A Holy Week Pilgrimage

Orange County Catholics marked Holy Saturday with an early morning pilgrimage to the diocesan cathedral--a reenactment of the journey that the pope wants all Roman Catholics to take this year.

Led by newly appointed Auxiliary Bishop Jaime Soto, about 200 people rose before dawn and walked more than a mile from a La Habra church to Orange’s Holy Family Cathedral, seat of the diocese.

The spirited participants brought an accordion, guitars and other musical instruments for their trek. They sang in Spanish along the way, stopping to pray at the Stations of the Cross.

“I want to share my feelings about Jesus with all the people who don’t know him,” said Jose Luis Diaz of Santa Ana, who took his first pilgrimage Saturday to the Holy Family Cathedral. “We live because Jesus died.”

Under a decree by Pope John Paul II, Catholics are expected to mark the 2,000th anniversary of Christ’s birth by undertaking a pilgrimage to Rome or the Holy Land. The pope did provide an alternative for those who cannot travel so far: a visit to someone who is ill or in prison or a pilgrimage to a local church designated by each diocese.

The Holy Family Cathedral is experiencing a boom in attendance this year as a result, diocese officials say. Also designated as substitute pilgrimage locations are Mission San Juan Capistrano and Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in La Habra.

“The pilgrimage is an opportunity for spiritual renewal and to receive graces,” said Father Rod Stephens, director of evangelization and adult education for the diocese. “It’s an opportunity to do something physical that articulates an interior disposition.”

The pope’s call is also causing a boom in parishioners at the diocese’s “mother church” in Orange, doubling the attendance at daily Masses and sometimes tripling it on weekends, said Father Arthur Holquin, rector at the Holy Family Cathedral. The daily 8:15 a.m. Mass now draws about 200 people, he said.

“A large concentration of Vietnamese Catholics have been making the pilgrimage here, perhaps because of our proximity to Garden Grove,” said Holquin.

Holy Family has more than 4,000 registered families, and the cathedral seats about 850 on its wooden pews per service. Last month, it was standing room only with more than 5,000 attending the the church’s six Sunday services.

The required rituals of the pilgrimage includes praying for the pope and walking through the cathedral’s appointed “holy door” which as been blessed by Bishop Tod D. Brown.

“The notion of pilgrimage has been within our tradition for a long time,” said Holquin. “Just as the hajj is hallowed to followers of Islam, a faithful Catholic would want to go to Rome at least once in their lifetime.”

Al Glicksir of Santa Ana, a Holy Family parishioner, said it’s heartening to see the diverse groups of people who are attending the church as part of the pilgrimage. But he said it has made it more difficult for him and his wife to get a good seat on Sunday.

Glicksir, who is retired, volunteers at the church and is charged with unlocking the wooden church doors every Saturday for the faithful who come from all over Orange County to kneel, pray, genuflect and occasionally cry.

“Sometimes when I come here to open the doors, it chokes me up,” said Glicksir, as he went to help florists festoon the altar with fresh flowers. “There is such serenity and peace in this cathedral.”