October 3: OUR LADY OF THE PLACE
What began almost two hundred years ago as a small pueblo populated by eleven homesick families from Mexico, stands today as Los Angeles, the world’s largest city named in honor of Our Lady.
The only major United States city bearing a title of the Blessed Virgin, Los Angeles, with its population of more than 2,000,000 and its monthly influx of three thousand persons, is a far cry from the tiny farm town that was founded September 4, 1781, merely as “The Place.” And the church which bears the city’s name, Our Lady of the Pure Angels, is a far cry from the hut built so rudely in 1784, where Franciscan Friars were forbidden to say Holy Mass.
The site of the city originally centering near the Junction of the Los Angeles River and the Arreye Sece, was chosen August 2, 1769, the day after the great Franciscan feast of Our Lady of the Angels of Portiuncula, and so was named in honor of that feast.
The eleven original families included some of Spanish, First Nations and Negro blood. The city’s first real church was dedicated December 8, 1822. Its original is as great and as beautiful as the town it served. Still standing today and commonly known as the Plaza; Place Church, the first structure was built by Joseph Chapman, a shipbuilder – symbolic, since the church is the “bark” or the ship of St. Peter; and Joseph constructed the church named for St. Joseph’s Spouse, Mary, the Mother of God and our Mother, who reigns as Queen in every place.
Los Angeles’ first church has grown with the city itself. To date, some 65,500 persons have been baptized in the almost 150-year old baptistery. But while all around it, has risen the steel and concrete giant that is a modern city, the Place (Plaza) Church has remained a center of Latin American religious and social culture; mixing the lives of peoples of many Places into one common blend of devotion to their Heavenly Mother, Mary.
Thy lovely features, Virgin sweet,
I see in pictures thousand-fold,
But none to match the vision bright
I in my inmost soul behold;
The world and all its panoply
Have vanished in its brilliant light,
In place a heavenly serenity
Now fills my heart with chaste delight.
From the Woman in Orbit - A Timeless Marian Treasure Compiled By Sr. Manetta Lamberty, S.C.C.
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