This is the fifth and final installment of my series explaining some history of the five saints portrayed down the left-hand side of the church. This last image is one of our Lady – our Lady of China and obviously represents our Chinese community. Mary needs no introduction and rather than trying to give some history, I have scoured the Internet to find other images of our Blessed Mother, a woman most Beautiful, “a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars” (Rev 12:1). Father Anthony has stated that he is making changes to beautify the church so that people can come and feel at peace. We can certainly feel at peace in the presence of our beautiful Mother. Since we are all one human race and our Lady is the Mother of us all, it is quite appropriate to find her represented as different races. The next image is the classic Madonna of the Street, followed by our Lady of Perpetual Help, which has been promoted by the Redemptorists. As we face the intimidation and threats of the Coronavirus, we see the child Jesus being forewarned by angels of His future suffering and death as he runs to his Mother for comfort. A most famous image is our Lady of Guadalupe, portrayed with a native American face. Since we have that image already in our church, I did not reproduce it here.
Next comes an image of our Lady in the Sistine Chapel followed by the Black Madonna of Czestochowa, in Poland, to which Pope Saint John Paul II had great devotion. That image, like John Paul, was attacked. It has two slash marks where it was cut by a sword. Then there is an image of our Lady of Santiago in Guatemala, which used to be our sister parish, referenced by the confessional and holy water fount near the Eastern entrance of our church.
And finally, we have a meme-style image that can nonetheless lead us to a moment of contemplative prayer, and the image of our Lady of Antipolo, a famous shrine in the Philippines.
The Men’s Club returned to our annual tradition of an in-person retreat right before Thanksgiving. The retreatmaster was Fr Ken Laverone, OFM, and the theme was “Wrestling with God.” It was built around the story of the seven Trappist monks who lived in peace with a Muslim community in Algeria, were taken captive by some Islamist extremists, and were killed in 1996. The story was made into the movie “Of Gods and Men”, which we viewed Friday night at the start of the retreat. The movie showed how each of the monks progressed in his thinking as the threat of violence began and escalated, and they were warned by the military that they should leave. It showed them wrestling with their decision until all seven monks decided to stay, at the risk of their lives. Fr Ken applied the story to us, asking if could have foreseen and bought into our present circumstances, way back when we first converted or reverted to Catholicism, or if a cradle Catholic when we decided to keep the Faith and go forward. We find that our spiritual life is a constant wrestling with that life and commitment as new circumstances present themselves and we must constantly decide whether to continue in our Faith on a daily basis, taking up our Cross, or not.
Fr Ken also was able to relieve some of the stress of the pandemic when he told us that some doctor friends of his say that on any day, 1/3 of the workforce in their medical building called in sick — a sign of depression. He said the same was noted by a group of CEOs who had met. He said that depression is the pandemic syndrome. Everybody is feeling it. It is in our psyche and we should not feel ashamed to admit that we are depressed.
He concluded by telling us what a wonderful group of men we are who have stuck together all these years and the great good we have done and can still do. As you know, we have not been getting many new members, we are older and don’t have the energy we used to have. It is difficult to find men to take on leadership positions, and in addition to thanking the current Board which has agreed to stand for election, I want to thank Greg Stephens for agreeing to step forward as “contact” President – the person who will provide a single point of contact for our clergy and the other ministries to communicate with our Club. With Fr Ken’s commendation, with hope, I urge you all to pray for a regeneration of our Club so we can continue the good works and prayers we have contributed to St Joseph’s in ministry.
In keeping with my usual custom, I am asking that you pray for our clergy and the following seminarians for our diocese — Eric Ruiz and Rodolfo Quinteros.
Dennis – VP for Spirituality