Pilgrimage to Our Lady of Champion Shrine

Reminder: Last day to sign up is Sunday, 2/4/2024.

Join fellow parishioners for a day trip to Champion, WI to visit the National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion. This is the first and only approved Marian apparition cite in the United States. And fortunately for us, it’s only a few hours drive away! The cost for this trip is $100 per person, with a $25 deposit required by January 28th to reserve the bus.

This pilgrimage will take place on Thursday, April 25th. Everyone will meet in the church parking lot to board the bus. The bus will leave promptly at 6:30am. The trip takes roughly 3 hours and 45 minutes each way. Once we arrive, the day will be packed with lots to see and do. A sandwich box lunch can be purchased ($10.50) or people can pack a lunch. The bus will return to Hammond by the evening.

What is a pilgrimage and why be a pilgrim?
The generic of pilgrimage is to travel to an unfamiliar location. It doesn’t sound difficult or desirable, does it? Abram did it at God’s calling. He left behind familiarity, family, and human sacrifice to wander the wilderness in search of the promise. Moses did it at God’s calling. He defied the power of Egypt and rescued God’s people to wander with them for forty years in the desert in search of the Promised Land. The three Magi did it in search of the promised Eternal King.

Pilgrims have wandered as long as there have been hopes, dreams and fears to drive them. Some have sought asylum. Some were in search of “greener pastures”. Some were escaping hunger and longing for a feast. Some pursued love. Knowingly or unknowingly, many went at God’s bidding. For this reason, pilgrimage is often seen as a religious exercise. Most religious pilgrimages today are to holy sites—sites where renowned spiritual phenomena occurred such as apparitions and healings. The efforts and sacrifices of traveling to these sites are often impelled by the desire to be nearer to our God—to become aware of His nearness in a far deeper way. Many have been blessed in this experience with healings, with fulfillment of their hopes and needs, and with a lifelong adjustment in their spirituality to more closely image Jesus in their life. It is my hope that this pilgrimage will be one of those journeys for each of us. Please be open to the movement of the Holy Spirit in your life through this pilgrim experience.

Sister Adele Brise
Marie Adele Joseph Brise was born in 1831 to Lambert and Catherine Brise in Brabant, Belgium. At a young age, an accident blinded her in one eye, but this did not affect her character; she was regarded as a pious young girl who loved God, the Blessed Mother, and everyone she met. She attended a Catholic grade school of the Ursuline sisters, where, at the time of her First Communion, Adele, along with a few other girls, promised the Blessed Mother they would join a religious order of missionary sisters to teach children in foreign countries. By the 1850s, however, Adele’s desire to join a religious order in Belgium seemed impossible since her family intended to emigrate. Troubled, but relying on God, Adele sought the counsel of her parish priest who told her that she should obey her parents, and, if God willed for her to be a sister, this would be realized in America.

In 1855, her family settled near Red River, Wisconsin, an area populated by Belgian immigrants served by missionary priests. One of the priests, a Crosier priest named Father Edward Daems, formed the Franciscans of St. Francis of the Holy Cross in the Bay Settlement area. At that time, American Catholicism suffered from language barriers, preventing many of the local churches from successfully addressing pastoral needs. Establishing ethnic churches was an attempt to meet this challenge, but not soon enough to prevent the spread of apathy among the many immigrants regarding the practice of their faith.

Adele Brise lived a simple life with her family. Yet, on October 9 th of 1859, as Adele was walking to the grist mill with a sack of wheat, she encountered “a lady all in white standing between two trees, one a maple, the other a hemlock.” Adele was frightened because she did not know who the visitor was. Eventually the vision disappeared; Adele continued along her way. A few days later, Adele walked the same eleven-mile route to Mass at her local church in Bay Settlement. This time she was accompanied by her sister, Isabelle, and by a neighbor woman. Adele again saw the lady, and again, much like the first time, the lady did not say a word and the apparition quickly vanished, leaving Adele distraught. She went to Confession after Mass to ask the priest for counsel regarding the two encounters. Fr. Verhoef, the parish priest, advised Adele that if it were a heavenly messenger, she would see the lady again, and this time she should ask, “In God’s Name, who are you and what do you want of me?” Following the priest’s suggestion, Adele armed herself with these questions. On the way home from Mass, still with her two friends, she encountered the same “beautiful woman, clothed in dazzling white with a yellow sash around her waist. Her dress cascaded to her feet in graceful folds. She had a crown of twelve stars around her head, and her long, wavy, golden hair fell loosely over her shoulders.”

Kneeling, Adele opened her mouth, beginning a conversation with the Blessed Mother Mary that would change her life forever. “In God’s Name, who are you and what do you want of me?” asked Adele, as she had been directed. “I am the Queen of Heaven, who prays for the conversion of sinners, and I wish you to do the same. You received Holy Communion the morning, and that is well. But you must do more. Make a general confession and offer Communion for the conversion of sinners. If they do not convert and do penance, my Son will be obliged to punish them.”

“Adele, who is it?” said one of the women. “O why can’t we see her as you do?” said another, weeping. “Kneel,” said Adele, the Lady says she is the Queen of Heaven.” Our Blessed Lady turned, looking kindly at them, and said, “Blessed are they that believe without seeing.” Then, turning back to Adele she said, “What are you doing here in idleness…while your companions are working in the vineyard of my Son?” “What more can I do, dear Lady?” asked Adele, weeping. “Gather the children in this wild country and teach them what they should know for salvation.” “But how shall I teach them who know so little myself?” replied Adele. “Teach them,” her resplendent visitor replied, “their catechism, how to sign themselves with the Sign of the Cross, and how to approach the sacraments; that is what I wish you to do. Go and fear nothing. I will help you.” The Queen of Heaven departed, lifting her hands as if giving a blessing. In a matter of a few minutes, Adele, a simple laywoman, uneducated but pious, received her vocation: to teach young people their catechism, and how to make the Sign of the Cross, and how to receive the sacraments worthily.