Skip to main content

Five holy wounds Portuguese church

During the course of the first Word War and after, a bunch of Europeans fled to America.  Among them were Portuguese.  Some of them traveled over time all the way west and landed in California.  Specifically around the bay area of San Francisco.

To sign praises of their lord Jesus a branch of devout Jesuits built a church.  That was 100 years ago.  During this centennial year of 2019 we visited this Portuguese church in the Little Portugal neighborhood of eastern San Jose, California.

Impressive as it is it offers a place for quiet reflection and is a sea of calm in an otherwise busy highway intersection bordered by working class communities.  Below are some scenes from this wonderful building and its surrounds.

Named for the five (holy) wounds Jesus suffered during crucifixion the Latin Cinco Chagas is the phrase used to name this church.

Beginning with the view of a stained glass from the outside as you walk toward the south facing main facade,


One of two fountains that sit outside the main doorway,


Main facade,

Entryway with a sign in Latin that reads - In this sign you will conquer


Main Nave and Chapel looking in



The church organ on top of the doorway you walk in from,


A trip to this spiritual building was followed by a food crawl in Silicon Valley... to get right back into the material world in a manner of speaking.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

But What If We're Wrong?

I attempted to read this book by author Chuck Klosterman backward to forward but it started hurting my brain so I decided to stop and do it like any other publication in the English language.  Start from page 1 and move to the right. Witty, caustic and thought provoking this is a book you want to read if you believe that the status quo might, just might be wrong. At times bordering on being contrarian about most things around us it tries to zero in on the notion of what makes anything believable and certain in our minds.  The fact that there is a fact itself is ironic.  Something analogous to the idea that you can never predict the future because there is no future. Many books and movies have tried to play on this concept - best that I recollect (I think I am) was 'The Truman Show'.  This book by Klosterman attempts to provoke the reader to at least contemplate that what they think they know may be wrong. He uses examples like concept of gravity, and how it ...

You are important to us

Followed by piano music.   Followed by 'we are experiencing heavier than usual call volume'.  Sounds macabre like bleeding during menstruation or after a ghastly attack with a weapon on a hemophiliac.  Sorry Mrs. Johnson but it appears little Gertrude here has been bleeding heavier than usual what with her night time activities competing with the woodchucks in your neighborhood. Some services even go as far as to pick a random day to say - 'if you were to call us during the Chinese lunar month when the moon is axiomatically hugging the polar star with Jupiter intravenous when call volume is light'.  Well I will be damned.  I thought  I had checked with my astrologer before I placed this well focused call but  I guess this is what you get for listening to a quack. Umph! I am not sure which marketing genius came up with this personal touch concept of informing the caller that you are really a jackass for actually calling the customer serv...

Of Jims and Johns

Here is another essay on the subject of first names. As in birth names. Or names provided to an offspring at birth. While the developed world tends to shy away from the exotic like Refrigerator or Coca Cola for their new production there is a plethora of Jims and Johns and Bobs or Robs. Speaking of which I do not think there is a categoric decision point at the time of birth if a child will be hereafter called as Bob. I mean have not yet met a toddler called Bob or Rob for that matter. At some point though the parental instinct to mouth out multiple syllables runs out and they switch from calling the crawler Robert to simply Robbie to Rob. Now speaking of - it is strange that the name sounds like something you would not want Rob to do - i.e. Rob anyone. Then why call someone that? After all Rob Peter to Pay Paul is not exactly a maxim to live a young life? Is it? Perhaps Peter or Paul might want to have a say in it? Then there is this matter of going to the John. Why degrad...