It caused me physical pain to see my Mom's face pressed into the mud.
At first I felt awful, then suddenly I felt better. It was like proof that "evil is real" and we're all in this together as the Body of Christ. The little injuries I received over the past two weeks were apart of this larger attack on the Catholic Church. How can I feel alone in my misery when my own Mom's statue is face down in the dirt?
I immediately asked my family to pray with me by this statue. We promised to do acts of prayer and reparations for this sacrilege. We talked about how it was no surprise that vandals chose this statue of Mary, out of all the other things in our Church to attack. The Devil hates Mommy Mary because she is so powerful!
If you look closely, you can see that this was a memorial to a 26 year old son who died in a car accident 30 years ago. What a beautiful statement of hope after tragedy his mother left for the parish.
Later, I went back to church at 3 PM and took some photos. I couldn't stand to see Our Mom doing a face-plant in the dirt. It took all the strength I had to flip her over. Marble is heavy!
I called in a few of my friends to help me clean her up.
My cleaning crew hard at work
It was a "coincidence" but the Sister of the deceased brother whose memorial this was came over to chat with us during our cleaning session. She was very heartsick that "people could do this." She was really touched however, that we were there cleaning up her brother's statue.
We left a note for the vandals.
(Dear Vandals, We are praying for you, St. Joseph's)
We know that the Devil is real and he does mean stuff! But lets not give up Hope. Let's keep with the fight. The Devil hates our Mom because she can crush him with a bare toe. If the Devil hates us because we're starting to have a "family resemblance to Mom" lets rejoice, instead of being disheartened or scandalized!
Update: Found out that his statue weighed 800 pounds and yet was dragged into the middle of a city street.
