In 2022, on his first day as rector of Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove, Father Bao Thai looked out at a crowd of about 8,000 worshippers. His first day on the job was the first day of the annual Marian Days celebration.
This year, Thai was at the helm of organizing the two-day event, held under the banner “With Mary, We Journey,” reflecting the central role of the Virgin Mary in the Catholic faith. The event combines worship with community and celebration.
The Marian Days celebration, Thai said, is an opportunity for Vietnamese American Catholics “to renew their faith in Jesus Christ and to strengthen that devotion.”
Marian Days was started by a group of Vietnamese refugees in the late 1970s. Fleeing the fall of Saigon, the group started the festival to worship God, to renew their devotion to the Virgin Mary — who many, Thai said, prayed to as they escaped Vietnam — and also to come together as a community.
Every August, tens of thousands of Vietnamese Americans make the annual pilgrimage to Carthage, Missouri for a festival.
“They have hundreds of acres of land in the small city of Carthage so therefore, the Vietnamese camp everywhere,” Thai said, noting he, too, has visited.
While the Christ Cathedral does not have enough space to accommodate campers, Thai said, it follows a similar agenda to Carthage’s for the celebrations.
Guest speakers included Father Gregory Boyle of Homeboy Industries; Rev. Hy K. Nguyen, rector of Assumption Seminary in San Antonio; and Rev. Thinh Duc Pham, an assistant professor of liturgy at St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo who all gave talks over the two days in Garden Grove.
One of the highlights, like in Missouri, was the Saturday morning healing mass centered around the cathedral’s Our Lady of La Vang Shrine.
The shrine’s centerpiece is a 12-foot-tall Virgin Mary statue depicting how she is believed to have appeared before a group of persecuted Catholics in 1798 in a rainforest of Vietnam,…
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