No one wants to be the type of child St. Augustine would use for an allegory. And, for the most part, I was not that type of child. However, on the rare occasion when my youthful nature got the better of me, the faculty of Our Lady of Victory Elementary School in my hometown of Lackawanna, N.Y., had a simple corrective: counting angels.
Immediately next door to our 19th-century red brick school (with distinct entrances still marked “Girls” and “Boys” over the portals) stands the gleaming Our Lady of Victory Basilica, clad with Carrara marble, the interior of which is bursting with well over 1,000 angels. I say “well over” because no one is certain how many there are throughout the church. I once counted 1,890. My friend Tom counted over 2,100, but I think he double counted.
Looking back on this “corrective,” all I can say is: What a gift! Next to being taught by and working with the Jesuits, the physical space, clergy and legacy of the captivating Our Lady of Victory Basilica and National Shrine has been the most transformative element of my spiritual life.
For 100 years now, Our Lady of Victory Basilica has been a landmark of the Western New York region and a pilgrimage site for tens of thousands of people every year. Built under the careful gaze of Father Nelson Baker (proclaimed venerable in 2011), the basilica stands as a testament to not only the faith of a singular community, but the millions of people who followed Father Baker in devoting their lives to God through the inspiration of Our Lady of Victory. (I should note that Father Baker did not escape the Jesuits either, studying Latin and Greek with the Buffalo Jesuits in the evening in preparation for seminary.)
Father Baker was an exceptional parish priest (the rococo basilica perhaps being a giveaway). In his 60 years of ministry, he welcomed hundreds of thousands of orphans, cared for the sick and dying, provided a home for unwed mothers and abandoned infants, housed the homeless, welcomed the stranger, and educated and evangelized hundreds of thousands more (even being credited with inventing direct mail to fund his ministries). Scattered around the basilica remains the evidence of this ministry, ongoing still today, in a series of red brick buildings forming a veritable city of charity. And the basilica stands as the city center. America sent Alfred Barrett, S.J., to visit Father Baker in 1936, and the report gives us a magnificent look into the world he had built. “It is noteworthy,” wrote Father Barret, that Father Baker is one “who has done more perhaps than any single individual in America to build a communal Nazareth for the destitute of every description….”
The basilica, with its dome soaring 165 feet in the air, is a marvel. No detail escaped Father Baker’s attention. Over 40 different marbles decorate the interior; rare African mahogany has been molded into pews; marvelous murals decorate nearly every visible inch of the interior; the stained glass and grand organ are a feast for the eyes and ears; the Stations of the Cross are hewn from individual blocks of marble; and 40 brass doors, weighing more than 400-pounds each, guard the entryways denoting that you are entering a space totally apart from the world.
While Father Baker’s ministries espoused and exemplified the virtues of charity and justice, the basilica has one clear message: thanksgiving. It is the house built by Father Baker to welcome all before God; to honor Our Lady of Victory, his patroness, and to celebrate the source and summit of the Catholic faith in the Eucharist. It is “Alleluia” made manifest.
Never one for understatement, Baker constructed nine altars throughout the basilica and incorporated dozens of additional spiritual images. The whole of the basilica church envelopes you, embracing the person in prayer through every conceivable sense.
And there I was, counting angels as a 10-year-old reprobate. But I could not sit still. I began to wander, to read about Father Baker, to study the images—and to talk to God. One altar in the ambulatory, dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, particularly caught my young eye. White marble stood in rich contrast to a blue dome speckled with golden stars; it was there that I learned to pray.
It was there that I also realized that my prayers did not end in the church. Situated in prayer at this side altar behind the main altar of the basilica, placed at the heart of a steel town, I learned to connect my prayers to life beyond those walls. When you walk out the front doors of the basilica, you are confronted with the world—and Father Baker’s response to it.
To this very day, the red brick buildings that he built to serve the poor, the sick, the refugee, any and all in need, continue to stand and continue to serve those same groups in our society in both traditional and new ways. As Pope Francis put it so succinctly: “[W]ork and prayer are also complementary.”
This realization did not hit me like a freight train. It did not overwhelm me like a tidal wave. It was as though I was accepting the embrace of prayer and thanksgiving in which the basilica enveloped me and then taking the natural next steps of sharing that embrace with the world. It was in that moment, over 20 years ago, that the words that I had heard nearly every day of my youth all came together.
That holy legacy of work and prayer continues today. A century on, this house built by a community of faith is undergoing a restoration. The murals have been restored; marble repaired; pews refinished; and the copper domes replaced—shining as they did in 1926. In this exercise of restoration, I cannot help but recall that the work of faith is never finished. We are constantly awash in a renewal and recommitment to our belief in Jesus Christ. These efforts, undertaken by countless hands and contributors, reaffirm the centrality of God at the heart of this City of Charity.
And God does not leave us alone. The work of Father Baker reminds us that the Lord lives through time and space—through the sacramental, the tangible and the relational. The same motivations Baker had a century ago animate the faithful in Buffalo today, as well as nearly the two billion Catholics worldwide who, despite doubts and fears, believe in that hopeful Thanksgiving we are each called to be a part of throughout our lives.
Above all else, Father Baker taught me to keep counting angels—those I love, and those I have yet to learn to love. Regardless of where I am or who I am with, God is present and his angels are among us. We just need to look beyond ourselves and keep counting.
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