Youth pilgrimage to shrine

CONVENT STATION  She was born and raised in New Jersey. She was the youngest of seven children. She came from an immigrant family. She attended a public school. Many teens in the Diocese can claim this background. But it was also the background of Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich.

On Sunday, May 5, high school teens from around the Diocese are being invited to a youth pilgrimage to Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich’s shrine in Holy Family Chapel, on the campus of the College of St. Elizabeth here, where Blessed Miriam Teresa studied and made vows as a Sister of Charity of St. Elizabeth before her death at 26 in 1927.

The day-long pilgrimage event will begin at St. Paul Inside the Walls: the Diocesan Evangelization Center at Bayley-Ellard in Madison with faith-filled games and music led by Fiat Ventures. Then the young people will walk to Holy Family Chapel here. The walk is nearly 1.5 miles and will take about 30 minutes. At the chapel, young people will see where Blessed Miriam Teresa is buried and learn about her life and mission. There, Msgr. Raymond Kupke, pastor of St. Anthony Parish in Hawthorne and diocesan archivist, will present a talk on Blessed Miriam Teresa and holiness. Bishop Serratelli will conclude the pilgrimage with a Mass to mark the Third Sunday of Easter. The pilgrimage will begin at 2 p.m. and end at 6 p.m.

Father Pawel Tomczyk, diocesan director of RCIA and youth ministry at St. Paul Inside the Walls, said, “It’s important our young people get together each year to experience being a part of the universal Church and the community as the Diocese. The youth pilgrimage will be a day of fun and full of energy, and more importantly, it’s a spiritual event to serve the young people of our Church as a whole.”

Each parish is asked to send at least five high school students and all the Catholic high schools in the Diocese will be sending 100 students.

“The pilgrimage is an opportunity to introduce to young people that there is a holy person that was born here in New Jersey,” said Sister of Charity Mary Canavan, vice postulator for the sainthood cause of Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich, “We all pray to saints from all around the world. Certainly a saint from the same state as these young people will catch their attention.”

The pilgrimage is met to serve three purposes: to bring together the youth of the Paterson Diocese; to teach the youth about holiness; and to experience a different form of prayer that comes through a pilgrimage.

“Holiness is possible,” Father Tomcyzk said. “Here in our own backyard, someone lived a life of holiness.”

During her lifetime, Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich issued a universal call to holiness that every single person, no matter their age or state of life, is called to follow. Because of her saintly life, her striving for perfection as a religious sister, her spiritual writings and favors received by others after her death through her intercession, the Sisters of Charity opened her cause for sainthood. She was beatified in 2014 in Sacred Heart Basilica, Newark, after a miracle, the curing the blindness of a first-grader, Michael Mencer, in 1964, was attributed to her.

“She is a great role model for young people today. At an early age, Blessed Miriam Teresa knew she wanted to follow the will of God. She became conscientious of God’s presence in her life at a very young age all throughout her childhood, adolescence and into adulthood,” Sister Mary said. “She is a model for all of us to follow the will of God because God is calling each of us to live a holy life.”