 A Visit to St. MARY’S CHURCH [1925] Erected by the Franciscans in 1885, St. Mary’s, while it is not the largest in ground dimensions, is yet one of the most massive and striking in the city. As one enters the Church he is immediately impressed by the magnificent proportions. It is Roman in style and cruciform – the cross being seen to best advantage in the richly frescoed ceiling. Beautiful polished granite columns divide the side aisles from the nave and support the walls of the main roof. These costly monolithic shafts give an air of richness to the ornamental plaster decorations of the walls and ceilings and are in pleasing contrast to the more common order of Church decorations. Recently redecorated, the interior dimensions are considerably emphasized. The extreme length is 176 feet, the width of the body 80 and of the transept 116 feet. The height of the nave at the center of the arch towers 90 feet. The most notable features outside of the magnificent proportions are its wood-carved stations and its several shrines, which in no way detract from the original purpose of its architectural outline. It is these shrines that single out the Church of St. Mary’s in Detroit as the “Church of the Grottoes.” The Holy Ghost Fathers, the Religious in charge, share the signal honor of possessing an edifice at once commandingly artistic and sheltering a group of grottoes unlike anything to be found in this country. These grottoes are the choice and plentiful offspring of the creative genius and pious inspiration of one man as they are in great part the work of his own hands. It was under the personal direction of Reverend Joseph Wuest, C. S. Sp., that the Grotto of the Agony and the Grotto of Lourdes took shape and gave expression to an artistic conception that makes these grottoes the appealing shrines of piety that they are. The exquisitely wood-carved and realistic life-sized statues and the painted shores of the Jordan river apart, the Grotto of the Holy Baptism is in its entirety the manual labor of love and zeal that the pious genius and deft fingers of Reverend Father Wuest, C,S,Sp., could alone construct. THE GARDEN OF OLIVES
The fire of a new energy inflaming our hearts, we light a candle at the shrine, and pass down the aisle, our attention attracted to the wood-carved way of the cross that marks our progress toward the Grotto of Agony. These stations were carved in Bavaria and were procured in 1907 at a price in excess of $3,000.00. At the end of the aisle in the far northwestern corner, we note a large crucifixion group standing on a mound of rough stone. At this point we are about to enter the Grotto of Agony and we picture ourselves outside the walls of Jerusalem in the presence of Christ’s consummated sacrifice. It was in August, 1920, that the Grotto became an accomplished fact. It has been declared by artists the most beautiful thing of its kind in the United States and occupies some 20 feet square in the vase of the left tower. The frieze above the walls of the entrance displays the harrowing instruments of the passion. Here are the cross and the crown of thorns; the scourge and the bent crude nails.
As we step into the Grotto our advance is arrested by a sense of calm and content. There are the beautiful soft light, the exquisite coloring of artistic values knowingly placed, of a great quiet and a brooding peace. Even before one reads the invitation traced in the floor, “Watch ye and pray”, he almost hears an angel’s voice bidding him enter so to pray. Recalling the eve of a sin-stained world’s Redemption, our eyes involuntarily stray to the central figure of Jesus kneeling in prayer on that fateful night. He gazes sadly, patiently upward toward a hidden light that throws across the face a pale, aesthetic perfection and lingers on the single tear glistening on the cheek. An angel with reverential awe stands mutely by, the Chalice of sacrifice in his uplifted hands. Reclining on a roll of grass and rock-studded moss are Peter, James, and John, weary with the wait within the garden of Olives, garment wrapped and all asleep. There is yet another group; three figures, life-sized and skillfully carved standing before the tall pillars of a temple. Two are of priestly dress and one extends in thin blue-veined hands, thirty pieces of silver. The third with sullen brow, and brooding, lowering face is already reaching out a grasping hand – Judas receiving his pay for the tragedy of the world.
The figures are of composition and life-sized. In harmony with the setting, is a panoramic oil painting showing Jerusalem in the evening twilight. The ceiling is studded with lights, star-shaped, controlled by an automatic cut-off that causes them to twinkle and helps to create the illusion of a soft summer’s night. The bases of the grotto walls are of a lake rock similar to that found in sea caves on coral islands. With this one distraction in our prayer, we rise from our prie-dieu and depositing our little offering, we light a candle, a sense of nearness of God pervading the atmosphere we are leaving.
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THE GROTTO OF LOURDES In turning to our tight, we proceed to the base of the south tower. Dedicated to her own sweet memory, the church bearing her name must needs shelter a shrine of our own Blessed Mother. Thus in June of 1912 was realized another ambition of the gifted Pastor of St. Mary’s and the Grotto Lourdes in miniature was transplanted from the banks of the Gave de Pau. Here as in the Grotto of the Agony the entrance is suggestive of the spirit of the interior. Above the archway is a bas-relief representing Paradise, showing the angel ordering Adam and Eve to quit the garden. Sin-stained Eve was to be henceforth the fruitful mother of a sin-stained progeny. Through Mary, the sinless one, this vast progeny will become regenerate.
In 1858 the Blessed Virgin in apparition to a peasant girl at Lourdes, France, gave testimony of her Immaculate Conception. The Catholic Encyclopedia briefly summarizes the history of the miracle of Lourdes. “The Pilgramage of Lourdes is founded on the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin to a poor, fourteen-year-old girl, Bernadette Soubiroux. The first apparition occurred February, 1858. There were eighteen in all. The last took place July 16, of the same year. Bernadette often fell into an ecstasy. The mysterious vision in the hollow of the rock Massabielle was that of a young and beautiful lady. ‘Lovelier than I have ever seen,’ said the child. But the girl was the only one that saw the vision, although sometimes many stood there with her. Now and then the apparition spoke to the seer, who also was the only one that heard the voice. Thus, she one day told her to drink from a mysterious fountain in the grotto itself, the existence of which was unknown, and of which there was no sign, but which immediately gushed forth. On another occasion the apparition bade Bernadette to go and tell the priests she wished a chapel to be built on the spot and processions to be made to this grotto.” It was on the 18th of February that Bernadette questioned the identity of the apparition. The Blessed Virgin told her simply, ‘I am the Immaculate Conception.’”
If the angel in the Garden of Eden drove hence with flaming sword our first parents, two angels in the entrance of the grotto at St. Mary’s bid us draw nigh and enter the facsimile of that other Eden of the Immaculate Eve. We are heartened by the legends they bear: “Refuge of Sinners”, and “Help of Christians.”
Fashioned after the original of Lourdes, the interior adapts itself to the twenty square feet of space without crowding and is built of Tussa rock. Countless thousands of pebbles, stones, shells, and valuable bits of ore from practically every nook and former of the world have been gathered together and used in the construction of this beautiful grotto. Some idea of the distance from which the stones came and of their variety can be had from a note written on a card, found in one of the boxes. “In the bottom of this box are stones that were found in the bed of Lake Superior. The six smooth white stones came from Belgium, while the iron and copper ore are from the mines of Montana. The black material is slag taken from the copper furnaces.”
On the summit of a hill stands the life-sized statue of the Blessed Virgin. The figure rests in a niche lined with precious bits of metal encased in their coverings of mother rock from mines of Mexico on the south, and from the silver in Cobalt on the north. Little electric bulbs fixed in the arch of the niche reflect their radiance in myriads of sparkling prisms that cast a halo of light on the statue. Beneath the statue, fixed permanently in the hillside and readily distinguishable, are two bits of stone taken from the very spot of the apparition in Lourdes. At some short distance kneels the simple peasant girl, the blessed Bernadette. In the center of the grotto, set back in the rocky bed, stands an altar. With its construction it is so wonderful that it is hard to believe that it si not a natural cavity with a tiny altar chiseled out for its worshippers. Every Saturday morning throughout the year, Holy Mass is celebrated at this altar. Outside and to the left of the altar, is an opening from which bubbles forth a tiny stream of water, dripping down the face of the rock. We may never see the grotto in the Hautes Pyrenees, but as we feat our eyes on this realistic replica, we pray with the same simple faith that stirs the hearts of the devout pilgrims that worship at that shrine. That the Queen of Heaven looks with favor upon those who here would pay her homage is attested by the several marble slabs that have been erected in thanksgiving for extraordinary favors received.
Within the grotto, affixed to the wall, is a reliquary. That most precious of all relics, a piece of the true cross is here reverently preserved. While there are in addition relics of the Saints, one is surprised and pleased to find here that rarest of relics, a portion of the veil of the Virgin Mother. This relic is exposed for veneration every Saturday afternoon after the recitation of the beads and Benediction at 4 o’clock. The clients of Mary approach the altar rail to kneel and kiss this most worthy object of devotion. In 1923 a veteran of the world war, in a letter addressed to the Pastor, declared positively that a disabled hand, which no natural means had been able to restore to normal use, had become tractable by contact with the relic after a novena of Saturdays. In response to an inward urge, he took a pencil in his fingers and began to write – something he had been unable to do since his experience overseas.
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The BAPTISTRY A UNIQUE SHRINE
As we turn to leave the Shrine of Our Lady, we deposit our little mite and light a candle, feeling infinitely better for our humble homage to God’s and our own Blessed Mother. As we continue to our right we pass the semi-circular confessional reserved for the deaf and stand before the iron wrought gates that open into the baptistry. Undoubtedly there are other shrine in the length and breadth of the land that recall the miraculous apparition of the Immaculate Mother at Lourdes, and indeed there are shrines that re-enact in artistic grouping of figures and scenes that prayerful setting in the historic Garden beyond Kedron Brook, but never have we seen a likeness of the shrine that now commands attention.
While there is a mirage here, it is one that gently glides into the substantial reality that woos but does not win the wanderer of the desert. In from the wall facing our approach toward the south, flow the placid waters of the Jordan. It might be an illusion, but we hear the falling of the waters, nay, we see the play of light o’er a rock-bound coast where beneath a bridge that spans a crude rock-hewn basin, gold fish disport themselves. Here is movement and here is life; a charming detail that adapts itself beautifully to the scene that surrounds us as we stand within the grotto. This shrine of a baptistry occupies about 18 feet square. After little less than a year, in the early spring of 1923, Reverend Father Wuest, C.S.Sp., completed a work that is peculiarly his in design and construction. Every stone and shell, and there are many, small and large, found its place through the day by day application of an untiring Pastor.
As we descend the several steps into the baptistry, the scene tells its story in one sweep of the eye. It is a reproduction of the baptism of Christ on the banks of the Jordan river. The same artist who hung the canvas of Agony Grotto here applied a skillful brush. Every shade and color is capably blended to carry out the motif, and there is a sympathy between the painting and the figures that help make the grotto the unique work it is. From the South wall the painting swings easily and naturally across the western extension into the inland country of Jerusalem. Out of the mists of a painted country materialize the homes of an Eastern architecture tastefully arrange on the rocky soil that rears its rugged coast above the water’s level. Thus, too, the highways and byways of the illusion are continued in the stone and sand formations of the grotto. The floor is of colored cement, its border relieved with flower designs. Its southwest reach forms the outer bank of the river that reveals itself in a pool of water beneath. In this pool we have the central figures of Christ and John, the Baptist. Carved in Tyrol, Austria, the statues are of wood and lifesized, as are all the other figures in the setting. His shoulders bared to the flowing waters, our Divine Savior gently inclines His Sacred Head. Standing on a bit of projecting rock, the Baptist drains a shell of its water as he holds it over the head of his beloved Master. Suspended by a barely perceptible cord, hovers the symbol of the Holy Ghost, and in the circular window of the colored skylight appear the words: “This is my beloved son.” On a broad expanse of shore land a group of three awe-inspired men stand directly to the rear of this touching scene.
As our eye travels from this group we pass along the winding path that crosses the bridge, and on the other side we meet a shepherd and his flock on the hillside. The moss-covered rock is reproduced in the picture and the sheep are seen coming in from the distant plains in answer to the call of their shepherd. Beneath this scene a drawer has been built into the surrounding stones. Here are kept the holy oils, cotton, ritual, stole and all the necessary material for the administration of the sacrament of baptism. In a place of its own, the outer shell of the receptacle in harmony with its surroundings, stands the well of the consecrated baptismal water. A bit of projecting marble serves as a bracket for the candle and its holder. To the right of this is a large cross done in mosaic, and before this cross, in a cast-iron support stands a large, deep bowl over which is inclined the head of the catechumen or the infant. As we now turn to our right, we get a better view of the pool that flows about the naked feet of the Savior. A number of fish have drifted toward the shore and are seen darting to and fro over the surface. Ready to spring into the cool waters is a large stone frog. On closer inspection we notice a number of smaller ones, and then we note a caged-off cavern in one of the several caves.
Threatening to wrench the bars that confine him is the evil spirit extended to the full height of his 18 inches. His feet are cloven, from his hideous head project two horns, while his tail swings its arrow tip against unyielding rock. He witnesses that first baptism, and impotent rage must spend itself by devising means of undoing what the Son of God has come to accomplish. In the stream above, a turtle contentedly squats in the refreshing water. Further inland is a sign of vegetation and even habitation blending happily with the pictured fields and distant cities of the mural painting. Pretty birds of vari-colored plumage are resting in the tree-tops. A lone house of eastern architecture is suggestive of the town as it meets the painted background. The art symbolism of this inspiring work unfolding itself to our inner consciousness, we pass up the left aisle to spend a few moments at the Shrine of our Sorrowful Mother. |
