Gate of Dawn Chapel

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Of the gates that once pierced the walls of Vilnius, built in the early sixteenth century, only one survives, and above its arch is a window through which passers-by in the street below can see the face of Mary. The painting, made probably in the early seventeenth century on oak planks, shows her without the Child, head bowed, hands crossed on her breast, clothed in a robe of gilded silver so that only her face and hands are visible. The Carmelites built a chapel for her inside the gate in 1671, and she became the Mother of Mercy for Lithuanians, Poles and Belarusians alike; the poet Adam Mickiewicz invoked her in the first lines of his national epic, and people still pause in the street, remove their hats and cross themselves as they pass beneath her. She was crowned in 1927, and John Paul II prayed the Rosary here in 1993. In 1935 the image of the Divine Mercy painted under the direction of Saint Faustina was displayed for the first time in public here, beside her. Today is her feast.