Holy Places

These nearby pilgrimate sites are great places to visit, learn about the saints, and foster faith.    The holiness of Mary and the saints reflects God's presence and mercy.  These holy places help us to grow in our prayer life and to establish a relationship with the saints who are wonderful helpers to each one of us on our journey home to Heaven. 

1) Basilica Of Our Lady of San Juan del Valle - National Shrine: Brownsville, TX.    Click HERE for information.

Story:

For centuries Christians have made pilgrimages with a spiritual purpose to holy places. Here in the Rio Grande Valley, hundreds are drawn to the Shrine dedicated to Our Lady of San Juan del Valle, and the number of pilgrims continues to grow. Averaging more than one million visitors a year (20,000 a weekend), it is one of the most visited shrines in the United States.

The history of this Marian Shrine begins in 1920, when the Reverend Alfonso Jalbert, O.M.I., built a small wooden chapel in San Juan, Texas as a mission church of St. Margaret Mary Church in Pharr, Texas.

The origins of the devotion to Our Lady of San Juan del Valle are found in San Juan de los Lagos, Mexico, a town founded near Guadalajara after the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Spanish missionaries placed a small image of the Immaculate Conception in the church of San Juan de los Lagos.

In 1623, an acrobat traveling with his wife and children stopped in San Juan de los Lagos to give a performance.  While practicing their act, the youngest daughter lost her balance and was killed. An Indian woman, who was the caretaker of the church, begged the parents to place the image of the Virgin Mary over their daughter's body and prayed for the Virgin's intercession. The child was then brought back to life. As word spread of the miracle, the devotion to Our Lady, under the title of “La Virgen de San Juan”, started to grow throughout Jalisco. Today, she is recognized by many people throughout Mexico as well as the United States.

In 1949, Rev. Jose Maria Azpiazu, O.M.I., became pastor of the parish of St. John the Baptist in San Juan, Texas.  He was convinced that fostering a devotion to Our Lady of San Juan would benefit the people and help draw the community together. After receiving permission from the bishop to foster the devotion, he commissioned an artist in Guadalajara, Mexico to make a reproduction of the statue venerated at San Juan de Los Lagos and this reproduction was first placed in the San Juan chapel.

Bishop Mariano S. Garriaga approved the construction of a new church and the Shrine was built five years later in 1954, and dedicated to the Virgen de San Juan. At the time San Juan was a part of the Diocese of Corpus Christi.  Sixteen years after its construction, a tragic event on October 23, 1970 destroyed the entire Shrine. While 50 priests were concelebrating Mass with another 50 people in attendance, and 100 school children in an adjacent cafeteria, the pilot of a small low-flying airplane crashed into the roof of the shrine and exploded into flames.

While the overall loss was estimated at $1.5 million, many claim it was a miracle that no one was hurt or died in the tragedy. The pilot of the plane, Francis B. Alexander, was the only fatality. Our Lady of San Juan was protecting her children at that moment. Also, Father Patricio Dominguez, O.M.I., a missionary priest, along with the help of Pedro Rodriguez, a sacristan, rescued the statue of Our Lady of San Juan del Valle, and Ron Anderson, then a Diocesan Priest, saved the Blessed Sacrament before the
altar was engulfed in flames.

After the Shrine was destroyed, the Shrine’s dining room temporarily housed the statue of Our Lady of San Juan.

In 1972, Bishop John J. Fitzpatrick separated the administration of the Shrine from the parish. He made plans to build a parish church on the site of the destroyed Shrine and build a bigger church to serve as the Shrine on the grounds north of the former Shrine. The ground breaking for the new Shrine took place on November 27, 1976. The new Shrine was dedicated on April 19, 1980. Cardinal Medeiros joined Bishop Fitzpatrick at the dedication along with an estimated 50,000 people.

The National Conference of Catholic Bishops designated Our Lady of San Juan del Valle a national Shrine on March 24, 1998, and the following year on June 12, 1999 Pope John Paul II designated it as a minor Basilica.

 

2)  Shrine of St. Padre Pio - San Antonio, TX

Click HERE for information & address

Story of St. Padre Pio

·         Though a relatively new saint in the Catholic Church, St. Padre Pio de Pietrelcina has been revered by countless people around the world.  Padre Pio's extraordinary holiness was recognized during his lifetime as people of all faiths sought him out for his spiritual guidance and the intercession of his prayers. Padre Pio bore the stigmata, the five wounds of Christ's passion, on his body, as physical evidence of his sanctity.  In the long history of the Catholic Church, very few people have been signed with the stigmata.     Francesco Forgione was born to a farm family in southern Italy.  His father, Orazio, was a shepherd  In his youth Francesco suffered several health problems and at one point his family thought he had tuberculosis.  At age 15 he entered the novitiate of the Capuchin Friars in Morcone and joined the order at 19 years old, taking the name of Pio.  He was ordained at the age of 22 on August 10, 1910.

 On September 20, 1918, Padre Pio was kneeling in front of a large crucifix in the choir loft when he received the visible marks of the crucifixion, making him the first priest in the history of the Catholic Church to receive the stigmata.  The doctor who examined Padre Pio could not find any natural cause for the wounds.  Upon his death in 1968, the wounds had disappeared.  In fact there was no scaring and the skin was completely renewed, fulfilling a prediction that Padre Pio had made 50 years prior that upon his death the wounds would heal.   Word of Padre Pio quickly spread, especially following World War II after American soldiers brought home stories of Padre Pio.  The priest himself soon became a point of pilgrimage for both the pious and the curious.  Padre Pio had the ability to read the hearts of the penitents who flocked to him for confession to bring both sinners and devout souls closer to God; he would know just the right word of counsel or encouragement that was needed.  He died on September 23, 1968 at the age of eighty-one with the words, "Jesus"-"Mary" on his lips!  Over 100,000 people attended his funeral.   Padre Pio's canonization miracle involved the cure of Matteo Pio Colella, age 7, the son of a doctor who worked in the House for the Relief of Suffering, the hospital founded by Padre Pio.  On the night of June 20, 2000, Matteo was admitted to the intensive care unit of the hospital with meningitis.  By morning doctors had lost hope for him as nine of the boy's internal organs had ceased to give signs of life.  That night, during a prayer vigil attended by Matteo's mother and some Capuchin friars of Padre Pio's monastery, the child's condition improved suddenly.  When be awoke from the coma, Matteo said that he had seen an elderly man with a white beard and a long, brown habit, who said to him: "Don't worry, you will soon be cured."  The miracle was approved by the Congregation for Saints and Pope John Paul II on December 20, 2001. On June 16, 2002 over 500,000 pilgrims gathered in Rome to witness Pope John Paul II proclaim Padre Pio as Saint Pio of Pietrelcina.

Relics of St. Padre Pio

3)  Basilica of the National Shine of the Little Flower - San Antonio, TX

Click HERE for Information & address

St. Therese's story 

4) Miraculous Stairs of St. Joseph, Santa Fe, New Mexico

In September 1852 the Sisters of Loreto came, by paddle steamer and by covered wagon, to the Southwest.  Their trip, which had begun in Kentucky the previous May on a riverboat steamer which took them up the Mississippi to St. Louis, was at the specific request of Bishop Jean Lamy, who had been appointed Vicar-Apostolic of the New Mexico Territory in 1850.  From St. Louis to Independence, Missouri, the Sisters took the steamer "Kansas," but on the way a sorrowful adversity befell the little community.  Their beloved Superior, Mother Matilda, came down with cholera and died shortly after arriving in Independence.  Two other Sisters also had the disease, but they slowly recovered.

After more months of struggles and fears, broken axles and wheels, and scorching days, what was left of the missionary team finally arrived in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Sisters Magdalen, Catherine, Hilaria, and Roberta made up the community.  At the direction of Bishop Lamy, Sister Magdalen was appointed Superior of the Sisters.  She was a woman of strong faith and firm resolution, and the situation she and her Sisters faced was a difficult one.

It was only because these Sisters of Loreto were great-hearted women, thoroughly permeated with an all-consuming love of God, that they were able to brave the hardships of those first years.  Bishop Lamy was in the midst of a valiant struggle to preserve the Catholic Faith in "New" Mexico.  The formerly Spanish Catholic territory was still groaning under its hostile "takeover" from Mexico in 1848, and the Sisters were not particularly welcome, as far as territorial officials were concerned.  Thus, they certainly had no comfortable Convent waiting for them upon their arrival.  They lived at first in a little, one-room adobe house.  At that time the population of the little city of Santa Fe was still made up mostly of Catholic Mexicans and Indians.  Today Santa Fe is a large modern city, the State Capitol, though, with its quaintly narrow streets and Spanish architecture, it still keeps alive the ancient climate of the old "Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Assisi" (The Royal City of the Holy Faith of St. Francis of Assisi), which is its proper name, founded by Spanish Catholic conquistadors and missionaries in 1610.

But back in 1852 it soon became quite evident that, if the Sisters were to fulfill the intentions of Bishop Lamy, who had brought them to Santa Fe for the specific purpose of helping him to preserve the Catholic Faith of the people, they would need a Convent and a school to teach their children.  Mexican carpenters zealously began to build for the Sisters.  The school was swiftly completed and was called "Loreto Academy of Our Lady of Light."  Plans were made next for a beautiful Chapel.  According to the Sisters' annals for the year 1873, the Chapel was begun on July 25th of that year.  It was designed by the same architect, Mr. Mouly, who had designed the Bishop's Cathedral in Santa Fe.  Because Bishop Lamy was from France, he wished the Sisters to have a Chapel that was similar to his beloved Sainte Chapelle in Paris.  That meant that it was to be strictly European Gothic, in fact, the first Gothic structure west of the Mississippi.  It was to be, in many ways, a visible symbol of the courageous Bishop's opposition to "Americanism," which would be condemned by Pope Leo XIII in 1899.

French and Italian masons immediately went to work on the new structure.  It would be large -- larger in fact -- than most of the mission Chapels in that area.  It was to be 25 feet by 75 feet with a height of 85 feet.

Mother Magdalen recorded in the annals that the erection of the Chapel was placed under the patronage of St. Joseph "in whose honor we communicated every Wednesday, that he might assist us."  Then she adds, "Of his powerful help we have been witnesses on several occasions."

The Chapel work progressed with some financial worries and a maximum of faith on the part of the Sisters.  It was not until it was nearly finished that they realized that a dreadful mistake had been made.  The Chapel itself was beautifully done, and the choir loft was wonderful too, but there was no connecting link between the two.  There was no stairway and, because the loft was exceptionally high, there was no room for a stairway as ordinary stairways go.   Mother Magdalen called in many carpenters to try to build a stairway; but each, in his turn, measured and thought and then shook his head sadly saying, "It can't be done, Mother."  It looked as if there were only two alternatives: to use a ladder to get to the choir which seemed impractical in any case, or to tear the whole thing down and rebuild it differently.  The latter would have been a heartbreaking task.  However, anyone who knows true Catholic Sisters and their trust in Divine Providence, knows they will not plunge into such a drastic solution to a problem without first saying something like, "Let's wait awhile and make a novena."  So the Sisters of Loreto made a novena to St. Joseph for a suitable solution to the problem.

On the very last day of the novena, a gray-haired man came up to the Convent with a burro and a tool chest.  Approaching Mother Magdalen, he asked if he might try to help the Sisters by building a stairway!   Mother gave her consent gladly, and he set to work.  According to the story that was later told by some of the Sisters present at the time and passed on to others, the only tools he had were a hammer, a saw and a T-square, and some of the Sisters remembered seeing a few tubs of water for soaking the wood to make it pliable.  It is not clear how long he took to complete the work, for when Mother Magdalen went to pay him, he had vanished.  She went to the local lumber yard to pay for the wood, at least.   They knew nothing of it there.  To this day there is no record stating that the job was ever paid for.

..The winding stairway that the kindly man had left for the Sisters is a masterpiece of beauty and wonder.  It makes two complete 360 degree turns.  There is no supporting pole up the center as most circular stairways have.  This means that it hangs there with no support!  The entire weight is on the base.  Some architects have said that by all laws of gravity, it should have crashed to the floor the minute anyone stepped on it, and yet it was used daily for over 80 years.

The stairway was put together only with wooden pegs -- there is not a single nail in it.  At the time it was built, the stairway had no banisters.  These were added later.  Among the girls who attended the Academy at the time the stairway was constructed was a girl of about thirteen years.  She later became a Loreto Sister, and she never tired of telling how she and her friend were among the first to climb up the stairway.  She said that they were so frightened when they got up to the choir that they came down on their hands and knees!

Visitors have come from all over the world to see the wonderful stairway.  Among them have been architects who, without exception, declare that they cannot understand how the stairway was constructed nor how it remains as sturdy as it is after a century of use.  Mr. Urban Weidner, a Santa Fe architect and wood expert, says that he has never seen a circular wooden stairway with 360 degree turns that did not have a supporting pole down the center.  One of the most baffling things about the stairway, however, is the perfection of the curves of the stringers.   According to Mr. Weidner, the wood is spliced along the sides of the stringers with nine splices on the outside and seven on the inside, each fitted with the greatest precision.  Each piece is perfectly curved.  How this was done in the 1870's by a single man in an out-of-the-way place with only the most primitive tools is inexplicable to modern architects.

Many experts have tried to identify the wood and surmise where it came from.  No one has ever been able to give a satisfactory answer to this mystery.  The treads were constantly walked on for over 80 years since the stairway was built, but they showed signs of wear only on the edges.  Mr. Weidner identifies this wood as "edge-grained fir of some sort."  (Others say it is long-leaf yellow pine.)  He knows definitely that this hard-wearing wood did not come from New Mexico.  Where the mysterious carpenter got this wood is a secret known to him alone.

Holy Mother Church is always cautious about making statements concerning things of a supernatural nature.  Therefore, the good Loreto Sisters whose prayers were so wonderfully answered, as well as Bishop Lamy, in this spirit, refrained from saying anything definitive about the stairway.  But Mother Magdalen and her community of Sisters and students knew that the stairway was St. Joseph's answer to their fervent prayers.  Many were convinced that the humble carpenter was St. Joseph himself, as his silent, prayerful labors were precisely the virtues one would expect of the foster-Father of Our Divine Lord.

The Convent annals tell us that the Chapel of Our Lady of Light was dedicated by the Bishop on April 25, 1878, and remained as a beautiful testimony of the wondrous power and intercession of good St. Joseph for over 80 years.   Tragically, in the devastating aftermath of Vatican Council II, religious vocations dwindled, and the Loreto "sisters" of the new post-conciliar religion, having first betrayed their Order by discarding their traditional religious garb and way of life, ended by betraying the faith and devotion of Mother Magdalen and her Sisters by selling the entire Academy grounds, including the Chapel, to a commercial property developer.  Most of the historical monuments of the love for souls, zeal for the Catholic Faith, and pious devotion of Bishop Lamy, Mother Magdalen, and the Sisters who established the Loreto Academy of Our Lady of Light were demolished to make way for monuments of secular "progress" (greed and materialism) upon their ruins.   What the secular government had been unable to accomplish for almost a century, the post-Vatican II church did in a matter of a few short years.  Even the beautiful shrine of La Conquistadora, by which Bishop Lamy paid homage not only to Our Lady, but also to the glory of the Spanish Catholic "conquest" of New Spain, was removed from its place of prominence in his ancient Cathedral dedicated to Christ the King.

Fortunately, however, there was such an outcry from the devoted people of Santa Fe, including many of the alumni of the Academy, that the Chapel with the "miraculous" stairs was preserved as a national monument, albeit amidst the commercialism which surrounds it.  To this very day, those who love and revere good St. Joseph, can still go and gaze upon that which is, without doubt, a visible testimony that St. Joseph indisputably finds ways to provide for those who humbly and confidently place their needs in his capable hands.

·      Photos & source: Internet