Posted from Ireland · Collect in Roscommon
Guides
Choosing a statue, and keeping it well
Questions we are asked most often, answered at length: what resin and marble are like to live with, how to judge a size from a photograph, what suits a garden or a grotto, and the stories of the devotions behind the statues.
Guide · Materials
Guide · Measuring
Guide · Care
Outdoor statues in Irish weather
Ireland is kind to stone in some ways and hard on it in others. Rain is constant, frost comes and goes, and wind off the Atlantic finds anything not fixed down. A little care at the start and once a year does most of the work.
Cleaning and repairing statues
Most damage to indoor statues is done by kindness: a scrub with the wrong cleaner, a candle too close, a statue left where it gets knocked. Here is what is safe and what to leave alone.
Guide · Garden
Guide · Devotion
Blessing a statue
A statue is traditionally blessed when it is first set in place, at home or in church. It takes a few minutes, it costs nothing, and your parish priest will gladly do it.
The Sacred Heart in Irish homes
For generations, the Sacred Heart picture in the kitchen, with its small red lamp and the family’s names written underneath, was as much a part of an Irish home as the range. The devotion behind it is easy to renew.
Divine Mercy
Jesus in a white robe, one hand raised in blessing, two rays streaming from His heart, and five words beneath: “Jesus, I trust in You.” The Divine Mercy image is now one of the best-loved in Ireland.
Guide · Our Lady
Our Lady of Knock
On a wet Thursday evening in August 1879, people in a small Mayo village saw Our Lady, St Joseph and St John the Evangelist at the gable wall of their parish church. Not a word was spoken. Ireland has been going to Knock ever since.
Our Lady of Lourdes
In 1858 a poor, asthmatic fourteen-year-old in the south of France saw a young Lady in a rock cave by the river. Her name was Bernadette Soubirous, and the cave was Massabielle, at Lourdes.
Our Lady of Fatima
Between May and October 1917, three shepherd children in a Portuguese hill village saw a Lady “brighter than the sun”. She asked them to pray the Rosary every day.
Making a May altar
In Irish classrooms and kitchens, May has long meant a small altar to Our Lady: a statue, a blue cloth, a jam jar of flowers the children picked on the way to school. It is one of the easiest devotions to begin.
Guide · Saints
Padre Pio
A Capuchin friar in a small town in southern Italy, who spent most of his days hearing confessions and bore the wounds of Christ for half a century. Few modern saints are as loved in Irish homes.
St Thérèse, the Little Flower
She died at twenty-four in an enclosed convent in Normandy, having done nothing the world would notice. Within thirty years she was a saint, and she is now a Doctor of the Church.
St Joseph
He says not one word in the Gospels, yet God trusted him with Mary and with the Child Jesus. St Joseph is the saint of ordinary work, family life and quiet faithfulness.
Guide · Christmas
A question these guides do not answer? Ask us — we would rather measure twice than have a statue posted back.
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