridge passed over a stream.
Volostate was a typical boycottian village whose population at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries exceeded a 1000 inhabitants. present only 45 people live here, mainly owners of agritourism. There was no trace of historical buildings. erstwhile in 1946 most of the inhabitants were displaced into russian Ukraine, and a year later the remainder of the remainder of the Vistula Action on Earth was recovered, the buildings left by them were burned, including the church. There are only a fewer available present to read Russian tombstones in the upper-class cemetery. The youngest comes from planet War II.
A modest wooden chapel was erected at the church in the 2 1000 ’ s. Now that we are praying before her, kneeling on the foundations of the destroyed church, many people are beating themselves up on the “Baranek of God” which we will not witness in another parts of Poland – it is simply a remnant of the strong influences of Ukrainian Unicant Catholicism in these areas. past paradox.
After Mass, we head out in tiny groups to the first station, in expanding depth. The only way out of Volosaty is to go back to the advanced Injection or... nowhere. virtually – this is 1 of the fewer examples of a village from which no another village can be reached. There are wooden poles moving along the asphalt for a while, but... no wires, due to the fact that there's no 1 else to pull them up to. Finally, the road ends with a ban on entering the bridge leading to the pre-war border with Czechoslovakia, where there is no border crossing now. The hiking way walks distant from her. So we reached the end of the planet – and we march on.
I hear this way in the 1970s, Tito and Brezhnev went hunting bison... Now fortunately, believers, including many of my age or younger, young marriages and parents with children, with a priest and a wooden cross at the head, consider the Passion of Christ. Stations of the Way of the Cross were set up at all more distinctive places, specified as tourist worlds, the bridge over the Volosatka River, or a tiny waterfall, and wherever it was impossible, just by the way erstwhile all fewer 100 meters. The way becomes more hard over time. The dry way is initially made muddy, then covered with a thin layer of watery precipitation, and in the advanced parts – already rather solid cover of beaten snow, in which you can "melt" your leg to the knee. At each station we halt for respective minutes, then we go on our way, praying.
In the reflections, quotes from St John Paul II frequently appear, which is not amazing in the light of fresh events. However, it is peculiarly crucial that not the most celebrated statements are cited – there are no cremaries or "Let Your Spirit descend" – only those "less popular" elements of the teaching of the Holy Father. I was peculiarly impressed by the 17th station, where the pope's homilies and texts about morality were reminded – about the marriages based on Christ, which are the basis of the civilization of life and those where there is no God, so that only the search for sensations begins, there is contraception and abortion, so that they are absorbed by the civilization of death.
Golgotha Hope
At the end of the route, erstwhile we approach the top steepness and get tired, respective people are close to falling off. But on the Way of the Cross nobody goes alone – shortly there are willing to help, who, despite their difficulties on the trail, are ready to support others in achieving the goal.
When we scope Bukowskia Pass, it rewards us for our effort a fantastic view of the Ukrainian Zakarpackie – with which Poland borders, interestingly, not from the east, but from the south. After considering the last station, Father Peter blesses the cross of all participants of the Bieszczady Cross Road and the fighting Ukraine.
We're going to a small rest. Workers of the national park and borderers in winter uniforms, who followed us on snowmobiles, bring a cocher with tea, to which people throw with shiny eyes. Nothing like a sip of something warm advanced in the mountains, right by the border posts, over which birds fly carelessly, but people – they cannot.
Maybe we'll come back next year. possibly the plans will keep us someplace else. 1 thing is certain – this experience will stay in us for good. And the Lord's Passion will be something a small closer, though small better understood and appreciated by us. due to the fact that that's what the Cross Service is all about.
Marcin Więckowski
Photo. Author
