Let me begin by saying that this trip, as a pilgrimage, had a slower pace (and more shopping) than the previous pilgrimages with my parish priest, according to the regulars who go for these trips. So although there seems to be more shopping-than-pilgrimage, this was purposely slowed down for the older folks, I think. Also, to make it easier for the usual people, considering that the other pilgrimages to France and Italy were way too packed, with all the rush of travelling up and down. We also did a couple of touristy stuff, like visiting the local attraction of Hallstaat, their salt mine, going to mount Titlis (lul) in Switzerland, and went Swarovski shopping. We even crossed borders: we went to Germany for less than a day to visit one of the churches, and went through Liechtenstein, saw two churches there, and then went to Switzerland to stay overnight. Ain't so Austrian after all! I also got a poop-ton of postcards and pictures of flowers, so I'll probably put those in a separate post.
Back to business though: unlike the previous pilgrimages, where they had booklets with all the information of the churches, this time round, we had to fill in our own booklets, so that people would actually pay attention instead of just taking pictures all the time lol. We also had sessions on most nights, where our parish priest would talk about certain things about Lyfe, which I'll probably put in another post as well.
Anyway, you wouldn't think of Austria being a country for pilgrimage journeys, compared to places like Italy, France, Israel, Jerusalem etc but Austria is quite a Catholic country, in the sense that most of the churches we went to were all relatively close by to one another. Compared to the other pilgrimages, it took them hours to reach the next cathedral or shrine. Not saying that those countries are any less Catholic, but just that I think it shows how strong the Austrians' faith is. We went during the time of Corpus Christi (celebrating the belief that the bread and wine during Eucharistic celebration in mass is the true body and blood of Christ) and the Austrians seem to take it quite seriously - but I'll explain more about that later.
So with that done, I'll start with the churches we went to! I think we missed one in Switzerland (St Francis Cathedral I think?) but apart from that, we covered quite a lot as well. Also forgive my horrible photography orz
Maria Zell
As it is with most of these churches, they didn't start out very fancy, and were simply little shrines or chapels. So this, started out when this dude, Monk Magnus, was going somewhere, but there was a huge rock in his way. He prayed to mother Mary, and it split, so he placed a statue of her on a branch in her honour, and created a little chapel. There are also two statues in the front of the church: one of Hungarian king Ludwig, who was fighting a battle against the Portuguese, and won after praying to mother Mary; and another of dude was healed from gout after praying at the church.
There are a couple of unique things about the church: it is the church with the most ex-votos (gifts of thanksgiving) than any other church - in the world; the tabernacle (where the body of Christ is kept in the church) is a globe, which is actually quite unusual. Only a few other churches have that I think. There's also a figure of baby Jesus, and he holds and apple and fig in his hand, but I can't exactly remember what they were meant to symbolise lol Anyway, the yellow-white flag in the front is supposed to signify that it is the designated pope's basilica in Maria Zell.
Maria Taferl
In 1643, a cattle herder came across the rotting tree and tried cutting it down - but he cut himself twice while trying to do so. It was then that when he fell down, he saw the cross, prayed for forgiveness and was healed. The other story, is that the local magistrate, who suffered from fits and depression, decided to replace the rotting cross with a statue of Our Lady of Sorrows - and was cured soon after. A couple other miracles were things like miraculous flashes of light in the town, and apparitions. There was even a time when an altar boy accidentally burned down the altar, but the holy image of the Our Lady of Sorrows was untouched I think. (I have horrible handwriting, and writing in those books with glossy pages ain't good for a person with inky pens orz)
Anyway, the church was raised to basilica status in 1947 by Pope Pius XII. What's also unique about the church, is that it has a depiction of Joseph's assumption, which is very rare.
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| Dude who cut his leg |
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| Dude who put the statue in the tree |
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| The fresco of Mary's assumption is like hella fine omg |
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| And here it is in its full glory, with some of the scenes of Mary and Jesus as a child. There are actually some inaccuracies in it, but it'd be quite a lot to go through them lol |
Linz Cathedral
The story behind this altar is actually p cool. There was a dude who had epilepsy, and went to the forest to pray, and used a holy image (can't remember what of, though) to help him focus as he prayed. He later put a little figure of Jesus into a hole of a tree. And that tree is the very same tree that is in that altar piece, with the figure of Jesus in it. Like, holy poopers bro they got a tree as an altar piece like !!!!!!!! Also, it has a golden globe tabernacle too.
Linz cathedral is also known as Our Lady of Immaculate Conception, although I can't remember why lol Anyway, the cathedral has 2000 stained glass windows, and holds 20 000 people. There's quite a lot of stained glass windows, such as the one you can see from the outside, which is a rose window.
The stained glass window here is split into three sections, which is supposed to represent God, Mary, and life in Linz. I'm not sure which one is which, but some of the pretty important people in Linz are like Kaiser Fredrich III, Maximillian the poet (I think), Johannes Kepler (whom the University of Linz is named after), Anton Brugner (something like that) and Beethoven.
The church's layout is such that it looks like a cross, so it's like the altar is at the head, and at the two arms, are rose windows. The rose window on the right represents war and the seven deadly sins, and on the left represents peace, the four cardinals virtues and the seven works of mercy. There's even a huge pipe organ at the back, which I have a postcard of lol. There were also quite a couple of depictions of Mary, considering it's a Marian church lol. One was of Mary's assumption as the apostles finding flowers on her bed, but not her body, and another was of her as the mother of the church, sheltering the people under her arms.
Christkindl Steyr
This was one of the Christmas churches we went to, and it was quite cute, 'cos the building beside it, that is usually a restaurant, gets transformed into a post office around Christmas, where children come in by school bus-loads to send letters and such to friends and others. There's even a display of a huge nativity scene and mechanical moving scenery kind of thing that is opened around the Christmas season - but they were opened specially for us!
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There was also a dude who asked the bishop, who was in a place along the border of Germany and Austria, for allowance to build a church, but they fought about it, and even while they were fighting, the dude was getting it built anyway lol such a rebel
The mechanical moving scenery comprised of 300 wood carvings, that took the dude, Karl Lauda, 40 years to make - by hand. It was initially moved using bicycle chains and turned by hand, but now it's motorised. Anyway, it goes through different biblical scenes, apart from just the birth, like the annunciation to the shepherds, and some of the people in it are the apostles, king David, Saint Paul etc.
There was also a large, something like a diorama, that went was a 58 square metre nativity scene, that had four scenes: the shepherds, the birth, the magi, and oriental women at the well in their village.
Traunkirchen
This church is pretty well-known in its area for it's Fisherman's pulpit. On it, has a depiction of Saint Francis Xavier, who dropped his cross in the sea, and a lobster (or sometimes shown as a crab) comes out of the sea to give it back to him. It also shows the scene of the miracle when the disciples' boat was filled with fishes when they tossed the net on the other side.
I can't remember if there's any significance of this altar, but hey, it's p cool and vibrant lol
Gmunden
Well, that's not the name of the church, but rather the town, but we visited their local parish church, which is dedicated to the three magi - a rather uncommon church, I'd say. (The pictures here were poop, so uh, no photos ono)
Loreto
I don't remember much about this church, considering we couldn't spend much time in it, and it wasn't in our book either. But I think it had a miraculous statue, that was only shown during mass. Otherwise, it was kept with the nuns.
Salzburg
Just to side track a bit: we got the chance to walk around Salzburg, which is p famous for Mozart. That's where they sell the original Mozart balls (*immature snicker*), had a plaza where they played a Mozart piece every day, and had those cute, hanging iron signs to show what the store was for (before people could read). It was home to Mirabell gardens as well, which is one of the sites where they filmed The Sound of Music. Heck, we went to a few places where they filmed it lol I'll put photos of the Mirabell gardens in one of the other posts lol
Salzburg also means "salt fortress", 'cos they transported salt via the river there, and there's a castle fortress thing on the hill nearby too. (Even Hallstaat is in reference to salt, considering they have a salt mine there lol)
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| cutie owl omg |
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| cutie lederhosen omg |
Salzburg Cathedral
omg don't get me started on Salzburg cathedral - it's damn huge. It's so huge, that I didn't get a chance to take down everything about it lol But what I did get, was of The Virgin's Column, which depicts Mary right on the top, with an angel, the devil, Wisdom and the Church at each corner. The Church symbolises how Mary is the mother of the church; The angel represents Mary in God's kingdom, as the queen of angels; Wisdom is represented as a woman, and how she knows the will of God for her (which is essentially what wisdom is from the Catholic point of view of the gifts of the holy spirit); and the Devil represents what is said in Revelations of a woman giving birth and the devil comes to get the child, but the mother and child are both saved. There's also a lightning bolt heading towards the devil, which is supposed to be about how the disciples saw the "devil fall like lightning" when they went out to preach.
Another thing about the Virgin's Column, is that if you stand at a particular angle, in front of the statue, the crown on the cathedral lines up perfectly with Mary, such that it looks like angels are crowning Mary.
Inside, was where Mozart was one of the organist for awhile, I think. There are like four organs in each corner of the main section of the church, and like all four organs are only used during special masses. There was even a crypt kind of thing under the church, but I think they only keep the old parish priests there or something, can't really remember lol orz
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| You can see the holy spirit, represented by a dove, riiiight in the top |
Just outside of Salzburg, is a little chapel where Silent Night was written. Franz Gruber and Joseph Mohr did the music and lyrics respectively. It was first performed, here, on Christmas eve in 1818, before it spread all around the world after that. It was sung in Germany and New York City in the 1830s by then lol There's also a replica of this in Frankenwurth (I think) in in a German themepark in Michigan, 1973 lol
Maria Plain
The church overlooked quite a huge piece of land, since it was on a hill. You could actually see the Salzburg fortress from all the way up there! And there was a large scene of the crucifixion there too.
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| You can see the fortress riiiiiiiiight there! |
Anyway, the church houses a miraculous image of Mary inside. Once, a fire broke out in a family bakery, and destroyed everything in the town - except the image. The image was then brought to the plain, where people visited it, and church was eventually built there. The anniversary of Mary's coronation was also celebrated in this church, and Mozart wrote his coronation mass for Mary here too. It was also raised to minor basilica status in 1952.
The other thing that is quite interesting about this, is that there is a hanging statue of Mary in it. What most people wouldn't notice though, is that on the wire that holds the statue up, are big beads, to represent the rosary lol Even I didn't notice it at first.
Saint Michael's Church (Mondsee)
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| That's St Michael there lol |
Now this, is my favourite church, mostly 'cos it's yellow, and it's Saint Michael's church holla~ Anyway, it's a Benedictine monastery, and one of the largest Gothic churches in Austria. It was also the church where Maria and Von Trapp got married in The Sound of Music lol The oldest German translation of the bible was also here. The other funny things in the paintings, are things like in one of them, the painter actually included himself in it, and the church can be seen somewhere in the paintings.
Maria Hilf (Help)
We went inside here, but it was more of a veeeery small chapel, and we couldn't get past the gate inside the chapel, (apparently a lot of the small churches and chapels have gates on the inside, although I don't relaly know why) so we didn't do much except enjoy the scenery outside. Inside though, are pictures of Mary and Jesus and stuff, and I think they might be ex-votos, but some of them were pretty unique. I remember one of them being sort of like a sketch, and it showed Mary kissing baby Jesus' hand, and she looked young, yet gentle and motherly, compared to the usual depiction of just her and Jesus with the two angels beside lol idk made her look a lot more real and human.
Saint Wolfgang
In Saint Wolfgang, there were two altars: one main one, and the other dedicated to St Wolfgang, which they don't use for mass I think. The main one has these panel-doors that can be moved, so it can be opened or closed. On the inside, shows the coronation of Mary, while the other panels show Mary praying to baby Jesus, circumcision, presentation of Jesus in the temple, and the death of Mary. What's unique about the last panel though, is that it shows Mary's soul going up with Jesus.
The story of St Wolfgang, is that he wanted to be a hermit, and the devil came to tempt him. But he prayed hard, and eventually the devil left. He then decided that he would build a church wherever his axe would land when he threw it. So he did, but then the devil came back again. The devil then said that he wouldn't torment St Wolfgang anymore, if the first person that enters the church was to be given to the devil. So St Wolfgang prayed about it, and lo and behold, a wolf entered the church, so that was given to the devil.
Hallstaat
Hallstaat is a rather small, picturesque-kind of town on a lake, which I'll probably talk about more in one of the other posts. It has two churches: one Catholic and one protestant.
Anyway, the Catholic church, Maria Am Berg (a.k.a Mary's Assumption Church) was on one of the hills. It has a bone house, where they keep bones from graves every ten years. I mean considering how really small the town is, there isn't a lot of land for graves in the church, so they get dug up, but kept in the bone house.
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| The Catholic church |
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| The protestant church |
Much like the previous church, they also have panel-altars, but with two "wings", so there's an inside, an inner pair of panels, and then a second pair of panels. Depending on the occasion, different altar panels are shown. The first position (when the inside of the outermost panels are shown) depict the meeting of Anna and Joachim, Mary and Elizabeth, circumcision, and the wise men. The second position, when everything is completely closed, shows Jesus in the temple as a child, the wedding at Cana, Jesus and Martha, and the ascension. The position that we saw, was the one of Mary's birth, annunciation, presentation of Jesus in the temple, and the death of Mary. Inside, shows Mary, with St Catherine and Barbara on her left and right. There's also a second altar, that shows Gethsemane, Pilate, the scourging, and carrying of the cross.
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| The Marian altar |
According to our parish priest, the protestant church that we went to demonstrated that protestants kinda "contradicted" themselves? I mean like in the sense that some protestants don't believe in "praying to statues" - yet there were statues in this church; there were votive candles which are used to for praying through a saint/person - yet these weren't dedicated to anyone; and protestants don't use a crucifix - yet there was one in that church. I'm not sure which denomination it was, so I'm not sure whether there are any denominations that keep in line with certain traditions that the Catholics have, but yeah. I guess, from what he saw it as, is that they were kinda "lost" in the middle of all the different beliefs that denominations and Catholics had.
The other thing about Hallstaat, was that we went there to witness their Corpus Christi procession, which is actually quite a big thing: it even gets news coverage lol There were other tourists who came on the same day as us to catch a glimpse of their procession. First, they bring the Eucharist to the plaza, where there's some prayers and stuff (it was all in German so I have no idea what they were saying lol), and then they bring it out onto the lake and sail around for a bit. There was a previous trip that went to Austria as well, led by the same priest as this trip, so when they went, they only saw the procession - but this time, when we visited the Catholic church, the priest there offered our priest a chance to get out onto the water to join them! And he did lol - in his Hawaiian shirt (cos he initially tried to go undercover).
There are a couple of townsfolk who go out onto the water themselves to try and catch a glimpse of the boat with the Eucharist on it.
That aside though, the way they celebrate Corpus Christi is very different from how we do it in Singapore. At some of the churches we went to, they were making serious preparations for it. They have outdoor processions with the Eucharist in a monstrance, and a banner-tent-like thing to protect it as it's brought around outside the church. In Singapore though, apparently we're not allowed to have processions - not even just outside our own church. I don't know why though ono
I guess I'll stop here for now. There's about 15+ more churches to go, so I'll see if I can finish them up in another post lol (Hopefully not too long from now!)
