Mai Vu, 66, drove eight hours from Santa Rosa to Garden Grove to join the more than 20,000 Catholic faithful expected to attend the Marian Days festival at the Christ Cathedral.
This is the third year making the trek with her friends for the two-day event that continues Saturday with masses, a rosary procession onto the streets, workshops, cultural dances, inspirational speakers, live entertainment and more.
Marian Days was created in the late 1970s by a group of Vietnamese refugees. After fleeing the Fall of Saigon in 1975, the group started the festival in Carthage, Missouri to worship God and the Virgin Mary and to connect with other refugees. Each year in August, tens of thousands of Vietnamese Americans continue to make the pilgrimage to Carthage for the festival. Vu was once among them.
“Before we went to the festival in Missouri, but now we come to this one,” she said. “Last year we really enjoyed the dragon dancing, and this year we are hoping to have some more fun.”
Inspired by the celebration in Carthage, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange created its own celebration in 2022 after the dedication of its Our Lady of La Vang Shrine, a project the diocese’s Vietnamese American community saw to fruition through years of effort.
“We would like the people of this region to come here,” said the event’s chairman, Father Bao Thai. “It is an opportunity to express their faith.”
Festivities will center around the outdoor shrine and its statue of the Virgin Mary depicted in a Vietnamese áo dài dress, cradling the infant Jesus. The shrine was designed to emulate the Marian apparition said to have appeared in 1798 in the Vietnamese rainforest of La Vang to comfort persecuted Catholics who took refuge there. Our Lady of La Vang remained a symbol of encouragement among Vietnamese Americans as they fled war and journeyed to the United States, many finding homes in Orange County.
This year’s festival theme is “Mary, Ark of the Covenant” — one that is layered in meaning, Thai said.
In the Old Testament, the Ark of the Covenant, said to be the dwelling place of God, is the container used to carry the Ten Commandments brought down from Mount Sinai by Moses. Mirroring the Old Testament scriptures, the New Testament understands Mary, carrying Jesus in her womb, as the new dwelling place of God.
With this year’s theme, the festival hopes to remind attendees that, “We can be just like Mary, with Jesus within us,” Thai said.
New to this year’s Marian Days celebration are several youth and young adult programs, held in conjunction with the festival to “reach out to younger generations,” said Bishop Thanh Thai Nguyen, representative of the Diocese of Orange County for the Vietnamese community.
The programs, held in English, are “not just for Vietnamese youth, but for the youth of the diocese,” Nguyen said. “My hope is that younger generations encounter Jesus and spread the word.”
Planning for the festival started back in October, officials said, with more 1,000 volunteers coming together to bring the event to fruition.
Hong Nguyen, 55, was at the Christ Cathedral campus early on Friday to volunteer for the third year.
“The Vietnamese community came together with their time and talent to organize this event.” she said, “Marian Days is a comfort and consolation to many Vietnamese Americans.”
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