The Black Madonna Shrine

One Franciscan’s 23-year labor of love to honor Mary has become an oasis of peace in the foothills of the Missouri Ozarks.

Story and photography by Richard Bauman

Brother Bronislaus Luszcz was a man with a mission—a mission to create a shrine to honor the Black Madonna of Czestochowa. He had such a great devotion to Mary, especially as Our Lady of Czestochowa, that he spent 23 years, working alone, building the shrine. Th e result is an open-air church and a series of hillside grottoes dedicated to St. Francis, St. Joseph, Mary, the Holy Family, and events in the life of Christ.

Brother Bronislaus was among six Franciscan Missionary Brothers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus who came from Poland to the St. Louis area in 1927 at the behest of Cardinal John J. Glennon. Th eir mission was to build and operate the St. Joseph Hill Infi rmary, a nursing home for men. Situated on 200 acres of wooded land in the rolling hills of the Ozarks, the site is near Eureka, Missouri, and about 40 miles southwest of St. Louis.

Ten years aft er arriving in America, Brother Bronislaus started clearing a hillside adjacent to the now-closed infi rmary where he would create the Black Madonna Shrine.

THE BLACK MADONNA’S HISTORY

Th e icon of the Black Madonna dates to early Christianity. Tradition says St. Luke painted the image of Mary holding the infant Jesus onto a cypress tabletop that came from the Holy Family’s home. Christians in Jerusalem venerated the icon for about 300 years. When

OPPOSITE PAGE: The icon of the Black Madonna that hangs above the altar in the Chapel of the Hills is one of several Black Madonna icons in the chapel.

BELOW: The Chapel of the Hills at the Black Madonna Shrine features a mosaic on the wall behind the altar. The mosaic was created by Frederick Henze, a friend of Brother Bronislaus. On the lower right is the icon that had hung above the altar in Our Lady of Czestochowa in St. Louis.

The grotto of Our Lady of Perpetual Help is more ornate than the others and incorporates seashells, colorful rocks, and bits of colored glass. St. Helena went to the Holy Land, searching for the True Cross of Jesus, she came upon the Black Madonna icon. She brought it to Constantinople in 326 and gave it to her son, Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor of Rome.

The Black Madonna remained in a chapel in Constantinople for about 500 years. Over the course of nearly 900 years it was moved several times before it came to Czestochowa, in what is now Poland.

To protect the icon from invading Tartars in 1382, Prince Ladislaus Opolski, the duke of Opole, planned to move it to his castle in Upper Silesia, but it never got there. When the horses pulling the wagon carrying the icon reached the crest of a hill in Czestochowa, they stopped dead and wouldn’t budge. No amount of pushing, pulling, or coaxing would get them to move. That night, Prince Opolski had a vision in which Mary told him to build a chapel for the icon on that hilltop. The chapel was built and eventually grew to be Jasna Góra (Bright Hill) Monastery.

The icon has survived fires and even physical attacks. In 1430, invading Hussites sacked the monastery; among the treasure they took was the Black Madonna. It was loaded into a wagon, but the horses stood stock-still. The raiders tossed the painting off the wagon, and only then did the horses begin to move. One soldier slashed the icon with his sword, creating two cuts on Mary’s right cheek. When he went to strike it again, he dropped dead. His cohorts fled, abandoning him and the icon at road’s edge.

That original icon is still at the Jasna Góra Monastery. Due to the primitive paints used to create it, it has become dulled and darkened with age. Not to mention the icon has been through at least one major fire, and the smoke from innumerable candles and incense has contributed to further darkening the image.

The title “Black Madonna” is actually a nickname given to the icon because of the

darker skin tones of Mary and the infant Jesus. Mary, Jesus, and Joseph lived in a hot, arid climate, so their skin tones would naturally have been brown or olive.

THE BLACK MADONNA SHRINE

Brother Bronislaus was 44 years old when he started his 23-year labor of love creating the Black Madonna Shrine to honor Mary and the ancient icon. Whether he was sweating under the stifling heat and humidity of Missouri summers or enduring the bone-chilling cold of winter, he consistently worked on the shrine and worked alone.

The first thing he built, however, was a cedar wood chapel with a reproduction of the famous icon hanging above the altar. The chapel became a place of religious devotion, and pilgrimages to the shrine were common. Prayer services and Mass were celebrated there for about 20 years.

In 1958, the chapel was destroyed by arson. All that remained of it were embers and ashes.

THE GROTTOES

After finishing the chapel, Brother Bronislaus plunged into building seven massive grottoes. They are nestled on a hillside on the shrine’s grounds. Each is handcrafted from concrete and a ragged, multicolored stone known as Missouri tiff rock. In most of the grottoes he also incorporated seashells, costume jewelry, ceramic figurines, and even colorful, crystalline geodes. He used gelatin molds, baking pans, and coffee cans to create some of the concrete decorations.

Brother Bronislaus mixed every batch of concrete himself, and he carefully placed the stones and embellishments in each grotto. He had no formal plans for any of them—he prayed for guidance and then went to work. Though they are similar to one another and incorporate the same kind of materials and adornments, each grotto is unique.

Where did he get the plethora of jewelry, gems, and other items for his shrines? As his work became known, he received donations

TOP: As he built shrines, Brother Bronislaus started using more elaborate decorations on the grottoes. For example, on the grotto dedicated to St. Joseph, he created starfish-like designs embellished with pieces of glass, buttons, and other eyecatching items. BOTTOM: The grottoes of St. Francis (right) and St. Joseph (left) can be seen from the entrance to the self-guided tour at the shrine.

Information of all kinds from visitors, people throughout THERE IS NO admission the country, and even charge to visit the Black from missionaries in Madonna Shrine and foreign countries. The Grottoes, although dona- St. Francis Grotto, tions are appreciated. for example, includes The shrine has a gift shop several small bird but receives no financial figurines that were support from either the donated by visitors. diocese or any parish. Brother Bronislaus’ labor of love came to The shrine’s an end on August 12, mailing address is: 1960. He was trying to 100 St. Joseph Hill Road finish the grotto to Our Pacific, MO 63069 Lady of Fatima when he apparently suffered The hours of operation heatstroke. He probably currently are: realized he was dying May–Sept.: 9 a.m.–7 p.m. and left a trail of hand tools as he staggered April and Oct.: 9 a.m.–6 p.m. several hundred feet uphill to the grotto of Nov.–March: 9 a.m.–4 p.m. Our Lady of Perpetual Help. That’s where the other brothers found his body that evening. For further information, to get Mass times, and to verify VISITING THE BLACK MADONNA SHRINE the shrine’s hours of opera- Originally the shrine and grottoes were built tion, call 636-938-5361 or as a place of solitude, meditation, and prayer visit the shrine’s website, for the brothers. Today people visit the Black FranciscanCaring.org. Madonna Shrine for the same reasons. They If you are driving to the come to get away from the busyness and shrine and using GPS, the business of the day. They come to pray and address to use is: reflect, to find serenity in the world of chaos. “It’s a place to sit and listen to the quiet,” 265 St. Joseph Hill Road one visitor said. Pacific, MO 63069 In the mid-1960s, the Chapel of the Hills was built to replace the shrine’s burned-out chapel. It’s an open-air church where visitors can see the expanse of Brother Bronislaus’ handiwork. From there, too, they can embark on a self-guided tour of the grottoes. At the Bridge, the first stop on the tour’s path, visitors can see above and to their left the Crucifixion and Gethsemane Grottoes. The Crucifixion Grotto’s crucifix has become a local landmark. Hikers use it as a point of reference as they trek through the nearby woods, and lost hikers have used it as a guide to safety. Every grotto at the shrine is worth visiting, but certain ones resonate in a special way with most visitors. The Gethsemane Grotto, for example, depicts Christ’s hours of praying just before his betrayal. There is a large, white statue of Christ kneeling in prayer, and above him on an outcropping is another statue

depicting an angel sent from his Father. A short distance from the statue of Christ are statues portraying Peter, James, and John sleeping through Christ’s agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. The Our Lady of Sorrows Grotto is the first grotto Brother Bronislaus built. He erected and tore it The grotto dedicated to St. Francis of Assisi features down several times native tiff rock and donated materials. before he was satisfied with it. It isn’t as ornate as the later grottoes, but its white altar stone is from the original monastery chapel. A path leads to the Mother’s Sanctuary, which is just above the Our Lady of Sorrows Grotto. There is a pond in the midst of some trees, and on its far side is a statue of Mary cradling the infant Jesus in her arms. The Chapel of the Hills has a plethora of art dedicated to Our Lady of Czestochowa. There’s a mosaic wall behind the altar created by Frederick Henze, a friend of Brother Bronislaus. There is also a painting commissioned by Cardinal Stefen Wyszynski, the former primate of Poland, that was donated to replace the painting destroyed in the cedar wood chapel fire. It arrived just a few weeks before Brother Bronislaus died. Cardinal John Carberry of St. Louis donated a glass-encased icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa thought to be between 200 and 300 years old. It had originally hung over the altar of the Church of Our Lady of Czestochowa in St. Louis. The church was razed in the mid-1960s to make way for Interstate 55. The Black Madonna Shrine and its grottoes are an example of what one person with faith, determination, and a willingness to work can do. And each grotto is a solid statement of Brother Bronislaus Luszcz’s love for God and Our Blessed Mother.

In the Mother’s Sanctuary, there is a small waterfall and a statue of the Richard Bauman is a writer and photographer who resides Blessed Mother holding an infant in West Covina, California. A self-described “history sleuth,” in her arms. he enjoys visiting, photographing, and writing about lesserknown historical sites across the United States.