Cardinal Dolan, Bishop Iffert bless and dedicate the Gardens at St. Patrick’s on Holy Wednesday

Maura Baker

Staff Writer

The Gardens at St. Patrick’s beckoned hundreds to a celebration, ribbon cutting and Mass on April 1, with founder Gerald Lundergan, his wife Charlotte Lundergan and other esteemed guests such as former President of the United States Bill Clinton, a personal friend of the Lundergans; Archbishop Emeritus of New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan; former University of Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari; and the diocese’s own Bishop John Iffert and Bishop Emeritus Roger Foys. Together, they cut the symbolic ribbon in front of the state-of-the-art welcome center, opening the Gardens to all, inviting them to a place of prayer, reverence and personal pilgrimage, where they can follow along in Christ’s paschal mystery.

Cardinal Dolan began the celebration of Mass outdoors, among the stations, with Bishop John Iffert; Father Augustine Aidoo, pastor, St. Patrick Church, Maysville; Father Joshua Heskamp, parochial vicar, St. Patrick Church; Father Michael Black, parochial administrator, St. John the Baptist Parish, Wilder; Father Andrew Young, pastor, St. Joseph Parish, Cold Spring; and Deacon Steve Winbigler, also of St. Joseph Parish, Cold Spring, before the threat of rain and increased wind speed necessitated the celebration to move indoors.

“Sometimes when you have these kinds of emergencies, it’s more memorable, and it kind of reminds us, it’s his sacrifice, it’s his supper; we’re blessed to participate in it,” said Cardinal Dolan of the change in location mid-celebration.

Given the abrupt change, Cardinal Dolan’s homily was brief but impactful. He reminded those who remained of the spiritual song which says, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” In response, Cardinal Dolan told the crowd, “You bet we were and we sure are. Thanks to these living stations of the cross here in Maysville, we were there. We are there. The passion, death and resurrection of the Lord didn’t just happen. It is happening.”

This echoes a sentiment which Cardinal Dolan shared with the students of St. Patrick School, Maysville: “These are life-size. These are really going to make the Passion and death of our Lord come alive because it is alive. Jesus is still on this cross. Jesus is still rising from the dead, and he wants us to be close to him.”

“Our life is united to the life-size stations of the cross. Our life is united to Jesus, who told us that he is the way, the truth and the life,” he said to the students.

The Gardens at St. Patrick’s is a 6-acre recreation of the Passion of Christ, complete with extraordinary attention to detail and a 7.5-story-tall lighted cross. Visitors will begin their journey in a symbolic Garden of Gethsemane, where a 6,000-year-old olive press sits, a reminder of Gethsemane’s original function as an olive garden before its key role as the location of Judas’ betrayal.

“You can walk through this garden and touch that implementation and think of Jesus and his work and the incarnation and the way he emptied himself out to become one of us,” said Bishop Iffert at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

The garden will lead visitors down a scaled replica of the Via Dolorosa, the path which Christ walked to crucifixion, where they will marvel at the strategically placed life-sized stations of the cross. The sculptures were hand-carved by Italian sculptor Reto Demetz and his team in Northern Italy, before being shipped to their permanent home at the Gardens of St. Patrick’s.

“I want it to be just like it is in Jerusalem,” said Mr. Lundergan at a private endowment luncheon prior to the public celebrations. “I want it to be exactly like Jerusalem so that when people come they go to Jerusalem, they’ll know exactly what our Lord went through, for each and every one of us.”

Praying the Stations of the Cross is a common practice during Lent, a time of penance and sacrifice, as a way to connect with Christ and his great sacrifice on the cross.

“We have a tradition,” Bishop Iffert said at the ribbon-cutting. “We speak of that as those who are baptized into Jesus as being called to live as Alter Christi — other Christs. After his pattern, in his style of loving the people he loves, learning to live sacrificially as he lives.”

“This is what a garden like this is about. This is what the Stations of the Cross are about,” he said. “Inviting us to walk literally in the path of Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at, but rather he emptied himself out, becoming human, like one of us in all things but sin. That’s what this garden is about. It’s about forming people, forming people to live like Christ, to live into that baptismal call, to become the hands and feet, the extension of Christ in the world.”

The beautifully, intricately carved stations serve as a stark recreation of the Passion of Christ. With the emotion shown raw on the statue faces, livid anger and gut-wrenching sadness, it makes real the passion, death and resurrection.

“Anybody who thinks that God is distant, anybody who thinks that God doesn’t know what they’re going through, anybody that thinks that God is way beyond this, let them come to Maysville and let them come to this Garden of St. Patrick. Let them look in the eyes of the life-size Christ. Let them see him fall and try to get back up. Let them see his mother’s tears as she greets him on the Via Crucis. Let them see the anger and the violence in the soldiers. Let them see,” said Cardinal Dolan at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

“These gardens are more than just soil and stone,” said Mr. Lundergan at the endowment luncheon. “They are a sacred path that tells a story of suffering, sacrifice and ultimately redemption. These stations remind us that Christ himself carried a cross, and in our own lives, we are each called to carry our cross.”

Speaking to the hundreds gathered at the welcome center, Mr. Lundergan said, “No matter if you’re Catholic, Protestant, Christian, as long as you believe in the Lord and what he did for us, this is your garden.”

Bishop Iffert said to the crowd, “When we have the stations built on such a magnificent stage, such a magnificent proportion, maybe it will just help us to think for just a moment about how living after the image and likeness of Jesus means that he takes all of us, every gift that we have to give, every sorrow we have to suffer, and he takes it … he blesses it, he breaks it, he shares it, he makes it plenty. That’s what a place like this can do for us.”