News Item: : Favourite Calvaries - Part 2 of 3
(Category: Torch of The Faith News)
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Wednesday 23 March 2016 - 23:14:57

Here are some more of our favourite Calvary scenes:-

Groom - Texas

When we first encountered this gigantic 190ft-tall cross, next to Interstate I-40 on the old Route-66 at Groom in Texas, it was being billed as the ''Biggest Cross in the Western Hemisphere!'' Since then, and inspired by this one, some folks in the town of Effingham, Illinois have erected a similar cross with a height of 198ft. Other crosses in Florida, Finland and Spain also vie for the honour of being the tallest.

Still, standing at 19-stories in height, and with a weight of some 1,250 tons, the cross at Groom is no miniature. As such, it can be seen for around 20 miles. That being said, its vast white structure is dwarfed by the endless blue skies and wide-open spaces of Texas. It is only when you pull up in the car park beneath the cross that you begin to grasp something of its sheer scale.

On the day that we did, in the summer of 2005, a golf-buggy suddenly raced over to greet us. The jolly fellow driving it hit the brakes near our car, but sailed on straight past us. He was laughing infectiously, as he announced that he needed to get his brakes fixed! He gave us some free introductory literature, declared that we were most welcome at the site and then, waving and grinning delightedly back at us, shot off again to greet another car that was just arriving.

The cross at Groom was constructed in 1995 by Cross Ministries as a vehicle for evangelization. The team behind the cross pray that visitors will come closer to Jesus and they take 1 Corinthians 1:18 for their motto: ''For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.''

Some 10 million people pass the cross every year on I-40. The site is open 24/7 and every single day, around 1,000 people stop off there. Indeed, during the last 20 years, millions of people have come to visit from all over the world. It is the dream of Cross Ministries to build these crosses all over America. 

The immense white cross is not the only attraction on site at Groom. There is also a large Calvary scene at the top of a stone stairway.    

At night, the white cross and this Calvary scene are floodlit against the dark night sky. With little to no light-pollution out there in Texas, they stand out as a powerful witness to the many drivers who cruise past at all hours on the busy Interstate; being as it is the main through-route across the U.S. in the south-central region.

There is also a full and life-size Stations of the Cross sculpted in bronze and running all around the base of the large white cross. When we were there an Evangelical Christian lady was excitedly filming all of the stations on her cam-corder. Saying that she had never seen anything like this, she told us that she was going to get her pastor to have a set put up in her church. She was amazed when we told her that every Catholic church in the world has a smaller set of Stations of the Cross running around the side walls. ''Really?!'' she gasped. 

Visitors can take their time to: pray the Stations of the Cross; visit the Empty Tomb and pray alongside a bronze sculpture representing the Angel Gabriel on Easter Sunday morning; view a life-size sculpture of the Last Supper; pray the Holy Michael prayer next to a life-size sculpture of St. Michael the Archangel; view a splendid back-lit copy of the Turin Shroud; pray before a Divine Mercy statue by the ''Fountain of Living Water''; visit the gift shop; and even receive counselling or advice in a suite of counselling rooms.

There is also a special area dedicated to the sanctity of life in loving memory of all the innocent victims of abortion.    

The statue of Our Lord depicts Jesus as though in the Garden of Gethsemane with a small baby in the palm of His hand. We stopped there to pray for all the aborted babies; and for mothers who have had abortions to receive the graces of repentance and healing.

As the background of this photo of Angie kneeling alongside that statue demonstrates, many large semis (lorries to English readers!) pull off the interstate when they see the giant cross at Groom. The lady in the gift-shop told us that some drivers have had conversion experiences and healing by stopping off at Groom during long-haul road journeys.

This is backed up by the Guest-Book page at the on-line website of Cross Ministries. Clearly many folks have been converted, reverted, encouraged, healed and strengthened by visting the Cross at Groom in Texas. We certainly enjoyed and got a lot out of our visit. Whilst there, we also bought a cassette - it was 2005! - of the story of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas who were inspired to build the cross in the first place. We recommend a visit to their website -  they've even got a link to the Douay-Rheims Bible!

Knock - Co. Mayo, Ireland  

Angie's parents are Irish and we visit them each year. As they only live about a 25-minute drive from the Shrine of Knock, we always spend at least one day a year at the shrine.

Just next to the old parish church of St. John the Baptist - at the gable of which the holy Apparition occurred in 1879 - is this beautifully crafted Calvary scene.

We always stop off before this Calvary to say a little prayer; and usually to take another photograph for the family album. Those grey clouds look like a fairly typical summer in Co. Mayo! The Shrine of Knock is important for these times and we recommend a visit. If there were more Traditional Latin Masses it would be very Heaven; there are some around in Co. Mayo, but you've got to do some research and be prepared to travel... 

Little Crosby - Merseyside 

The village of Little Crosby on Merseyside is thought to be the oldest extant Roman Catholic village in all of England.

It is historically important, and we personally believe that it is spiritually important for these and future times, because the recusancy of the local squires of the Blundell family kept the flame of the True Faith burning uninterruptedly here throughout the revolution of the Reformation and post-Reformation centuries. 

The village is centred on the splendid Pugin-inspired St. Mary's Church, has a now-closed convent building and a small parish school, and keeps up various traditions through the seasons of the liturgical year. Although it retains much of the architecture and feel of earlier centuries, it is today used as a through-route by a great many vehicles cutting through from places like Formby and Southport to Crosby. This does mean that, in spite of the small scale of the village, many souls pass the village crucifix every day.

That crucifix, pictured above, was erected in memory of the squire Francis Nicholas Blundell, who passed from this life in 1936.

At its base is found an encouraging quote from the Gospel of St. Matthew 10:32: ''So every one who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before My Father Who is in Heaven.''

Interestingly, the presence of this large crucifix in the village allows locals and passers-by the opportunity to do just that!

Over the years, we have found it a special place to stop off and say a prayer for the reconversion of England. An American friend from Steubenville visited us one summer and we walked him through the village to point out the cottage where the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was said from penal times and to visit the village crucifix. We do believe he was mighty impressed!

Lourdes, France - Hillside Stations 

During the summer of 1998, I spent a whole month working as a pilgrim-guide for English-speaking pilgrims from places as disparate as Africa, America, Australia, India, Ireland, the Philippines and, of course, the UK. It was a time of immense graces and blessings.

Every morning, after Holy Mass followed by an introductory talk, my duties included leading pilgrims up the Stations of the Cross on the steep hillside above Lourdes. Each of those stations is constructed from a series of life-size bronze-coloured statues. It can be a very moving experience to go up there with pilgrims and I am sure that I received graces for ongoing conversion and repentance during those marvellous days.

Most times we would be joined by a dozen or so ''Pelerin d'un Jour'' (Day-Pilgrims) who were passing through Lourdes as part of a tour of the major Catholic sites of Fatima, Lourdes and Rome during their sojourns in Europe.

I witnessed many ''mini-miracles'' during that month - moments when people received instances of emotional healing and new strength to carry on.

Two of these stick in my mind even now - 18 years later.

One day, an Indian gentleman who was living in London had come to Lourdes to pray for his father who had just died and been buried in London. As he left one of the churches in the town of Lourdes, he bumped into the very doctor who had tended his father in his last moments back in England! He was amazed by this and took it as a sign of God's providential care for his late father and for his own needs in his time of grief.

Gosh, some of those Indian families were holy. They had such a profound love of God and humble respect for the sacred priesthood; and for seminarians by extension. I met a lot of folks from Kerala and they were simply on fire for the Faith! It did the soul good just to meet people like this and listen to their stories.

Another ''mini-miracle'' that I remember involved two women who had come separately to Lourdes from England, without either having ever met the other, in order to recover from troubled relationships that they had been in with abusive men.

As I mentioned earlier, most days I had about a dozen pilgrims from various continents coming up those stations with me. On that day, just those two English ladies came along. They were very broken souls. It became clear to me as a then-young seminarian of just 25-years of age that there was a limit to the help that I could give, aside from prayerfully leading the stations and encouraging them. (Newer readers might need to know that I became ill in the modernist atmosphere in the seminary and eventually left. Just over a year after leaving, I met Angeline and we got married two years after that in 2002. We established Torch of The Faith together in 2008).

What was amazing was that, from the time I gave the introductory talk, these two had begun to form a genuine friendship. At the end of the Stations of the Cross, I had a real sense that God was working to help these ladies to help each other; and that I, having done the bit assigned to me, needed to simply get out of the way and let the Holy Spirit do the rest. When they said ''goodbye'' to me after the Stations of the Cross, and headed away for a coffee together in a local cafe, there was a real joyful sense of God's caring presence working in this new friendship. It is hard to put into words really.

Anyway, what I did put into words most days relates to the picture of the Calvary scene above.

If you look closely, you will notice that the Good Thief - St. Dismas in Catholic Tradition - is looking across to Our Blessed Lord. On the other hand, it is chilling to observe the Bad Thief looking away angrily from Christ and dying unrepentant.

I used to ask the pilgrims to consider that scene prayerfully for a few moments; and to grasp both the beauty of repentance and the awful horror of sin and, even worse, of unrepentance.

I used to remind the pilgrims that we must pray for the grace of final perseverance. Just a few months ago, I read somewhere that a saint - I can't recall who now! - taught that we must beg God every day for the grace of final perseverance. There is a prayer to St. Joseph for a Happy Death which we would highly recommend in relation to that.

Those many days of going up those high Stations of the Cross with pilgrims in Lourdes were among the happiest days of my life. The Calvary at the top is therefore one of my favourites anywhere.

God willing, Angie and I will share our final ''Favourite Calvaries'' with you in part 3!   

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