Sascha Wil­son

Since grow­ing up as a child in Siparia, Di­anne Ramdeo has heard of the mir­a­cles of Si­pa­ree Mai, and has been pay­ing homage to her dur­ing the Si­pa­ree Kai Mai Fes­ti­val.

On Good Fri­day, she was among hun­dreds of pil­grims who vis­it­ed the stat­ue of Si­pa­ree Mai, al­so known as La Div­ina Pas­to­ra, and paid homage to her at the La Div­ina Pas­to­ra RC Church in Siparia.

Ramdeo took her four-year-old daugh­ter and her nine-year-old son to pray and make an of­fer­ing to the Si­pa­ree Mai stat­ue.

She said, “We came to church to­day. I have al­ways come here as a lit­tle girl and (now I) have brought it to my kids. He (son) is di­a­bet­ic. I al­ways come here for bless­ings, hop­ing that one day he will be okay.”

She said Siparia Mai gives her hope. “She comes like a moth­er to us,” she added.

Ramdeo, who now lives in Ch­agua­nas, said it’s a tra­di­tion she in­tends to con­tin­ue and pass on to her chil­dren.

“Hope­ful­ly when they have chil­dren of their own they will con­tin­ue,” she said.

Dur­ing the fes­ti­val, pil­grims and good Samar­i­tans give out alms to the home­less and un­der­priv­i­leged, scores of whom were gath­ered out­side the church’s com­pound.

Some of them came with their chil­dren. Sit­ting on the pave­ment with her chil­dren, moth­er of three, Tri­cia Ve­ra, said she lost her job at a su­per­mar­ket dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and since then she has been un­em­ployed.

De­pend­ing on the gen­eros­i­ty of mem­bers of the pub­lic to pay her rent, put food on the ta­ble and send her boys to school, she lament­ed, “I run pil­lar to post to get help. I need help. I need plen­ty of help.”

Parish priest Fa­ther Alan Hall said there were more pil­grims than last year.

“As is cus­tom­ary in Siparia when the stat­ue of La Div­ina is moved from the church, it is placed in a sep­a­rate room so that pil­grims can en­ter through the boys’ school and they do their lil prayers and make their lil de­vo­tion, so they come with gifts, they come with can­dles. They pur­chase olive oil, we have a bar­rel which they pour it in­to. Some of them, as they of­fer the oil to the stat­ue, they bless them­selves, some drink, some anoint them­selves with the oil,” said the priest.

Ex­plain­ing that many Hin­du devo­tees see La Div­ina Pas­to­ra as the Moth­er of Siparia (Si­pa­ree Mai), he said they have tes­ti­fied to her per­form­ing many mir­a­cles in their lives as well.

Hall said his theme or his mes­sage since the start of Lent has been ac­cess to spir­i­tu­al life. “Be­cause when we have ac­cess to a life that is earth­ly we get so dis­tract­ed and it’s all about self preser­va­tion and self fo­cus, but the mo­ment we ac­cess the life that spir­i­tu­al is—the more self-do­nat­ing our life will be,” he said.

Hall said the best way to build a com­mu­ni­ty is by be­com­ing less self-fo­cused and self-pre­serv­ing, but more self-do­nat­ing in ser­vice to oth­ers.