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After 47 years of quiet, faithful service to the abbey and its bookstore, Brother Marinus lay dying. So too was his beloved monastery. It was 2001 and not a single monk had joined and remained at the abbey in 25 years. A spiritual life that started with such joyous salvation seemed to be ending with a slow, sinking sadness. And so the head of the congregation in Germany, Archabbot Jeremias Schroeder, began looking into the question of whether the monastery should be phased out. He learned about Marinus's history and learned too that many Korean Catholics had migrated to New Jersey.Schroeder contacted monks from the flourishing Waegwan monastery in South Korea. It had been founded in 1952, the year the Meredith Victory was decommissioned and its skipper, Leonard LaRue, began his search for a new life.
Now, the monks of Waegwan were looking for a mission of their own. On October 12, 2001, Father Bosco Kim accepted the challenge to rescue St. Paul's Abbey. Two days later Brother Marinus died, in peace, at the age of 87.
Since his death the abbey has been rejuvenated. Every Sunday there are masses in English and Korean. New gardens produce a flourishing vegetable crop. A retreat center has been reopened. And Koreans from all over the New York metropolitan area have come to volunteer and to pray.
The Rev. Bosco Kim says, "We believe that this is our time to return something." Benedict Ahn wants to return something more. He expounds enthusiastically about his campaign to build the monument. He has a website, and a colorful brochure that shows a model of the plan: a grassy park, a black monolith near its center crowned like a Korean rooftop, and supporting it all a dark stone in the shape of a ship. It's an ark, if you will, that symbolizes the daring rescue of 14,000 souls. And it suggests what the life of one quiet, faithful man can do.
Under the Arch
Natalie Garibian Peters
from The Palm Beach Post
I was studying in Paris, reveling in college classes, weekend train trips and my own youthful Renaissance. My family-oriented father had asked me to look up relatives who might live somewhere about. But I didn't. I wanted to feel sophisticated and free, cutting family ties and abandoning the trappings of my American upbringing. Summer passed. The days grew longer, cooler, darker. And even in the City of Light, I was beginning to miss my family. It was my first time away from home and I was feeling lonely and disconnected, longing for the familiar joys of Christmas. I wondered, was I turning the pages of my life too quickly?
So on this one particular cold and dreary day in 1996, I found myself walking to the Armenian Church, a modest stone edifice on the opulent boulevard rue Jean-Goujon.
I took a seat out of the way and under one of the beautiful stone archways. As the Der Hayr (priest) spoke and the service progressed, I saw an old woman, hunched over, walking up and down the aisle looking for a seat.
Given the length of an Armenian church service, I didn't exactly want to give up my place, but I was 20 and she was 70. So when she came by, I spoke in Armenian and offered her my seat. She took it without speaking and I stepped to the side under the arch.
From time to time I saw her looking at me. I found myself staring back. There was something soft and gentle in her dark eyes, deep and mindful. I watched her cross herself, sing, and cross herself again. I envied the comfort and security she seemed to feel in singing and lifting her hands to God.
As the service drew toward a close, she quietly spoke to me. "You are not from here, are you?" she whispered.
"How did you know?" I asked.
"Because you speak to me in Armenian. The young people here speak French. Where are you from?"
"America. Florida," I said rolling the "r" to make it sound more Armenian.
Keeping her eyes on the service, she said: "I have family in Florida. Three brothers. Sarkis, Dikran and..."
"Ara," I said. A lump rose in my throat. "Ara is my father."
Her strong, weathered countenance crumbled in tears. She raised her hands again. "Asdoodzo Kordzeh (God's work). I have been looking for your father for 30 years," she cried. "I knew you were someone special. I knew it in your face."
She was my "auntie," a relative of my paternal grandfather's widely dispersed family who had been part of the Armenian diaspora across Iraq, Syria, America. She herself lived in Syria, and was only in Paris temporarily. But she happened to be there under that arch at the very same moment I was. Overarching oceans and generations, the two of us connected.
I thought I was in France to discover who I was, to collect stories for the future. Perhaps I didn't know exactly what I was looking for, but then I didn't need to -- because an angel from the past, Arev Kasparian, found me and reunited our family.
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