Summer for me as a child meant spending time at my Uncle Frank’s beach house near Scarborough beach on the Rhode Island shore and going out with him to dig for clams at low tide. We would bring them back to his house and then have little necks on the half shell with lemon and Tabasco sauce. I grew up with steamers and quahogs and Rhode Island chowder, which is the real thing because in Rhode Island chowder there is no milk or, even worse, tomato to pollute the essence of the clam broth. But it was not until later that I discovered the oyster and the silken mystery that it is. The shape of the shell and the texture of the shell made them more interesting for me than little necks. And when I learned about how a pearl is formed in an oyster, how the oyster removes the irritation caused by a grain of sand or something else that has found its way into its hiddenness, removes it by secreting a substance called nachre and covering the source of irritation, and the result is the beauty of a pearl. Beauty is the result of pain and suffering.
When I first thought about a shrine of our Lady of Norwalk, I knew that it had to be related to the symbol of Norwalk, which is the oyster. For the shrine and this dedication are not only about the great Mother of God, Mary most holy, whose powerful intercession blesses us all here this evening; it is also a celebration of the city of Norwalk, its history and its present. Surrounded by towns of extraordinary wealth, Norwalk, with its multicultural and multilingual population. remains one of the most real places in the unreality of Fairfield County, I am so happy to be the pastor of this parish, the second oldest parish in the diocese, and the Mother Church of so many of the surrounding Catholic parishes. This parish had to be named after the Blessed Virgin Mary, because this parish not only has given birth to many parishes in the diocese and imitates the fecundity of the Mother of Jesus Christ, our Lord and God, but also because in a time when only 18 % of Catholics go to Mass regularly, this parish is the beacon, the lighthouse of that liturgical renewal based on the beauty of Catholic Tradition that will help the Church lift herself out of the quagmire of secular modernity by using the firm plank of the Traditional Roman Mass. This parish does not have many funerals, because the majority of those who come here to Mass are young, young defined in a broad way, but surely in contrast to my own generation. And the city of Norwalk has a special place in my own heart because of the history of my relationship to this city. Most of you know that I am a convert from the Episcopal Church. My first Episcopal parish was here in Norwalk, many years ago. And by the grace of God, my last Catholic parish is this great parish of St Mary’s. There are no coincidences in the spiritual life. For me, my life and my history are clear examples of the reality of the grace of God.
The statue that Bishop Caggiano blessed last year as Our Lady of Norwalk comes from a church or chapel in Belgium, dating from the mid 19th century. Unlike the house of the Blessed Virgin Mary that flew on its own power from Nazareth to Loreto in Italy, our statue flew here as well, but on an airliner. You notice that she is holding an oyster shell, which I picked up on Calf Pasture beach, and the Holy Child is holding a pearl. It is in the hidden and dark womb of Mary that the Savior of the world was conceived and carried and nourished, and it is Mary who gave birth to the pearl of great price, God himself in the flesh. The pearl of an oyster is the product of covering a painful irritation. The pearl who is Jesus Christ was born into this world because of the painful and deadly irritation of sin, because of the threat of eternal death for all mankind. And it is by Christ’s suffering and death that that deadly irritation of sin was conquered and transformed in his resurrection into the pearl of eternal life for those who believe in Him. And it is Mary whose suffering at the foot of the Cross, watching her Son suffer in such a terrible way, having her heart broken so that it could be joined to the Sacred Heart of her Son that was pierced with a lance, it is Mary who makes the hope of eternal life possible by her Fiat, her Yes to the will of God for her.
The central panel of the triptych shows Mary’s throne as the Queen of Heaven. It is surrounded by John the Baptist and the 11 apostles. The right panel depicts St. Mary’s church in all of its motherly splendor. The left hand panel shows an oysterman in his work clothes, holding his oyster rakes. In the background are the Norwalk islands. The oysterman is not only a symbol of the past and present of this city. He is for me a symbol of a priest, the one who fishes after men, seeking them with the rake of grace, exposing them to the bracing water of baptism and feeding them with the bread of eternal life in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
My heart is filled with happiness and thanksgiving this evening. I thank Alonso who created the shrine from the depths of his artistic heart. I thank Henry who painted the shrine in a way that evokes the beauty of those medieval triptychs that graced the altars of so many churches long ago. I thank Carlos who restored the statue when it was damaged in the summer. I thank Rosario for his skill in mounting the shrine. I thank Marge and Scott for their financial support of this wonderful project. I thank all those whose hard work and love for what they do makes the oyster industry thrive. And most of all I thank the people of this parish for their love and support for me and for this unique parish church.
I close, as I often do, with a poem. This is by the Irish Catholic poet, Seamus Heaney.
Oysters
Our shells clacked on the plates.
My tongue was a filling estuary,
My palate hung with starlight:
As I tasted the salty Pleiades
Orion dipped his foot into the water.
Alive and violated,
They lay on their beds of ice:
Bivalves: the split bulb
And philandering sigh of ocean.
Millions of them ripped and shucked and scattered.
We had driven to that coast
Through flowers and limestone
And there we were, toasting friendship,
Laying down a perfect memory
In the cool of thatch and crockery.
Over the Alps, packed deep in hay and snow,
The Romans hauled their oysters south to Rome:
I saw damp panniers disgorge
The frond-lipped, brine-stung
Glut of privilege
And was angry that my trust could not repose
In the clear light, like poetry or freedom
Leaning in from sea. I ate the day
Deliberately, that its tang
Might quicken me all into verb, pure verb.
