The ONLY One

August 1, 2007

Ever since I started blogging, I've wished I'd had one back when I'd lived in Portugal. There were so many things that I saw and experienced that I wished I could pull back up from the archives. Having to depend on just my memory is so dull...and increasingly less accurate memories than my old posts on the blog.

I'm currently in Marseilles, France on a work project. Yesterday, after we'd finished work, Sue-Wee and I went wandering around the town (it's a first time here for both of us). Really, we were just waiting for all the restaurants to open at 7 so we could feed our American-that-needs-to-be-fed-before-7pm-stomachs. When you arrive in Marseilles, there are two immediate things you notice: the boats (it's a port town), and the building-that-looks-like-a-church up on the hill.

There is one hill that is considerably higher than all the others, and perched atop of it is what-looks-like-a-church, with a very tall steeple. On top of the steeple is a gold statue. From down at the port, you just see the gold, you don't really make out who it is. The building is called Notre Dame de la Garde--Our Lady of the Guard, because the hill is named La Garde for how it watches over the city.

Now, I mentioned Portugal earlier because I had forgotten until yesterday the effect that this kind of Catholicism can have on me. When I lived in Portugal, I learned from seeing on a regular basis, all about the part of Catholicism that idolizes Mary. I don't believe all Catholics do it. I think there are many Catholics who love Jesus and worship Him, and it's just that their style of worship is considerably different than mine. But there in Portugal, especially in a town named Fatima...it's sort of hard to find Jesus at all.

It made me ill back then. I would smell the odor of wax burning and think it smelled like death. I saw people walking on their knees, or even pulling themselves on their stomachs using just their elbows as a way to demonstrate penance. I was shocked by mosaics of Mary being crowned by Jesus and the angels.

But it's been many, many years since I've seen that. I've been to Sri Lanka and India where I saw the worship of ugly, non-gods that made me just as ill. I've lived in Muslim countries where I hear the call to prayer and know they've got the idea of God all messed up. Maybe I've become de-sensitised to it all since I was young and seeing a religion other than my own back then in Portugal. Or maybe it is seeing what has stemmed out of my religious beliefs all contorted in the wrong way, but still called by the name of my faith that bothers me so.

We climbed that hill...climbed and climbed and climbed until we kicked ourselves for not taking the bus. We got to the bottom steps that lead up to the church and saw the stations of the cross marked on the way up them, and I thought to myself--this is one thing I love about Catholicism...seeing the stations of the cross. But when we reached the top, that was the end of the time of worship for me. There was no more Jesus there.

Above the door to the building was a painting of Mary on a throne, with two angels staring up at her in adoration. Underneath it was the phrase, in French, "I salute you Mary." There was a plaque that said, "Everything in her is so precious, we must be generous," asking people to give money to the upkeep of the place. Inside, it was all about Mary and not about the God-Man that she was privilege to mother. I refuse to call that place a church.

I'd love to be able to go back through old blog archives and remember how seeing that on a regular basis made me feel. I wish I could read through some of the happy, funny experiences that I had in Portugal that weren't like this related memory. Because all of this just bums me out.

So all I can is this: To Jesus Christ, the Name that is above all names, the only one worthy, be all glory and honor and worship and praise. He alone is God.