The Sanctuary of a Shrine

Several weeks ago while driving through North Adams, Mass., my wife and I noticed multiple house shrines. Most were shrines dedicated to Mary, but there were a couple of Jesus shrines scattered in as well. Seeing the shrines, I felt struck and moved by affection and a deep resonance within. She was there in the snow, doing what she always does, watching over her children, regardless of creed.

In November in Boston, I visited the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. It was early on a Sunday morning prior to Mass. I had not planned to be there at the Basilica. But I saw it as I was walking to breakfast and simply could not pass by without ducking in.

I feel that I should briefly address my own religious orientation. I am Catholic. I am also a woman who many years ago had a clear calling to ordination. I had the great fortune of a spiritual director and friend Fr. Tom Francis, a Trappist monk, who strongly encouraged me to pursue ordination, assuring me it would be the Church’s loss and God’s gain. Through the intervening years my faith has deepened and changed, my Catholicism as it remains today is heavily Marian, with a touch of the pagan, more Irish than Roman for sure.

And it was by listening closely to the call of that wild meandering faith that I found myself at the door of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. After visiting or speaking at church after church, if one pays attention, one develops a sense of things. Looking around the Basilica I felt certain I would find an internal shrine to a Black Madonna. I was right.

Black Madonnas are found throughout Western Europe, with heavy concentration in Southern Italy, Spain, France, and Portugal, as well as Mexico, South America, Africa, the U.S., Russia, basically everywhere there are humans struggling on the margins in need of the Mother’s help. She has many names: Our Lady of the Good Death, Our Lady of Czestochowa, Mamma Schiavona, the Black Madonna of Montserrat, the Black Madonna of Loreto, the Black Madonna of Soweto, to name only a few. She is often a protector of immigrants and those labeled “undocumented,” prisoners, the LGBTQ community – especially trans folk. She is known as the Mother of Slaves, and the Mother of Outcasts. When you have nowhere else to turn, She is there. There is even one in Burlington in the form of a large mural.

In the Basilica, off to the left, women gathered, lighting candles, crying, leaving written petitions in front of an Our Lady of Perpetual Help icon strongly resembling the Madonna di Montevergine (Mamma Schiavona). To the right and left of her shrine were pillars surrounded by abandoned crutches.

Globally there has been an uptick in the veneration of Black Madonnas; and how could there not be in the face of climate catastrophe, a looming third world war, increased water scarcity, a rise of fascism internationally, and increasingly draconian immigration policies that would rather see women and children drown than become “burdens” to a system. Where else would she be in this moment?

And that brings me back to the shrines of North Adams. There was a discussion recently on a North Adams chat page where someone asked about the origins of the household shrines. One response was that Catholics from earlier generations created the shrines, relics from a bygone era. And that is true. It is also true that the shrines still give comfort. They evoke a sense of curiosity and wonder.

An act of devotion is a human plea – a longing, a reverence. An act of devotion is simply that, an act of devotion. These things that call us to internal supplication, that invite us to confide our fears while we dare to hope, matter.

I live and work in an interfaith Abbey, and after 17 years of serving marginalized communities, I do not think it matters nearly as much what is on your altar, or to whom a shrine is dedicated, as it does what you bring to that space. There is some special comfort when these spaces appear without notice, whether on a walk through an unfamiliar city or on one of our neighborhood streets. These blessed and unexpected moments invite us to pause in silence or prayer. I’m pretty sure the ancestors who created those shrines would approve.

               -Rev. Jeannie Alexander

Originally published in the Bennington Banner