Visit Vahe Tokmajyan's website for more pictures and links. www.vahesculpture.ca New beginning for church Statue brings joy to parish but desecration not forgotten By RICK BELL, CALGARY SUN http://www.calgarysun.com/news/alberta/2010/06/04/14268106.html#/news/alberta/2010/06/04/pf-14268636.html A statue waits, sculpted in the type of marble once used by Michelangelo. She waits for Sunday mass to be unveiled in the balcony of a Catholic church on a well-ordered street in suburban Calgary. Tucked away in the guts of the church, behind a closed door and down some stairs, is another statue of Mary, Our Lady of Grace made of some sort of resin with a fiberglass coating. The hands once broken off are now stuck back on, the scars of ash from being burned are now covered over so measurements could be taken for the marble beauty taking her place. The face is pebbled, pieces break off. She stands, falling apart. “I can forgive but there’s nothing in the Bible that says we forget,” says Fr. Kevin Tumback. “To forgive and forget is the idiot’s choice. We forgive and we remember so we are not harmed again.” The priest still remembers the day 10 months ago. He calls it a dark time. It was Sunday morning. He saw the statue missing from the grotto outside St. Albert The Great church in McKenzie Towne. He found a finger, some chips from the statue. He phoned the police, who showed up the next day. From the pulpit, he told the faithful worshipping at that Sunday mass how Mary was missing, a story soon to become a headline in the dog days of summer. There was shock, disbelief. Within a few days, the story would become clear. Two young men took the statue. They had been drinking. They had been toking up. They wanted to take a statue. In the darkness of the weekend, Mary was there for the taking. Later, Mary was found in a ditch, her hands broken off, burned. There was now anger. It was one thing to steal, another to desecrate. Who could do this? The couple who made the donation for the statue were very hurt. The kids who skateboard outside the church didn’t get it. “You try to make sense out of something that doesn’t make sense,” says Fr. Kevin. One of the two who did the stealing and did the wrecking visited the church eight or nine times, talked to Fr. Kevin, wanted to figure out why people were so mad. You have to wonder. Did he think the stunt was like ripping off a gnome from somebody’s lawn? You just have to listen to Fr. Kevin speak. “Mary is the mother of Jesus. Mary is supposed to be our best friend. When you attack her or an image of her, it’s sort of like you’re attacking me, you’re attacking what I stand for, you’re attacking what I believe in,” he says. “It operates on a much, much deeper level. It’s not an intellectual thing. It’s in the heart. It’s a way of connecting with something deeper than ourselves.” Vahe Tokmajyan heard what happened. He is a gifted sculptor, originally from Armenia, proud to say his country was the first to adopt Christianity as a state religion in the year 301. He remembers his grandmother was very religious under the rule of the officially God-denying government of the Soviet Union. “If you’re a doctor and somebody needs help do you wait until you have a position at a hospital? I knew I should be helping,” says the sculptor. He offered his gift, took measurements, carved the marble in a place provided by a company known as The Granite Boys who also found the marble and installed the new statue. Fr. Kevin says the church only paid for some special tools and the cost of shipping in the marble. The young men paid for a $2,500 replica exactly like the old statue they ruined. It will stand in the grotto outside while the marble Mary will stay safely inside. The priest can’t say yet if the original statue can be repaired. If not, it will be crushed in small particles and buried at the church. Fr. Kevin says most in his parish are in a happier place. Some still ask why. The actions of individuals are not always as well ordered as the streets of this suburb appear. “We’ll probably never know the answer why,” says the priest. “To have an answer to the question why would mean there was a conscious thought process before the action. It wasn’t thought through.” As the man speaks, he always comes back to forgiveness because Mary forgave those who killed her Son. Yes, for the priest and many others, there is always faith. “God works. Bad stuff happens but good stuff will come if you remain faithful. “You take a horrible incident. The statue is stolen, the statue is desecrated and people feel horrible but, in the end, we have this beautiful marble statue looking down upon this parish as the mother of God looks down on all of God’s children.” He pauses. “But there are people who will always walk by that grotto and remember what happened.”
