Thank You, Little Jesus

     When my daughter returned from the Gulf War, she burst in the back door and plunked a tiny chunk of metal on the kitchen counter.

     "There's a souvenir for you, Mom," she said. "It's a piece of the scud that didn't get me."

     Her next remarks sent a chill up my spine and hot tears to my eyes. One of the Iraqi missiles was aimed for a direct hit on her base. The highly-touted American anti-missile Patriot that should have intercepted it never left the ground. Thirteen miles from target the scud, for no apparent reason, malfunctioned and exploded harmlessly in the air. No one was hurt.

     In his autobiographical book, It Doesn't Take a Hero, even General Norman Schwartzkopf admits that there is still a place in this world for miracles!

      Joanna then walked over to the family altar and hung a tiny silver camel around the neck of our statue of the child Jesus, Santo Niño de Atocha.

     "Thanks, Bud, appreciate the help," she whispered in her usual flippant manner.

     Our image of Santo Niño (the Holy Child) has blessed our home since my children were small. A devotion of Spanish and Mexican origin, Jesus is depicted as a small child of about six, dressed as a Spanish pilgrim in Little Lord Fauntleroy type clothing with a large floppy hat. Seated on a chair, he holds a water gourd and a basket of bread, symbolic of the food, both spiritual and temporal, that he offers. The image is a copy of the one at the shrine in Fresnillo, Zacatecas, Mexico.

     The legend of Santo Niño de Atocha swirls from the mists of memory in Moorish Spain. It tells how the Blessed Virgin of the Atocha sent the Holy Child to visit the Christian prisoners of the Moors. After tearful appeals to the Virgin from the women of the town, Our Lady directed her young son to feed the prisoners who were starving in the jail. The devotion traveled to Mexico with the miners, and settled in the silver-mining region of Zacatecas. Here, the moon waned and the son shone more brightly. The tiny image of the Son became known as a miracle worker, devoted especially to those in prison: the prison of the mines, the prisons of the poor, the self-made prisons of sin.

     Some of the first American troops to see action in World War II were from the New Mexico National Guard. They fought bravely on Corregidor with its underground tunnels and defenses. The Catholics remembered that the child of the Atocha had long been considered a patron of all who were trapped or imprisoned, and many vowed that if they survived the war they would make a pilgrimage from Santa Fe to the Niño's shrine at Chimayo in thanksgiving. After the war, two thousand pilgrims, veterans of Corregidor, the Bataan death march, and Japanese prison camps, along with their families walked, some barefoot, the long and rough road from Santa Fe to Chimayo to thank the child Jesus in his little adobe shrine.

     To understand the devotion to Santo Niño you need only know the Ultimate Love the little statue represents.  That Love reminds us that we must come to Him as a child, in simplicity and with faith and hope. That Love also demands our constant solicitude for all His children. "Suffer the little children to come unto me, for thus is the Kingdom of God." [Matt 19:14.] The love we show Love in our love for others is returned in overflowing abundance.

     Through the dark days of the Gulf War, in front of the little image of the Holy Child, my mother's heart poured out constant petitions for my daughter, my nephew, and all the children of America serving in the smokey desert. At the worst of times, no reassuring phone calls or letters were allowed through. When faith flagged, He brought blessed hope and comfort.

     Just a few days after the welcome news of the cease fire, a small package arrived in the mail. Joanna had sent a small book with a camouflage cover - a bible - with a flyleaf inscribed "Ceasefire day! 28 Feb 91," and the unwritten message that she was safe.

     When Joanna came home, we went almost immediately to California to visit her brother. On the return trip, driving through New Mexico, I suggested a seventy mile detour to stop at Chimayo. In the small, rude little sanctuary, Joanna took one look at my face and demanded, "Mom, did you make some vow that if I got home from the war safe you would come here?"

     I hadn't thought to do that. But then and there I silently promised myself that if I were ever able to do so I would pay a visit of thanksgiving to the Holy Child at his shrine in Mexico.

     The next summer I took my first real vacation in many years and flew to Central Mexico. In my little rental car, the first day I drove 200 miles into the mountains to visit the shrine at Fresnillo. I arrived in Zacatecas just as dusk was falling, so I checked into a hotel for the night.

     The next morning, I arrived at the shrine just in time for Mass. Although I didn't enter on my knees as many of the pilgrims did, I quickly knelt in the pew, and bent my head to hide the tears that came unbidden at the sight of the welcoming little thamauturge on his perch high above the altar.

     After Mass, I visited with the Clarist nuns who live and work at the shrine. Sister Maria Rosario cheerfully agreed to guide me through the beautiful cloisters of this colonial monastery. Walls and ceilings are completely covered with ex voto offerings. Those whose pleas to the powerful little abogado (attorney) are answered come and leave retablos in thanksgiving. These are pictures painted on wood, tin or paper in which folk artists express the story of a favor. There are retablos here dating from the 1500's to our own times. Today, many pilgrims leave other types of ex votos, especially the photographs of their loved ones. In Mexico, a land of churches, only the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe has more of these thanksgiving plaques. The shrine is now in the process of building a large new building to contain the never ending flood of thanksgiving offerings. Through a century of revolution, Mexico has provided many prisoners for the Holy Child to aid.

     As we turned a sharp corner in the cloister, I am certain my surprised gasp and expression of complete shock must have both startled and amused Sister Rosario. I stood face to face with a large retablo of the dove of peace flying over the smoking desert. Two others depicting exploding oil wells and smoking mountains accompanied the first. And the photos - nearly a hundred of them - smiling faces of American servicemen and women from all branches of the service! Like me, others had come from the north to this remote mountain village of Mexico in loving gratitude to the Holy Child who had aided their own children.

     Thank you, Little Jesus. •