Rosalie Clark has a schedule to follow for putting on the annual St. Joseph Altar and she wasn’t going to let something like an epic flood stop her. “I kept telling the water ‘you WILL go away.'”
St. Mary’s Catholic Church will hold its 17th annual St. Joseph Altar service and feast on Saturday because the water went away. Well, almost. On Friday, two streets along the block of the church campus were still full of curb-to-curb water. On Wednesday, the water rose to the steps of the sanctuary in the Old Orange Historic District.
Because of the Sabine River flooding, the church is extending a special invitation to people who have been displaced or who have suffered from the disaster. Mrs. Clark said the tradition of the St. Joseph Altar is to feed the needy.
On Friday, church volunteers were finishing the cooking. The volunteers are so dedicated to St. Joseph that Rose Tarver left her husband at home in an area that flooded. She had to pick up the special St. Joseph bread ordered from a bakery in Jefferson County on a day during the flood.
She rode back home through the flood waters like a queen sitting in the shovel of a front end loader.
Italian families have been in Orange for more than a century and the names Mazzola, Todaro, Lucia, Blanda, Rao and Romano are on the parish roster. Mrs. Clark was a Todaro but can claim kinship with other families.
She said individual families held their own St. Joseph Altar. Her family was one of those before they started bringing the whole parish into the tradition.
The St. Joseph Altar is a religious ceremony sacred to Italians. The event at St. Mary’s, entitled “Labor of Love,” will begin with a ceremony and blessing. At 11:30 a.m., the altar will be open to the parish and friends. It is set to last until 1 p.m.
Clark’s husband, retired State District Judge Pat Clark, said if flood survivors crowd the feast, the volunteers will keep serving until the food runs out.
People have been cooking for days. Mrs. Clark has 30 gallons of what she calls “red sauce,” but other call “marinara.” “My sauce has already been sitting there getting better and better every day,” she said. Pounds and pounds of pasta will be ready to go with the sauce.
The sauce has no meat. Some will get a traditional Italian blend of herbs and sardines known as “con sarde.” She has a special store in Beaumont that orders a canned imported version every year for the altar.
They will also have fish and fried vegetables including cauliflower and eggplant. The scent of garlic and parmesan cheese could be smelled 10 feet from the kitchen on Friday afternoon.
Besides the elaborately-shaped breads, cookies are another centerpiece of the St. Joseph Altar. Thousands of Italian cookies and biscotti spiced with anise, filled with figs or flavored with oranges will be set out.
The tradition of St. Joseph Altar began after a severe drought in Sicily, the history goes. The crops had withered and the people were hungry. They prayed to St. Joseph, their patron saint. Rain came and saved them.
As a tribute, the Sicilians prepared an altar with foods from their harvest. The tradition spread to other Italians. When Italians moved to American, they celebrated March 19 for St. Joseph.
Mrs. Clark was especially determined to have the altar this year, despite the flood, because her twin sister, Mary Ann Scofield, has cancer. The St. Mary’s pamphlet on St. Joseph Altar says “Many families believe that having a St. Joseph Altar can bring good fortune. And it is common to hear stories about favors received (a loved one’s recovery from an illness, for example), which are in turn attributed to the family’s dedication to St. Joseph.
The church does not charge for people to share the feast, but a donation basket is set out. Mrs. Clark said some donations are large enough to offset costs. She wants everyone to eat and not worry about paying.
She pointed out that St. Mary’s has members that are different nationalities, including Mexican and French, who “use another name,” she joked. “We’ve made them all honorary Sicilians” for St. Joseph, she said. -Margaret Toal, KOGT-
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