A NYC Catholic reader and devotee of "A Confederacy of Dunces" sends us this Assumption vignette from a Bronx shrine to the Virgin Mary. "Who said Irene Reilly was fiction?" he writes. "Check out the dialogue at the end." Excerpt:
Small groups of pilgrims walked up to the grotto, where they stopped and prayed. A man explained he had just brought some family friends."She's a little delicate," he said of the friend.
"It's her nerves," said his companion, Gladys Valerio.
"We asked the Virgin to help her," he said.
"To help her get out of her trance," Ms. Valerio explained.
Soon, Yleana Acosta, their friend, joined them, her face glistening with water from the shrine. A rosary hung around her neck, its crucifix dangling on her damp shirt. Her mother, Esperanza Tejada, stood beside her, with a face that mixed maternal love and worry.
"I am very stressed," Yleana said, her voice cracking. "I have a lot on my mind that I have to get out of my life."
She had come to the Bronx from Delaware, she said, to get away from some problems she was having with her boyfriend. When her mother noticed something was wrong, the next thing you know, they were at the grotto.
"Thank God for my mother," Yleana said, dissolving into tears. "She's always with me."
Her mother, Esperanza -- which means "hope" -- hugged her.
"Don't cry, my love," her mother cooed. "Don't cry."
Santa Battaglia, get the potatis salad outta the ice chest, doll, we gonna be here a while.
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My mom is a parishoner at Our Lady of Fatima. There is a room devoted to OLF where there are statues of children on their knees in devotion to a statue of Mary. I used to tell friends when I tried to explain this whole tradition, "Catholicism is such a great religion, not only do we worship statues, our statues worship statues".
It is a beautiful little story. I definitely need to travel out to shrine the next time I'm in the Bronx
For post modern sceptics:
try this Brit-priest's take, who links GK Chesterton's
to the mind's eye of children via none other than C.J.Jung!!
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/features/f0000299.shtml
(H/T) the Jesuits @ insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2008/08/ the-loveliest-o.html#comments
Who cares about the potatis salad, cher, so long as them drinks are cold.
Funny true St. Joseph statue story: Catholic woman buries statue. Feels bad, thinks it's superstition, digs up statue, throws it away as it's been damaged...short time later, town sells garbage dump.
Just for the record, the St.-Joseph-in-the-backyard ritual is almost certainly an ersatz twentieth-century (and now twenty-first) invention, not an authentic folk tradition.
John C.: Those are actually supposed to be the children to whom Our Lady of Fatima appeared, not just random children.
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