Mother Angelica’s Blessed Sacrament Shrine marks 25th anniversary

Joseph Pronechen By Joseph Pronechen for CNA

December 19, 2024 Catholic News Agency News Briefs 0 Print

 

The faithful adore Christ in the Blessed Sacrament at Adoration Sodality Day at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament. / Credit: Photo courtesy of the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament

National Catholic Register, Dec 19, 2024 / 14:55 pm (CNA).

On Dec. 19, 1999, the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, Alabama, was officially opened and consecrated. The opening Mass was celebrated by the Diocese of Birmingham’s bishop at the time, Bishop David Foley. Opening at the same time was Our Lady of the Angels Monastery. Then came the next awe-inspiring moment.

“One vivid memory that I have is of the moment when the shield in front of the monstrance came down for the first time,” recalled Franciscan Father Joseph Mary Wolfe, chaplain and chapel dean for EWTN. “The monstrance presented for the first time the newly consecrated Sacred Host from the dedication Mass for adoration. The choir and orchestra that Mother Angelica had arranged for began to sing the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ from Handel’s ‘Messiah’ and adoration began — forever changing the atmosphere of the temple, the monastery, and the surrounding area, because of the profound presence of the Eucharistic Lord who is loved and adored there.”

Father Joseph Mary was present from the start. He shared how various potential locations weren’t “quite right.”

But then Mother Mary Angelica of the Annunciation saw the countryside acreage about 50 miles north of EWTN’s headquarters in Irondale.

“I got out of the car and I knew. I felt the Lord’s presence so strongly. I knew this is where he wanted us,” the foundress of the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration detailed in her biography.

“When Mother saw the property in Hanceville, she knew this was the place,” Father Joseph Mary said. “One of the things that confirmed the location was the fact that the land was purchased for the very first time by the first owner of the land on Aug. 2, which is the feast of Our Lady of the Angels, which is the name of the monastery. When they first began excavations of the land, they discovered white clay in the area where the temple now is.” Since clay in Alabama is red, “they saw this as another confirmation.”

Then came a direction straight from the Lord himself, Father Joseph Mary explained.

“Her experience with the child Jesus at the Shrine of Divino Niño in Bogotá, Colombia, gave her the impetus from the child Jesus himself: ‘Build me a temple, and I will help those who help you.’ The genuineness of Mother Angelica’s experience is confirmed by the fact that the shrine exists and the benefactors’ businesses all prospered, as they later related to Mother Angelica.”

Mother Angelica poses for a picture with the tabernable inside the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament. Credit: Photo courtesy of Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament
Mother Angelica poses for a picture with the tabernacle inside the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament. Credit: Photo courtesy of Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament

Brother Bernard Mary of the Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word, who was also present at the beginning of the shrine, told the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, that the shrine “has fulfilled Mother Angelica’s vision by becoming a place of pilgrimage for the laity, priests, and religious with a special emphasis on rekindling Eucharistic devotion.” He added that “another aspect that may be overlooked is how it has transformed the lives of the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration. When they were in Irondale, they eventually became surrounded by EWTN facilities.”

“It was impossible for them not to be affected by the noise and busyness of the network,” he said. “In Hanceville, they are able to return to their contemplative vocation in the midst of an idyllic pastoral setting. That was certainly one of Mother Angelica’s intentions when she moved the community.”

The shrine materializes

The monastery-farm project, breaking ground in 1996, blossomed into “a monumental complex of European-style architecture in rural Alabama.”

Brother Bernard explained that five anonymous families financed everything because they “wanted to give the best of the best to Our Lord. No expense was spared.”

The design of both the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament and Our Lady of the Angels Monastery is Romanesque-Gothic architecture inspired by great 13th-century Franciscan churches and monasteries, especially in Assisi and Umbria.

Inside the shrine, the altar, sanctuary floor, and intricately designed temple floor are of exquisite marbles from Italy, Macedonia, Spain, Brazil, South Africa, Finland, and Turkey.

The beautifully designed and colorful stained-glass windows were made by famed glassmakers in Munich, Germany. The 55-feet-high, gold-leafed, hand-carved reredos of cedar from Paraguay becomes the throne for the nearly-eight-foot monstrance where Our Lord in the Most Blessed Sacrament is worshipped in perpetual adoration and solemn exposition.

The statue of El Divino Niño in the shrine replicates the one Mother saw in Colombia. In the huge piazza, the centerpiece is another statue of the divine child Jesus.

Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament is shown with the statue of the Child Jesus in the foreground centered in the piazza in Hanceville, Alabama. Mother Angelica had a special devotion to the Child Jesus. Credit: Courtesy of OLAM/EWTN
Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament is shown with the statue of the Child Jesus in the foreground centered in the piazza in Hanceville, Alabama. Mother Angelica had a special devotion to the Child Jesus. Credit: Courtesy of OLAM/EWTN

Commenting on the completed shrine, Mother Angelica said at the time: “I never in my wildest dreams thought it would be so beautiful. At every turn he would change it. It got bigger and bigger, and more and more beautiful. In every possible way he intercepted our ideas and we could see what he wanted. He designed it; he built it; he paid for it.”

Countless blessings

Seeds for vocations were planted at the shrine, too, such as for Father Patrick Mary of the Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word. In 2000, home after his first semester away at college, he drove with his parents and seven siblings from Florida to northern Alabama. The family decided to attend the Christmas midnight Mass at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament.

“I was an unsuspecting pilgrim walking across the piazza toward the shrine for Mass that night,” Father Patrick Mary recalled to the Register. “I had no idea that I was about to have a religious experience that would change the direction of my life. Although I had been going to Mass regularly on Sundays, I was quite lukewarm and mediocre interiorly, and the priesthood was not something on my mind.”

“A number of things struck me at the Mass — the beauty of the church, the reverence that I witnessed, and the use of Latin and of incense,” he vividly recalled. “The Gregorian chant and polyphony sung by the nuns was also very edifying and inspiring and was quite a contrast to the heavy-metal music which I had immersed myself in the previous few years. It was in the midst of all this at the Mass, that a clear and peaceful desire to be a priest was put on my heart. And it never went away. This led to my discernment of the priesthood and the religious life and to entering the Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word.”

The monstrance housing the Blessed Sacrament is above the main altar at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament. Credit: Photo courtesy of the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament
The monstrance housing the Blessed Sacrament is above the main altar at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament. Credit: Photo courtesy of the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament

Looking back on the shrine’s silver jubilee, Father Patrick Mary said: “I’m grateful to God for the many graces given me at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament and for the graces that continue to be poured out on pilgrims who come from all over, seeking a place of prayer, of peace, and of spiritual refreshment. For 25 years our God has been adored there in the Blessed Sacrament, day in and day out, by the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration and by pilgrims from all over. It is a most fitting place to give thanks to the Lord, whose goodness and love endure forever.”

In these past 25 years, the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament has likely brought about countless conversions.

Brother Leo Mary easily recalls how many people came into the Church 25 years ago.

“About 80 people came into the Church just at the beginning, when that shrine was being built,” he told the Register. “Bishops said they had a lot coming into the Catholic Church just because of them going to see the shrine. They would ask what drew these people to the faith, and a lot of it was EWTN and also the shrine, so that’s powerful.”

The visitors never stopped. Then, like today, “it was all about the Eucharist,” Brother Leo Mary said. Since he gives tours of the shrine and works with the pilgrims, he finds that so many “come to the shrine when they see signs for it on well-traveled roads. We get a lot of people come through that are non-Catholics, all of the denominations, and God loves them. … They stop by, and it’s beautiful to see how God is working on all these beautiful people.”

“Everything is about the Eucharist,” he underscored. “When you go into the main church, everything is pointing to the monstrance, everything points to Jesus in the Eucharist, and it’s very powerful in that sense. They learn about the faith and see the beauty.”

“Mother Angelica always wanted people to come to know Jesus,” Brother Leo Mary added. The Blessed Sacrament Shrine is “all about pointing you to Jesus and how much he loves you. That’s what she wanted.”

The shrine grows

Along the way, the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament and Our Lady of the Angels Monastery dedicated another addition on Dec. 8, 2013 — the new John Paul II Eucharistic Center. Cardinal Raymond Burke celebrated the dedication Mass. At that time, he told the Register: “Mother Angelica, in her profoundly rich and courageous love of the Catholic faith and in her desire to bring the Catholic faith to all, rightly founded a shrine dedicated the mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist.

He added that “all of us in the Church should have a particular appreciation for the inspiration of Mother Angelica in establishing a shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament.”

Father Joseph Mary of the Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word gives a talk at the shrine on an Adoration Sodality Day. Credit: Photo courtesy of the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament
Father Joseph Mary of the Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word gives a talk at the shrine on an Adoration Sodality Day. Credit: Photo courtesy of the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament

How does Father Joseph Mary see Mother’s vision has worked out for the shrine over these 25 years?

“This is just the beginning,” he said. “It has benefitted so many souls already and sparked vocations, including our own Father Patrick’s vocation. I believe greater things are yet to come.”

A Prayer for the Silver Jubilee

This prayer was composed for this silver anniversary by Poor Clare Sister Mary Michael, one of the original sisters of the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration to come from Ohio to Alabama with Mother Angelica:

“Dearest Jesus, at this time when our hearts are overflowing with gratitude for the infinite love you show us in your incarnation, we’re also thankful for this beautiful shrine and monastery that you inspired Mother Angelica to build; a temple where you would always be loved and adored in the Most Blessed Sacrament. This beautiful chapel is a place where everyone can spend quiet time with you, the God of love, in adoration and intimate conversation.

“Our hearts have always been filled with love and gratitude for all our friends and benefactors who made this shrine possible and help keep it going. They are daily remembered in our prayers. Bless each one of them, Jesus; keep them safe and reward them with the greatest gift you can give to anyone — the gift of yourself.”

This story was first published by the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, and has been adapted by CNA.

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Social doctrine is about solidarity, Catholic leaders insist

January 20, 2017 CNA Daily News 0

Washington D.C., Jan 20, 2017 / 11:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Catholics must fight the societal ills of contempt, poverty, and unemployment through solidarity, recent speakers at the Catholic University of America in Washington D.C. insisted.

“The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost,” Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, quoted the Gospel of Luke in his Jan. 17 address to Catholic University students on “bringing America together.”

“We’re sought. We seek others,” he continued. “If we want to change public policy and we want to change American culture, it’s not good enough to burn a bunch of money to help poor people. What are you going to do today to need somebody at the peripheries of society?”

Brooks gave the first CEO lecture of 2017 at the Busch School of Business and Economics, in which he emphasized the importance of work in human dignity.

There are many poor or unemployed persons living “at the periphery” of society who “we prefer not to see,” he said, asking the students in attendance, “If all the poor people in Washington, D.C. suddenly disappeared, how would your life change?”

“I daresay that most of you, your friendships wouldn’t change,” he answered to the students, adding that “really, intimately,” their lives would “not change very much” without the poor nearby.

“This is a country that has split in two so much” that “we don’t need the poor,” he said. “We don’t need millions and millions of our fellow Americans in any meaningful way.”

One in six “able-bodied men” are not even looking for work, he noted, and rising rates of alcoholism, drug overdoses, and suicides among white working-class middle-aged men without college degrees are “unseen and unheard.”

Yet this phenomenon of not “needing” the poor is toxic to society, he said, because “we need every human.” Every person “has the same inherent dignity,” he insisted.

“That is the source, all the politics aside, of the divisiveness” in society, he said, of “what’s pulling us apart.” The problem of “contempt” for fellow human beings, what he described as “the utter conviction of the worthlessness of another human being” is also at the heart of societal problems.

How can Catholics fight this? By going to the peripheries, befriending those with whom they disagree, and creating jobs that give human dignity back to the poor and the marginalized, he said.

He used the example of a program of the New York -based Doe Fund “Ready, Willing & Able,” which helps formerly homeless persons by employing them.

They “get back on their feet through work, through ordinary, sanctified, hard, honest work,” Brooks said. “That’s the equalizer. Human dignity is equalized when we all work in a sanctified way.”

The previous week, on Jan. 10, Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego and Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston addressed a conference on “Erroneous Autonomy: The Dignity of Work.”

When global markets and institutions are divorced from morality, human dignity is threatened, they insisted. Catholic social teaching challenges the autonomy of markets by emphasizing the dignity of the worker and the right of workers to organize to protect their rights, they said.

“Increasing international trade and financial relationships, combined with rapidly advancing technological innovation and the world of the internet, have produced what we call globalization,” Cardinal O’Malley said.

“This development has produced enormous amounts of wealth but not a fair and just distribution of the proceeds,” he added.

Three current social trends are operating apart from morality and pose special dangers to the common good, Bishop McElroy observed.

“The first of these is the drive for the sovereignty of markets. The second is the technocratic paradigm which seeks dominance over the environment and culture. The third, and most worrying, is nationalism.”

“In a very real way they have been evacuated of moral substance and operate autonomously from any moral anchors as principles of politics and governance in our national life,” he said.

Globalism was said by St. John Paul II in his 1991 encyclical Centesimus annus to “lack morality,” Cardinal O’Malley noted. Thus, leaders “have the responsibility to establish a moral framework which can assess and direct the purposes and the consequences of globalization.”

Human dignity is “the cornerstone” of the Church’s social teaching, Cardinal O’Malley said, citing Pope Francis.

“This means that each individual is to be protected by a moral framework of human rights and that the work a person does, whether manual labor, mining, or intellectual and professional work, is understood as an expression of their dignity.”

The Church must work with unions to ensure the dignity of workers is protected against markets that are separated from morality, Cardinal O’Malley maintained.

“The case for unions is rooted in the Catholic sense of our responsibilities to each other as members of the human family; we are not to be left alone in society and or in the economy,” he said.

“We are called to support the right of workers, all workers, private and public sector workers, to organize and be represented in the marketplace and in negotiations by an institution, the union, which gives workers leverage and a voice in the major decisions affecting them and their families.”

Pope Francis “has been a strong public advocate for the dignity of labor, including making interventions when companies were intending significant elimination of jobs,” he continued, noting that the Pope “has argued strongly that in the midst of the forces of technology and globalization, people cannot be reduced to arguments for greater efficiency.”

Health care, the minimum wage, and immigration are all present-day issues closely tied to Catholic social teaching and the dignity of the worker, Cardinal O’Malley explained.

“Debates about minimum wages are most relevant to those closest to poverty,” he said. “Catholic teaching about the option for the poor places us in support of reasonable initiatives to raise the minimum wage.”

“Affordable health care is foundational for the well-being of individuals and families and lack of health care directly threatens human dignity,” he said, emphasizing that “our moral obligation not to abandon people in their times of need is clear.”

Just this past week, the U.S. bishops’ conference asked Congress not to repeal the Affordable Care Act without having a replacement plan in place that would ensure health care coverage for those who most need it.

“While every country must balance numerous factors in determining immigration policy, particularly with regard to security, our national history and our principles call us to be a welcoming society,” Cardinal O’Malley continued.

“For decades the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference has called for systematic immigration reform, including protection of undocumented individuals and families.”

[…]

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