GARY – A warm and vibrant sense of public faith expression was realized during an intra-city procession that honored the Virgin Mary, her message and, in particular, her importance to Catholics of Mexican heritage.
On Dec. 3, the third annual “Great Guadalupana Walk” attracted more than 100 participants who journeyed after Mass at Ss. Monica and Luke church in Gary’s Emerson section, carrying a large statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe five miles to the city’s south side. Once in the Glen Park neighborhood, the pilgrims were greeted by a full house at St. Joseph the Worker church.
The parish’s regularly scheduled Mass was delayed until the late afternoon arrival of the faithful. The hardy souls dressed down from their winter gear to join the liturgy, which marked the start of a novena to Our Lady as “Patroness of the Americas.”
The faithful who participated in the journey were not deterred by temperatures that hovered in the upper 30s. They were not stopped by morning rain, and many who walked the route said the weather’s fine for sharing a bit of religious culture.
“We recognize Our Lady of Guadalupe as the mother of Jesus and as our mother, so we’re celebrating her for giving life to Jesus,” said Augustine Alatorre, who was part of the event crew along with his twin brother Julian Alatorre, also of St. Joseph the Worker. Their brother Ivan Alatorre, the second of identical triplets, is a diocesan seminarian.
The respect expressed by the Alatorre brothers was shared by Silvester Herrera, who played saxophone as he walked the route through the Steel City. Herrera gathered together a small group of musicians from St. Anthony parish on the south side of Chicago and connected with family in Northwest Indiana as they performed traditional numbers.
“We get used to it, with lots of practice,” said Herrera. “We have lots of stamina. We came to bring music and some joy and came to play songs for the Virgin Mary.”
Along thoroughfares such as 8th Avenue, Georgia Street and over the memorial Frank Borman Expressway, the pilgrims processed past neatly manicured yards, abandoned properties, industrial sites and nature preserves. With each step, they continued with songs in Spanish to punctuate the praying of the Rosary.
“Desde el cielo una hermosa mañana ... En la tilma entre rosas, pintada su imagen amada su imagen amada se dignó dejar. (From heaven, one beautiful morning ... Among the painted roses of the tilma, she deemed to leave behind her beloved image.),” sang the walkers.
Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, as she is known in Spanish, refers to how the Blessed Mother appeared to a Mexican peasant, now called St. Juan Diego, in a series of apparitions in 1531. Skeptical church officials were eventually convinced of the authenticity of the manifestations, and a period of tremendous growth of the Catholic Faith among the pre-Columbian peoples followed.
Some Gary residents looked on with curiosity as the Marian procession continued down their street on Sunday afternoon. One witness, an older gentleman who was delivering food to a nearby home, said he didn’t mind being stopped at the intersection. The west side resident said, “It’s good that they are doing that … otherwise these days everybody is rushin’, rushin’, rushin’.”
Father Michael Surufka, O.F.M., joined in the procession with a Franciscan brother who was visiting the Midwest from Brazil. Father Surufka is among four of his order serving in Gary parishes and nine who are in active ministry in the diocese.
Susan Herrera, a St. Joseph the Worker parishioner, said she was excited to catch up to a portion of the procession and then attend Mass and the formal start of the nine-day novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe where the church will host the colorful Marian statue.
“It’s a beautiful thing they do each year; I think (the Marian walk) is such a beautiful tradition, especially for the younger people,” said Herrera. “Our Lady comes and visits for the novena and we pray the Rosary on each of those days … it’s more like a family.”
Herrera praised the efforts of St. Joseph the Worker youth group members who coordinated the preparations for the reception that followed the liturgy.
Father Edward Shea, O.F.M., celebrated a late-afternoon Mass at St. Joseph the Worker. He fluently preached in Spanish, a language that the Irish and Italian priest said he began to learn during an assignment in Joliet, Ill. in the 1990s.
A congregation of African-, European- and Hispanic-American Catholics filled the Gary church as the Franciscan friar told the faithful that Christians must develop “nostalgia for God … not for the good old days, but for the moment of complete union with God – and we have those moments in our lives. Advent is the time to bring us right back.”
Father Shea called the walking pilgrimage “good for Gary.”
“For us, for our Franciscan mission in Gary, it was a great moment,” said Father Shea. “It felt like one unified celebration … we’re on our way to heaven and we ought to act like it.
He added, “This kind of lifts us out of the struggles of everyday life and (reminds us) that we are connected to something much greater than ourselves.”
As the Guadalupanos completed their walk through Gary and entered into the novena that would carry them through the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Dec. 12, many recalled a declaration by Pope John Paul II in 1999. The pontiff said that every church in the Western Hemisphere should celebrate the Mexican apparitions as the Blessed Mother is “the Patroness, the Evangelizer, and the Mother of the Americas.”
St. John Paul II prayed, “We dedicate to you our life, our work, our joys, our infirmities and our sorrows. Grant peace, justice and prosperity to our peoples, for we entrust to your care all that we have and all that we are, our Lady and Mother. We wish to be entirely yours and to walk with you along the way of complete faithfulness to Jesus Christ in His Church; hold us always with your loving hand.”
Caption: Faithful among more than 100 pilgrims follow a truck carrying a large statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe as they participate in the third intra-city “Great Guadalupana Walk” in Gary on Dec. 3. Catholics moved on foot or in vehicles as the large statue of the Blessed Mother was transported on a five-mile journey from Ss. Monica and Luke to St. Joseph the Worker where the novena celebration continued in the Glen Park neighborhood. (Anthony D. Alonzo photo)