We are convinced that authentic life in the Church can be learned through the right way of living Holy Mass. The Church lives from the Eucharist. That is why every Sunday of the academic year we meet for Holy Mass together. We invite you to take part in it and to share in the community of people who support catechumens on their way to receiving the sacraments of initiation.
The community that gathers for Mass exists only when each participant is truly involved in celebrating the liturgy. First of all, inner involvement is needed. That is why, before the celebration begins, we pray individually with a “preparatio ad missam” prepared for this purpose. We offer the Masses together for a specific intention. We try to make the intention of the person who requested the Mass as important to us as the one with which each of us comes to the altar. Mass intentions can be requested through an online form. We write our own intentions in a notebook. On their basis the deacon presents the prayer of the faithful to God the Father. We try to take part in the prayer of the priests celebrating the Mass, and they make this possible for us by keeping silence before the collect and at the appropriate moments during the Roman Canon, which they recite.
Each of us can join the procession with the gifts, in which we bring not only money but also food for the sisters (the hostesses of the church at Gródek), gifts for the community (most often biscuits, fruit, baked goods), gifts for the church (wine, flowers, oil, candles) and bread, which we share after Mass and take to those who were not at Mass. The singing is led by cantors, not by a schola or choir. The cantor does not act alone but leads the singing of the whole assembly, helped by songbooks available to all participants. The altar service is modest, so the readings are often read by someone from the assembly. We learn parts of Gregorian chant. In particular, during the penitential act we sing “Asperges me” – the original antiphon for the rite of sprinkling with water.
A special intention for all of us is to help people preparing for Baptism and Confirmation. During Mass, at the appropriate moments of the liturgical year, we celebrate the rites of Christian initiation. We remember in our prayers the catechumens and the adults who have not yet received the sacrament of Confirmation. The people who gather at Gródek are often the first community of the Church that the catechumens get to know and become part of.
After Mass we meet in front of the church to talk, share the gifts, and sometimes go out for coffee and longer conversations together. We want to get to know one another and not be anonymous members of the Church. Our Masses are not “ours” but the Lord Jesus’. That is why everyone who wants to join in their celebration is warmly invited to come to Gródek on Sundays at 11:00.
Monastery of the Dominican Nuns
At the beginning of the 14th century this was the site of the manor of Albert, the wójt (mayor) of Kraków, who in 1311 led a well-known revolt of the German part of the burghers against the rule of Władysław the Elbow-high in Lesser Poland. After the resistance was crushed, Władysław demolished Albert’s manor and built on its site a fortified small castle called Gródek.
Later Gródek became the seat of the town starosty. In the 15th century it passed into the hands of the Tarnowski family. In 1475 the small castle burned down and a new residence was built in its place.
In the first years of the 17th century, although “the difficulty was very great indeed, in town properties it was unthinkable, there being a great prohibition from His Majesty the King against selling to monasteries” (the monastery’s foundation chronicle), Anna Lubomirska née Branicka, wife of the castellan, after many efforts bought Gródek for the Dominican Sisters as a monastery in 1621. She adapted it and built the monastery church of Our Lady of the Snows, which, according to tradition, was a votive offering of thanksgiving for the victory of her son Stanisław Lubomirski at Chocim. The church was consecrated on 8 October 1634.
The sisters began their regular religious life on the Solemnity of St. Michael the Archangel, 29 September 1621. At first there were five of them. They came from the Third Order Regular of Dominican Sisters. Over the years the number of sisters at Gródek grew, and their fate was always linked to that of the homeland and the city of Kraków. The plagues and enemy invasions frequent in those times forced them to leave the monastery. In the course of its history the monastery burned three times, but the Most Holy Virgin Mary always came to its aid.
During the Swedish siege of Kraków in 1655, one of the enemy’s main attacks struck St. Nicholas’ Gate and the monastery. The roof caught fire, but the spread of the fire was prevented by university students defending the monastery. According to the monastery tradition, during the siege the Most Holy Virgin Mary appeared amid the smoke, sheltering the monastery with her mantle, so that the terrified Swedes halted the attack. In memory of the miracle, a painting of the so-called Swedish Mother of God was painted directly on the plaster of the façade facing the Planty.
In 1768, after the capture of Kraków by the Russians, the monastery at Gródek was plundered and burned, and on 16 July Mother Prioress Krystyna Dembińska and Sister Katarzyna Szwandrówna were murdered. In the difficult time of the suppression of religious orders, the sisters temporarily ran a school for girls in order to survive. After 1856, at the request of the then Master of the Order, Fr. A. V. Jandel, the renewal and return to contemplative life was carried out by Sister Hyacinth Camy from the French monastery of Mauléon. Sister Hyacinth was prioress of the monastery from 1883 to 1911.
In 1938 Sister Jordana Ostreyko, with a group of eight sisters, left for Kolonia Wileńska to lay the foundations of a new foundation. During the Nazi era both monasteries gave shelter to Jewish people. During the Second World War the sisters from Gródek were expelled in 1944 to the nearby monastery of the Poor Clares in Kraków, and until 1946 the monastery was occupied first by Ukrainian prisoners of war and then by the Ujazdów Hospital from Warsaw. After the war the monastery was recovered with difficulty and gradually, and strict papal enclosure was restored.
Today, as for centuries, the Sisters stand before God, begging for His mercy for the whole world. Every evening after Compline they go in procession singing the antiphon to the Mother of God: “Salve Regina Mater Misericordiæ”…
To support this work, so important for the Church, we encourage you to give offerings during Sunday Masses (once a month the collection is given entirely to the Sisters) as well as material gifts. You can also make a donation by bank transfer.
Our Masses at Gródek were celebrated until May 2018.
They were continued by the Sunday Mass at St. Giles’ in the 2022/23 academic year and the Mass for Those Seeking Beauty in 2023/24.