Today, under the cerulean California sky, we marked the first day of Advent: and it seemed perfect, a very peculiar kind of perfect. Our donkey was a Volvo, a rather temperamental motorized donkey of a car. It doesn’t like me; won’t start for me when its owner is in the passenger seat (so he has to get out and start it for me). We were setting out on a pilgrimage, and I hadn’t been to my hometown in fifteen years- a farming town in the San Joaquin (“Joachim”?) Valley of California- and it was sort of on the way to our object, a small Vietnamese Catholic church in Sacramento (“Sacrament”), where it is said a statue of Our Lady is weeping.
We began our pilgrimage at the Mass, in St. Joseph’s Shrine of Santa Cruz (“Holy Cross”), and drove our donkey/ Volvo through the mountains; one hundred miles later, I saw the town where I’d suffered into adulthood. It had been such a prison to me, even though there were people there I’d loved. Everything was there, but changed, and it seemed broken down and sad, a trashed and empty sort of place. The only spot of beauty was St. Mary’s Church, and I was so happy to come back there with my new Catholic eyes, and see the shrine to Fatima and the small Catholic ecclesial estate nestled into that sad little town. I also remembered with new force my sinful and desperate existence there, those ten or so years. Seeing old places like that can bring anew the state one was in when last there- and my memories, although full of the angst of a young person searching for love and comfort, were of a sinful life.
Leaving there, we traveled on to Sacramento. On our way, we saw a sign for a new housing development: “Anatolia”, it said, in large, curly letters. We looked at each other in some wonder, because our daughter’s name is Anatolia. What are the chances? So we thought perhaps this was a glimmer of a star for us and we kept on in the gathering dusk.
Finally, the midnight blue donkey got a rest as we stood in front of the large, white, cement statue of Our Lady. It was cold in that parking lot, in the rural darkness south of Sacramento. Suburbans full of Hispanic families and Cadillacs with Vietnamese families pulled in behind us, to join the small crowd in front of the statue. The many-belled sounds of the “Hail Mary” in Vietnamese blended in strangely with the sounds of Spanish. I waited by the car for awhile, and stared at the statue, and wept for the life I’d led, and for all those who were still enslaved in lives like that: desperate, alone, submerged in shadows of guilt and anger that can’t be waved away except in the great grace of repentance and conversion. I just wept for my sins while the back of my mind wondered why a statue would be weeping tears of blood at a Vietnamese church in Sacramento, out in the fields. Why not St. Patrick’s on Fifth Ave? And I wondered if it were true. But from a distance, I could not see the tears of blood, I could only see the crowd of people, looking and praying and holding candles in the air. I could only see the white figure of Our Lady, not looking cement-and-paintlike, but ethereal and simple; and I lived that sadness for sin, my own mostly- how many people had I hurt or helped to lose-and for the blindness of the world.
I went closer and saw the rivulets of dried blood, where the tears had come down. It seemed so-so earthy. But the dried blood brought me, brought us, brought all these people, to pray. And I didn’t worry too much about gawkers- after all, there is so much else to gawk at, why would you choose a statue and The Church of Catholic Martyrs, a Vietnamese parish? And I didn’t worry too much about fanatical sign-seekers: aren’t we all that, really? And I didn’t worry too much about the blood and whether it was a hoax or not, because I remembered Fatima, and Lourdes, and La Salette: that the Lord is sad, and offended- and asks us to do reparation for others and ourselves.
Advent: coming: the coming of the Lord in mercy, as a babe in a small-town stable. Joseph and Mary, beginning their journey to Bethlehem, traveling on a non-descript donkey back to that small town, that sort-of hometown to Joseph. The darkness of the rural roads, the small houses and huts and the smell of dung; the Holy Family picking their way through the crowds of Bethlehem: a Savior has come into the world, to this dark and sad place. Advent is a time for penance, and gratitude, for He wishes to be born in the sad and small places that are our hearts without Him.
