52 Masses

If you find yourself in the Cincinnati area tonight, I invite you to come to St. John the Evangelist Parish in West Chester. At 7 p.m., I will be delivering my first in-person presentation about my 14 months traveling the country attending Mass and meeting inspiring Catholics.

I was invited by the Justice and Peace committee at St. John (though to be fair, I am a member of said committee so I kind of had a leg up in the process) to speak about my experiences for members of the Tri-County Parish community, plus anyone else who might be interested.

As a reminder, if you are looking for a speaker for your parish or diocese, I would love to follow up this initial talk with other opportunities to share my stories. I honestly never tire of talking about it.

https://52masses.square.site.

Unlike for this brief talk I gave at St. John the Baptist in Laughlin, Nevada, I’m not expecting either a bishop or a governor in the audience tonight.

We’ve saved the most spectacular for last, but we’re going to split our photo evidence over two days.

One of the first things we did when planning our Costa Rican vacation was to book a visit to the Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Los Ángeles in Cartago.

The church, originally constructed in 1639, is consecrated to the Virgin of the Angels after a young girl came a statue of the Virgin Mary carrying the infant Jesus on a rock in the woods. She took the statue home, only to find the next day it had returned to the same rock. After it happened again, she took it to a local priest, who determined Christ wanted a church built at the site. The statue itself, known as La Negrita, is kept in a golden shell inside the basilica and Costa Ricans and others throughout Central America continue to visit this Holy Ground to pay their respects and ask the Virgin Mary for her prayers.

We were there Aug. 5, three days after the countrywide pilgrimage, known as the Romeria, to the basilica. More than a million people annually will walk from different points of the country to the basilica, many crawling for large parts of the pilgrimage. And though the formal Romeria had just passed, we witnessed numerous people crawling from outside the basilica up to the altar rail, a sign of their incredible devotion. It was truly moving, and unquestionably the highlight of the trip.

While my first and last stops will draw the most oohs and ahhs, the vast majority of Costa Rica’s Catholics don’t worship in these incredible locations. Rather, they’re experiencing the Mass in the small parish churches in their neighborhoods.

I wandered around the area near our hotel, located near Parque La Sabana, visiting a few of those smaller parishes. They included Iglesia de Maria Auxiladora, where children were flooding into the school building, Iglesia de San Juan Bosco, and Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. The neighborhood also featured the Nunciatura Apostolico, home to the Vatican’s diplomatic mission in the country.

As with all Central American countries, Costa Rica is overwhelmingly Catholic, with as many as 70 percent of the population born into the faith. But Costa Rica goes one step further, as it’s the only country in the region where Catholicism is adopted as the state religion.

In the park across from our hotel.

San Juan Bosco

Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

School kids entering Iglesia de Maria Auxiladora.

Nunciatura Apostolico.

My wife and I spent the past few days in Costa Rica. We were there to visit our oldest son, Ian. For those who don’t know, Ian is working as a refugee resettlement officer for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, traveling to various parts of the world to speak with those men and women seeking refuge in the United States due to persecution, violence or other threats in their home countries. It’s incredibly important, Christ-like work, and I couldn’t be prouder of his commitment to this effort.

While we naturally took time to experience Costa Rica’s natural beauty (more on that later in the week), we also used the time to explore the country’s rich Catholic heritage. We’ll start that visit at the head of the Church in the country itself, at the Catedral Metropolitana San Jose. It’s the home of the Archdiocese of San Jose, the ecclesial province over the six other diocese in the country.

As you can see, it’s a beautiful building, fitting for a church in this heavily Catholic country. And yet, it’s not nearly as impressive as the country’s most spectacular place of worship (more also on that later this week).