ALTAR AND RELIQUARY
The Altar is a square pine table, situated on a low platform at the focal point of the Worship Space. It has a feeling of nobility and simplicity and does not dwarf those of us who gather around it. Twisted columnar legs, carved vines and the pilgrim shell of St. James the Apostle all recall our Spanish past. The Altar was crafted by Roberto Montoya and Roberto Lavadie, who also built the small carved reliquary chest beneath the table. The reliquary holds the records of who we are - our baptism and funerals-and of our church - the documents of dedication.

SANTOS
When our parish home was built, it was designed to be closest to its ancient roots in its religious images – its santos.  As a community, we selected those holy men and women who are most important to us, and were therefore to be honored with images in our new home. We then chose to honor the faith and tenacity of those who have gone before us by creating our images in the same way they did – in the santero tradition. Starting with the image of St. Jude and moving around the ambulatory, here are brief biographies of the holy people thus honored in our Worship Space.

St. Jude, also called Jude Thaddeus, was one of the original Twelve, possibly a relative of Jesus. He has come to be regarded as the patron of desperate causes (or lost causes) and thereby has become much revered. He is honored on October 28. He is often pictured holding a halberd, the traditional instrument of his martyrdom; but the artists, Ben and Michael Ortega, have shown him with the staff of a disciple and with the picture of Christ at his breast and the tongue of fire over his head, both denoting that he was indeed one of the original Twelve.

As we continue to walk east in the ambulatory, we see the bulto of St. Teresa of Avila. She was lively, intelligent and a beauty of great personal charm. She was also a mystic, a reformer, a woman of steel who has since become a Doctor of the Church. She single-handedly reformed her order and probably saved it, undoubtedly needing all of these attributes to do so. The artist, Manuel Lopez, has shown her with the intense asceticism of her later life writ- ten on her face. We honor her as the single Spanish-born saint in our constellation and for the contributions which her Carmelites have made to the civilization of this stark frontier. We remember her especially on October 15. 

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini is the first US citizen to be canonized. She rose from obscurity and illness to found the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and, at the request of the Pope, to minister to immigrants first in New York and then throughout the western hemisphere. At the time of her death, her order numbered 1500. To them and to us she will always be Mother Cabrini. Linda Daboub has pictured her here in early life, when her innate sweetness has been untroubled by the world.

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton is the first native-born North American to be canonized. She was the mother of five children but became Mother Seton to the world because she founded the American Sisters of Charity and was in effect the founder of the US parochial school system. Tomasita Rodriguez has shown Mother Seton with one of her charges, quite evidently late in life. She seems bent and aged by her work but just as obviously fiercely protective of the child for whom she is responsible. We honor her on January 4.

Saint Patrick was probably born in England, of Roman and Celtic roots. His enslavement by Irish raiders changed the destiny of that country, for he escaped and returned some twenty years later as a Bishop with Papal mandate to complete the conversion of the Irish clans. He succeeded so well that Ireland became a bastion of Christianity and civilization in the Dark Ages. In our own time, his legacy remains the colonies of saints with which Ireland has peopled the world. Felix Lopez has pictured him as a Celt, in the robes of a Bishop, much as he may have appeared when he returned to Ireland to begin his mission. 

St. Martin de Porres was born a slave and died in teh self-imposed poverty of a Dominican lay brother, yet nobleman bore him to his grave. He served the poor of Lina so well that he was known as their father; miracles surrounded him in his own lifetime. He is the first black man in the western hemisphere to be canonized. He is shown with the tools of his vocation: loaves of bread and a smile.

St. Anthony of Padua sought poverty as a Franciscan, but his brilliant intellect and eloquence as a preacher brought fame to him, not only in Padua, but throughout Europe. He is the patron of the poor 'Wonder Worker' for his miracles, a Doctor of the Church, and finder of things lost. He is shown carrying the infant Jesus.

St. Kateri Tekakwitha is the first North American Indian canonized. Ostracized by her own Mohawk people when she was baptized, she joined a community of Christian Iroquois. Her devotion to Christ Crucified, her ascetic life style and her work among the sick and poor so impressed those who knew her that she was an extraordinary outburst of religious fervor in her community. After her death at age twenty-four she became known as the "Lily of the Mohawks". She is shown in the braids of an Iroquois but dressed in the costume of a Jemez woman. Symbols of the Corn Clan (Maxine Toya's clan) decorate her robe. She is flanked by an eagle feather and corn meal, both sacred to Native Americans of the southwest, housed in Tewa and Keresan pottery.