Mosaic
August, 1993 ---- We pulled into the town of Beaupre' in Canada on a
cool drizzly Tuesday. A few tourist buses had already arrived, but
thankfully, it appeared that the crowds would be light at the cathedral
that day. I parked the car and through summer showers we walked across
the church grounds and up sweeping stone steps to where massive doors
were swung open in welcome. It was there at the entrance of the
cathedral that we split up, Pam and Pete off to church and me to do a
little exploring.
I walked away from the spare crowd of pilgrims and tourists, across the
village road and up into an old graveyard on a hillside which overlooked
the church. The rain started down in earnest and I ducked into a small,
open memorial chapel built all of stone. Inside I found the walls to be
made of plaques. On each of these was carved a message, a name or two
and an address. None of the addresses were Canadian, all were from the
United States. The messages in stone were interesting to read. All were
to St. Anne and one way or another they all said, "Thanks for the help!"
St. Anne, you may recall, was Jesus' grandmother. About 1658 a crew of
fishermen who had survived a perilous voyage from France gave thanks to
St. Anne for their deliverance from the sea by building a chapel for her
here along the banks of the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, Canada. Since
then many "miracles" have occurred hereabouts, and in celebration a
great cathedral was raised at this place in 1923.
Today Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupre' is much like every other place of
pilgrimage that I have ever visited. The cathedral sits in the center of
its grounds, immense, ornate and oh, so symmetric. Behind the church is
a religious gift shop where water from the holy spring is available.
Just outside the church grounds is a large building whose billboard
proclaims a multimedia history of St. Anne's. Off in another direction
are the tacky tea "shoppes" and souvenir stores. I enjoy places like
this.
In a heavy rain I ducked out of the chapel, back across the street and
into a basement door that happened to be standing open. Mass was still
going on upstairs so this lower church was nearly deserted. As I shook
off the rain I ambled into a surprisingly long and broad room. The
ceiling was low and made of geometrically arranged arches. Each arch was
covered with a different richly colored repeating decoration. I spent a
quiet half hour there sitting in the pews and marveling at this
wonderful work of unknown hands.
Rather suddenly a lot of people began to arrive to examine my empty
church, and I knew that the Mass was over. I bucked the traffic and made
my way upstairs to rejoin Pam and Pete. Our plan was to meet just inside
the main church doors when Mass ended, and there, not 20 feet from my
starting point, I made the best discovery of all. The vault of the
vestibule was covered with more than 1000 small, colorful, mosaic
pictures of birds, flowers, trees, animals, plants and strange symbolic
figures. I got a stiff neck from looking up, and Pete finally had to
drag me away, out into the storm to find a souvenir stand. |
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