If Diocese of Wilmington Catholics have a home away from home, on Dec. 11 their favored gathering space was the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington.
From first timers to people who have made multiple visits, a group of about five hundred poured out of twelve buses and numerous personal vehicles to join in on this year’s diocesan Marian Pilgrimage on a pleasantly overcast Saturday morning in the nation’s capital.
Bishop Koenig greeted parishioners on the steps of the basilica at the start of the daylong session that included holy hour with rosary, confession, benediction, Mass and self-guided tours of North America’s largest basilica.
Leanne Brown was especially happy because she got to spend the day with her son, Jakob, who she doesn’t see as much during school season because he is away finishing his senior year at St. John Paul II Seminary at Catholic University of America, which shares its campus with the shrine.
“The first time I was here was Jakob’s first year. He was just being interviewed to become a seminarian,” she said. “He’d been here before and he was able to just bring us in and give us this amazing tour. The different chapels each depict that culture’s representation of Jesus and Mary. It spreads across cultures.”
Lourdes Ruiz-Arthur is a Newark resident from Holy Family parish. She traveled with a group to the basilica.
“I’ve been here before, but I’ve never been here with my friends, so it’s very special,” she said. “I’m hoping to a have a beautiful, spiritual day, to see all the images of our lady and to pray with the bishop and to all the diocese. I want to dedicate this day to our lady.”
Young and more senior Catholics alike found reasons to spend a Saturday at the shrine.
John Sweeney is a parishioner at St. Ann’s in Wilmington and first-year student at University of Delaware. He traveled to the pilgrimage with a group from the Newman Center and his friends who are active at the school’s campus Catholic ministry center.
“I haven’t always been a practicing Catholic, but a couple years ago, in high school, I had a reconversion of my own,” Sweeney said. “Since then, I have been trying to dedicate myself to the Catholic faith. Now that I’m at UD I get the FOCUS missionaries and Father (James) Gebhart and Father Rich (Jasper) are giving me such great opportunities to come here and do something like this.
“My prayer life is getting so much better, I’m understanding how to pray, what kind of things to pray for and how to maintain a spiritual discipline when it comes to my faith. And I think it’s really important. All of a sudden, I’m getting all these people who say, ‘please volunteer, please do this.’ They’re being so inviting.”
Sweeney said the Newman Center and the people involved with it have helped him grow his spiritual life.
“I’ve been trying to get as involved with the church in these past couple years. Without the church my life wasn’t so happy. There were parts of myself that were missing. I didn’t have a defined purpose. When I got back into it and I began researching, I found so much truth that I never found before. Now I have all these opportunities to express that truth that I didn’t know existed. It’s hard to believe that I have all these new opportunities that are coming at me. It’s just really great.”
He believes there is hope for young people who are currently away from the church.
“The biggest problem isn’t a lack of evidence,” Sweeney said. “It’s more that they have to change their lifestyle. A lot of people might even look into it and be like, ‘OK, this makes sense. I agree with these morals.’ But at the same time, they want to keep partying.
“Other people at my college, they might respect my faith, but at the same time they want to keep drinking, they want to keep on having premarital relations and all of those things, but I would say ‘OK, you want to have this very initial, short-term pleasure, but in the long run, when that’s not enough, come back. Say a prayer. Do some more research. And stick with it for maybe like a month. Go to church for a month. And see how you feel after that month. If you’re not feeling that little bit of sense of real purpose, then I’ll be super-surprised.”
Jakob Brown, the seminarian, said he’s grateful to live near the shrine.
“I’m really excited to see all of the different parishioners in the diocese and help them in whatever way that I can to connect with our mother that much more now that we’re in the basilica,” said Brown, a seminarian for the diocese of Wilmington.
“Before coming to seminary, I really didn’t know Mother Mary very well. After coming to seminary, being a 10-minute walk from the basilica each and every day and being able to come here and spend time with her and our Lord, it’s been such a blessing to understand her relation to me as my mother. She’s been an incredible part of my life.”
