A SUPER CITY

Did you survive Super Bowl Sunday? It always amazes me that unless your favorite team is playing, the game becomes secondary. There are hours and hours of programming - musical performances both good and not so good, interviews with all sorts of people, and of course the commercials. With all of this TV coverage the only thing I learned about the Green Bay area was they have a championship football team, that the weather is very cold, and a lot of their fans like to wear cheese shaped hats.

But if I could can I mention one other important fact about the Green Bay area.

In 1855 at the age of twenty-four and the oldest of four children of Belgian immigrants, Adele Brise came with her family to the Green Bay area. Adele had intended to join a religious community when she came to America, but her first days in Wisconsin were taken up with the hard work of farming and pioneer life.

Adele’s life changed in early October 1859. While carrying grain to a mill about four miles from her home, Mary appeared to her. A few days later, on October 9, while walking to Sunday Mass in Bay Settlement, about eleven miles from home, Mary appeared to her again. After Mass, Adele told the pastor about what she had seen. He said to her, “Ask in God’s name who it was and what it desired of her.” On the way, home, Mary appeared a third time and Adele asked the question as the pastor had suggested. Mary responded:

"I am the Queen of Heaven who prays for the conversion of sinners and I wish you to do the same. Gather the children in this wild country and teach them what they should know for salvation. Teach them their catechism, how to sign themselves with the Sign of the Cross and how to approach the sacraments."

Adele Brise dedicated the rest of her life to doing what Mary instructed. She gathered the children near her home and taught them the faith. She also traveled to other farms, sometimes as far as fifty miles away, to do the same. She faced challenges of the forest and weather that were often easier to handle than ridicule that came from those who didn’t believe that Mary had appeared to her.

Eventually, a school and chapel were built at the site of the appearances. Adele gathered a lay community known as the Sisters of Good Help.

December 8, 2010, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, was a momentous day for the Church and for the United States of America. It was on that day that Bishop David Ricken of Green Bay issued a decree that authenticated the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Adele Brise. The Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help, is now worthy of belief as a site where Mary really appeared along the level of Guadalupe in Mexico, Lourdes in France, and Fatima in Portugal. Mary’s appearances to Adele Brise are the first Marian apparitions approved by the Church for the United States.

So Green Bay is not only the home of the Super Bowl Champions but also the home of a SUPER natural appearance of the Blessed Mother.