The Black Madonna loved me into Eastern Catholicism

This icon is currently known as the Black Madonna of Częstochowa. She’s famously known as a Polish national symbol; in fact, she was crowned Queen of Poland in the seventeenth century. Of course, the fun trivia fact that I always want my Polish friends to know (and they know this all too well already) is that this crowning took place in the city of Lviv, which is in contemporary western Ukraine. I love my Polish friends, but just as I did not become Ukrainian by becoming Eastern Catholic (which this icon has some claim to being as well, as we shall see), I also did not become Polish by falling in love with this icon. I have permission to love the Theotokos this way because St John Paul II basically said that the Black Madonna is a picture of the Church’s solidarity with the modern world. She cannot be reduced to an identity politics; she is for everyone.