Religion is a big part of life in Lithuania and it would be fair to say provided a life raft to people during the dark days of occupation. It was brutally repressed also but the people quietly kept their staunch catholic faith and I would say it's stronger than ever in these post Soviet days.
I travelled a few hours on a day trip to the northern city of Siauliai to visit a rather unique pilgrimage site. Imagine a hill with seemingly hundreds of thousands of crosses and you will picture this place which couldn't be known by any other name than 'The hill of crosses' or more correctly Kryžių kalnas.
About ten kilometres out of this city this place has been a pilgrimage site for several hundred years and is closely associated with the survival of Lithuanian religion and statehood during various occupations over the years. There are hundreds of full size crucifixes, statues of Jesus and Mary, and countless small wooden crosses and rosary beads. The Soviets worked hard to destroy this place and bulldozed it at least three times. As such it became a masterpiece of peaceful
resistance as locals would climb barbed wire fences at night and replenish the hill with more and more crosses. It must have infuriated the authorities.
Vilnius itself is a pilgrimage centre also and has at least two churches housing icons reputed to perform miracles. Our lady of the gates of dawn is a small chapel above the old city gates which contains a centuries old painting of the virgin Mary in repose.The Church of Divine Mercy down another cobbled street has a painting of Jesus as he supposedly appeared to a 20th century polish nun Sister Mary Faustina.
A pious Lithuanian friend of mine, Simona, took me into these churches and explained the significance. I'll focus on the more recent Church of Divine Mercy as it's a rather intriguing story.
Sister Faustina claimed to have had many visions of Jesus in her cell and commissioned an artist to paint him. The painting is in Vilnius and is said to have granted many miracles over the years. The Vatican had their experts verify that and Sister Faustina became Saint Faustina. The church is a major pilgrimage site in Eastern Europe and proudly displays the icon.
The painting of Jesus is life size and stands on the wall above the alter one hand raised as if in greeting, the other unleashing two streams of colour. Red for the blood of the sacrament and white for the cleansing of baptism. It is a small church, big enough for fifty people say. And had an unusual atmosphere. There were probably about ten to fifteen people there praying intensely, and silently.
You could literally hear a pin drop. Watching these people kneeling and praying made me realise they must be desperately seeking miraculous intervention. My mind wandered over the reasons for this; a sick relative, a terminal illness? It made the place take on a very serious air and made me a bit uncomfortable as a 'tourist' in some way.
The painting is rather startling in the way that paintings can be. A bit like Mona Lisa, the face of Jesus was neither happy nor sad, friendly or angry but rather fascinating and hard to describe. Certainly not blank but open to interpretation perhaps. I think that may give it an ethereal quality. The eyes seemed to follow you and I stared at it for many minutes in that silence. Literally soul searching; either my own contemplation or the painting searching mine. Apparently some people can't stand being in the church and have run out the door such is the intensity of the gaze and their own guilt I suppose. I would say it's a rather 'interesting' notion that it could be the face of God captured on canvas, but that certainly occurs to you when looking at it.
One thing I would never have known if I had visited alone is that the hundreds of silver and gold hearts that adorn the walls near the paintings are a testament by believers that a miracle has occurred in their lives as a result of their prayers to the icons. Some would take that as evidence of the veracity of the icons.
I spent a long time debating the possibilities of miracles with Simona. Me the slightly world weary cynic, her the hopeful believer. She's very catholic and when I broached the subject that Saint Faustina may not have actually seen Jesus but perhaps just have imagined it, she acted as though the possibility had never occurred to her. I like to keep an open mind and try not to be too judgmental. After all who am I to say it's not possible? Simona, with her rosary beads, hail Marys and belief in the miraculous is happy. She has genuine faith in something that gives her meaning and understanding in life.
Who am I to question or undermine that?
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