Gray boulders loom at dusk under the trees next to St. Willibrordus Church. In an attractively lit cave, a small female figure scrubs an altar decorated with flowers. Dozens of candles flicker. Seventy-year-old Jennie Jaspers (cool black and white checkered jacket) leans against the black marble altar. Take a break. She was recently hospitalized with pneumonia, yet here she is brushing: “A little fresh air is good.”
Every Monday the friends from Sint Willebrord with whom she cleans the Maria Grotto have dinner at half past four, so that they can be here at half past six. The Maria Grotto is a ‘Lourdes Grotto’, a copy of the cave in which Mary is said to have appeared to Bernadette. For the opening in 1926, Pastor Bastiaansen cut a chunk of stone from the rock in Lourdes and cemented it into the wall under the statue of Mary.
In the ‘Mary months’ October and May there are masses in the cave, sometimes someone comes on a pilgrimage and often fellow villagers sit on the benches to ask for support from the Blessed Virgin. Together with Jacqueline Goossens (64), Marianne Valentijn (70), Francien Broeren (69) and Riet Konings (77), Jaspers offered many a listening ear.
“’The women of the cave’ they call us,” she says. “Every day one of us goes by, sweeping leaves, checking the flowers.” Sometimes they suffer from vandalism. Recently, for example, a fire had been fired from the autumn leaf. She is concerned about the large group of youth hanging in front of the church. “Sometimes it’s wild west here. If faith returned, people would treat each other differently.”
When she lost her husband Andries to COPD seventeen years ago, “way too early, he was only sixty”, her sister-in-law, who has also died in the meantime, asked her to join the club. “Our mom” polished the brass in the Willibrorduskerk, you did that, that was normal.” She herself went to the Catholic girls’ school behind it. “Our Lady was my support even then and still is. Maria is a woman and a mother, she has been through so much.”
In her house there are statues of Mary with tea lights in front of them, which she lights for her husband, sister-in-law, parents and the deceased child of her daughter. “Light a cherry and pray a little.” It gives comfort. “When I go to bed, I wish them good night.”
The plaster Bernade that sits on her knees in the cave in front of Mary is rubbed until it shines. Tonight they bring her in for her hibernation. Coffee with home-made chocolates in the sacristy. Jaspers: „We laugh and discuss our problems. What is said here remains with us.” Every year the ladies go on a Marian pilgrimage in Kevelaer, Germany: „When I come from there, it is as if I have wings. Then I feel lighter.”
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of November 12, 2022