HOMEPAGE for this issue: May 11, 2011 Download PDF Version // Click here to install/update Adobe Reader on your computer

Attending to Mary

By DCR Staff

May crownings and special rosaries are taking place this month to honor Mary.  One local man’s devotion to the Blessed Mother keeps him busy with a Marian apostolate all year round.

Jim Abeyta is among a handful of volunteers who each Saturday delivers a pilgrim virgin statue of Our Lady of Fatima to homes across the archdiocese.  Abeyta has been transporting the statue every Saturday without fail—for nearly 30 years.

“Many years ago, I hosted the statue in my home and decided I wanted to be part of the ministry; what we call a ‘custodian,’” he said of those who maintain the schedule for a statue. 

“I started … at St. Louis Parish in Louisville and when I moved to St. Mark’s in Westminster, I brought the statue with me.”

Each week, Abeyta and his honor guard partner Joe Barela, who has been involved with the apostolate for 25 years, pick up the statue, which stands 3 feet in height and weighs 30 pounds. 

They then transport it to the next home where it will spend the following week.

“We have a small table that travels with it,” Abeyta said.  “Joe and I bring everything in, set it up and then recite the rosary.  The family who is keeping the statue is also asked to pray the rosary each night it is in their possession.  Then the following Saturday, Joe and I pick it up and take it to another family.”

Families who wish to host the statue add their names to lists covering different areas that Abeyta and other custodians maintain.  Those who have never had the statue in their home are given priority, but the waiting list can be up to three years.  Still, people are anxious to host the statue.

The statue ministry is part of the Ambassadors of Mary; a pilgrim virgin statue movement that began in Fatima, Portugal, in 1947 on the 30th anniversary of Mary’s apparitions there.  At that time, the Bishop of Leiria blessed two replicas of the statue and sent them to circulate in churches in the West and Far East. The movement arrived in the United States in 1954, and now has 300 pilgrim statues world-wide, including 11 in northern Colorado. 

Although being a custodian has been fulfilling, Abeyta acknowledged it hasn’t always been easy.

“I’ve missed parties, birthdays, graduations—a lot of things,” he said.  “Believe me, I’ve heard about it more than once from my wife. But she understood that Saturday belongs to Our Lady and nothing interferes with that.”

The apostolate seeks men who are fervent and self-sacrificing. Servite Father Gabriel M. Weber, spiritual director of the local Ambassadors of Mary, said one apostolate member, Anthony Carusco, 88, of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Denver, attended a pilgrim virgin statue for 40 years, until his death last month on Holy Saturday.

“He was an ‘ambassador,’ a person who helps to deliver the statue,” Father Weber said.

Many of the men involved in the honor guards that attend the statues are elderly, the priest added.

“We want to get more men to volunteer to be ambassadors with us,” Father Weber said.

The apostolate is enriching and grace-filled, ambassadors say.

Abeyta pointed to the sense of Providence at work in where the statues are supposed to go. Dumont, Colo., resident Carolyn Buck agrees.  Over the years, Buck’s family has hosted a pilgrim virgin statue several times, always considering it a joy to do so.  But one time stands out.

“We were in the process of moving to Tennessee and everything that could go wrong seemed to,” Buck recalled.  “In the midst of everything we were trying to do, suddenly it was our week to host the statue.”

Seeing the upheaval going on in the Buck home, the custodian told them that this was precisely the time Our Lady should be with them. 

“We kept the statue for a week and things worked out,” Buck said. “My husband’s job came through, we sold our house; all was just as the custodian said it would be.”

Abeyta said that over the years he’s heard many such stories about how the statue was there when she was needed. He is glad that he can be part of an apostolate that touches the lives of so many people, but he emphasizes that his role is small.

“It’s Our Lady who knows what’s going on and where she is going,” he said. “I’m just the delivery boy.”