Gloria in Excelsis Deo: Beach Vacation Day 5

On Sunday, we took a day trip one hour away to Savannah, Georgia, where I hadn't been since I went with my Aunt Erica eight years ago.

Selling honey like beautiful wine bottles

We stumbled upon the Savannah Bee Company and stopped inside . . . it was a real delight! My father is an amateur bee-keeper and I have fond memories of all things bee-related. This gourmet shop was so interesting to me.

The water fountain at Lafayette Square

We parked our van near the cathedral for Mass, then walked for an hour to pass the time.

It was Divine Mercy Sunday, so visiting the Colonial Park Cemetery to pray the Divine Mercy chaplet seemed a perfect plan.

I have a real fondness for cemeteries because of my dad's decades-long hobby of genealogy. He took me on many a site-visit to cemeteries when I was a child, as he would do gravestone rubbing or collect firsthand data about the deceased family member. Honestly, I think visiting this cemetery was my favorite event of the day and I could have spent hours there.

The Colonial Park Cemetery was established around 1750 and closed to further burials in 1853. There are about 600 burial markers present, but it is estimated there may be as many as 9,000 people buried there. During the Union occupation of Savannah in the Civil War, many graves were desecrated and looted. That vile behavior feels distant to me, but I felt my blood positively boiling today when I saw some modern graffiti carved into the gravestones. Who would do such a thing?!

Many of the displaced gravestones have been mounted to the brick wall for display.

Then it was time for Mass, so we headed back to the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. From our guidebook: "The colonial charter of Savannah prohibited Catholics from settling in Savannah. The English Trustees feared that Catholics would be more loyal to the Spanish in Florida than the English. This prohibition faded shortly after the Revolutionary War . . . ."

The exquisite altar

A view of the main altar through a side chapel

The impressive pipe organ

This was one of those Masses that is frustrating for me and brings out the complainer (who comes out by invitation way too readily anyway). Joseph was overtired and very fussy, yet he wouldn't fall asleep in my Ergo either. I tried more than half a dozen times to enter into the sanctuary, only to have to walk out immediately because of Joseph's fussing. I walked on marble and pavement in the humid heat for almost an hour and a half, missing the entirety of the Mass and Holy Communion, so you can imagine the thoughts running through my head.

But I believe God sent me a nice lady to boost my spirits. This woman approached me with bubbly confidence and it turned out that she is the wife of a permanent deacon in Georgia. This woman was such a powerhouse of personality that I forgot to inquire her name. She told me all about how she and some friends had founded a group for mothers of large families to go on annual retreat (and, no, I failed to get the name of that group as well!). I replied enthusiastically how I had recently gone on my first retreat in eight years. She told me how scared she was the first time she went on retreat, leaving eight children with her husband, but that they all did fine and she realized that going on annual retreat was her "life line."

She gushed to me about what a "good witness" I was being, merely by being there with my children, nothing else. I really needed to hear that, as I paced outside with the baby. Then she asked, "Are you forming your children to follow the Lord?" I said yes, and then she presumed, "You're homeschooling them, aren't you?" Before she went on her way, she praised and gushed maternally in support of homeschooling.

This nice lady whose name I can't know was so encouraging about Catholic motherhood, which I really needed during that challenging Mass.