Faithful celebrate Marian feast; thank God for life, faith, and community
The B.C. Catholic
MISSION
Hats, umbrellas, and glistening foreheads dotted Fraser Valley Heritage Park as pilgrims assembled for the Feast of the Assumption.
Despite blazing heat, more than 1,000 people met Aug. 20 to pray, celebrate Mass, and join a Eucharistic procession to the grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes.
“We are privileged, today, to be counted among those generations that call her blessed,” said Archbishop J. Michael Miller, CSB, during his homily.
The grotto, originally erected in 1892 and rebuilt in 1997, is B.C.’s first Marian shrine. It stands high on a hill in Fraser Valley Heritage Park, not far from the foundations of what was once St. Mary’s Mission and Residential School, and not far from a cemetery for the Oblates who served in the province.
Pilgrims come to this heritage site for various reasons. For Elizabeth Bob, the annual pilgrimage is a way to thank Mary for her intercession.
“Mother Mary’s love brings me every year. I’m so touched. I have a personal deep relationship with Mother Mary and Jesus,” Bob said. “It’s a big miracle for me to be alive.”
Bob said she was about 1 year old in India when she became seriously ill with a high fever, and came near death.
“My parents didn’t know what do to. At the last minute they took me to the hospital. The doctors said, ‘You brought her at the last minute. We cannot do anything. She has five or 10 minutes.'”
Her parents prepared to say goodbye. Her mother, who was not a Christian, suddenly knelt down on the floor and began praying to Our Lady.
“Exactly after one hour, my life came back,” Bob said. After that, her mother would always take her daughter to Feast of the Assumption events in India.
“When I came to 10 or 11 years, my mom said: ‘In the future, I might not be here, but you should continue going to Mary’s feast. This is the reason second life was given.'”
Bob moved to Canada in 2007, and has been travelling to Mission to celebrate the Marian feast ever since.
As Bob thanked God for a second chance at life, pilgrim Josie Diaz prayed for her mother, who died this April.
“This is the first year that I’m here without my mom,” said Diaz, who has prayed on the hilltop in Mission every year for at least the last 20 years.
“She was 87 when she died. Every single year, she wanted to come here.”
For her, the pilgrimage offers a special sense of community.
“There are only a few times that the parishes get together,” she said. “It’s a good sight to see all these families. When you think about teaching the values of family, I think this is a good place to celebrate that togetherness.”
Enrie Dickie, a member of Our Lady of Mercy Parish in Burnaby, also comes for the community.
“When you get here, you’re welcome. You feel home. You feel like you belong.”
When Nalia Angeles, of St. Mary’s Parish in Vancouver, walks down the hill from the grotto, she feels “lifted up.”
“For me, I feel like this is a little heaven, for now,” she said. “You feel more the Holy Spirit. Families come together here, so it’s like heaven at this moment. That’s the emotion.”
Angeles has only missed one of these Marian pilgrimages in the last 12 years.
“My family back home, my nieces, my nephews, I always remind them: ‘You are Catholic. Our parents, our grandparents had no money to give to us. That’s the only thing that came from them: the gift of faith. No money can buy being a Catholic.'”
Oblate missionaries began establishing a mission on this site to reach out to the Stolo First Nation in the 1860s.
“Our presence here shows that we appreciate all the Oblate fathers and brothers who, along with the Sisters of St. Ann, gave their lives to God so that the Stolo would discover the great mystery of God our Creator and our Saviour, Jesus Christ,” said Jack Etier, a former pilgrimage organizer and a member of St. Joseph’s Parish in Mission.
“May this pilgrimage to Our Lady of Lourdes create a greater faith in all of us. Our Lady’s goal is to bring us closer to her Son, Jesus Christ. He is our happiness.”
