Before I tell you about the National Shrine of Our Lady La Leche at the Mission Nombre de Dios, I want to share my favorite childhood memory. My parents would take me and my sisters there to feed peanuts to the squirrels. The grounds were full of them - and they were trained well. As soon as you sat on a bench, they would race down the trees, waiting at a safe distance for you to toss a few peanuts. I was mesmerized by how they would crack the shells with their tiny hands to reveal the nut inside. If you got up from your seat, or tried to take a step towards them, they would scurry away. A few years ago, I went back to take my godsons to share that experience with them, but to my surprise, we didn’t find any. A lot has happened in the town since my childhood. Maybe the hurricanes scared them off. The property did suffer damages from Hurricane Matthew in 2016 that damaged the gift shop and the bridge connecting to the mission grounds. Since that time, they’ve built a new one and repaired the crossover.
If you’ve never been there, the place is hard to miss. You can see The Great Cross peaking over the tree lines before you make your way into the historic part of downtown. It was added as part of the city’s 400 year celebration in 1965. People who visit for the first time share the sense of peace they feel when walking around. There’s a replica stone chapel that is open for people to pray in and also displays a statue of Our Lady La Leche. You will also find other meditation and areas for prayer, and cemetery plots. Some of significance are those of the Sisters of St. Josephs. They were sisters who came from France to the U.S. after the Civil War to teach black students. Many of them were later jailed because according to Florida law at the time, you could not have a white teacher teaching at a black school nor could black teachers teach at a white school. The three nuns were arrested. Two of them were released, but one refused to pay the bond and was put on house arrest at the covenant. Eventually it became clear to the sheriff it’s not good to put nun in jail and decided the school was private and the law should apply. There is still a group of Sisters of St. Joseph in St. Augustine today. You can read more about them here.
For more on the history of the Mission Nombre de Dios and The Great Cross, watch the video below:
For more on the Mission Nombre de Dios, visit their website here.