Local News
Ash Wednesday calls fire-scarred faithful to walk path of sorrow, renewal
The faithful trudged up the hill to Mater Dolorosa Passionist Retreat Center on the first Ash Wednesday after the Eaton Fire, clutching umbrellas along with their hopes that this season of Lent could lead, from ashes to ashes and on to an Easter of new beginnings.
The Sierra Madre center was one of many houses of faith that marked the beginning of Lent, the 40 days Christians observe with prayer and penance before Easter. In the still-scarred landscapes of the Eaton and Palisades fires, believers said this first Ash Wednesday brought with it a stark visual of that fire that destroys but also cleanses.
“We, the Mater Dolorosa retreat center community, along with all affected, find ourselves walking a path of sorrow and renewal,” said Rev. Febin Barose, director of the 101-year-old center.
The Eaton Fire decimated more than 14,021 acres in Altadena, Pasadena and Sierra Madre after it broke out on Jan. 7, killing 17. More than 9,000 structures were destroyed. In the Palisades, the 23,707 acres destroyed included almost 7,000 structures reduced to rubble. In both wildfires, houses of worship fell to ash.
But much of the conversation Wednesday focused as much on renewal as on ruin.
“The recent fire has left visible scars on our beloved grounds,” said Barose, “yet it’s also ignited a deeper awareness of Christ’s journey to Calvary.”
A slice of heaven, even in the rain
On the Sierra Madre campus, Karla Burden of Monrovia held an umbrella over visitors as she escorted them from their cars to the chapel. A longtime volunteer, she said the center is a little slice of heaven for her.
“Even in the rain, I love it here,” Burden said. “This Lent, I think we have to go through some tragedy in order to regrow.”
Mater Dolorosa’s hermitage, garage, and staff apartment burned down. In the center’s famed outdoor areas, the Seven Sorrows Garden, St. Paul of the Cross fountain, and Stations of the Cross were damaged. A building roof and two floors of the center’s main building also needed repairs. Insurance won’t cover everything, so the religious order that runs the center is fundraising.
This recovery phase is called “a journey of hope under the shadow of the Cross,” Barose said.
The center’s name, after all, calls to Mary, Mater Dolorosa, or Mother of Sorrows, standing at the foot of the Cross. But we know sorrow is never the end of the story, Barose added.
“The Resurrection is coming. Mater Dolorosa will shine again with faith and support as a place of grace, peace, and renewal,” he said. “May this Lent draw us closer to Christ, whose love conquers all suffering and leads us to new life.”
More than 2,500 people attend Good Friday devotions at Mater Dolorosa before Easter, and volunteer Pat Wickhem, 78, of Sierra Madre will be ready to lead the prayers. He has been attending retreats at Mater Dolorosa with his father since he was a young man.
“God spared this place and to see the joy and of everyone here today, I just feel so blessed,” he said.
Jose Diaz, 72, of East Los Angeles, brought his wife and grandson to the place he said has given him so much.
“Lent is a special time for us Catholics to deepen our faith in our traditions and remember, out of the ashes comes new life and we can be renewed,” Diaz said. “I love to talk but to come here for the men’s silent retreats, I leave with hope in my heart.”
Paulina Baeza of Fillmore brought four of her seven children to the center because she wanted them to see where she found much comfort at retreats.
“Mater Dolorosa saved my life,” Baeza said. “And coming here, in the rain, I prayed my children would know how to love Jesus and follow Him and find the healing and comfort I found.”
In Altadena, a hero returns to his church
At fire-damaged Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Altadena, Deacon José Luis Díaz, 68, was hailed as a hero in the days after the fire. Already safe at the evacuation center at the Pasadena Convention Center, Díaz was asleep when his wife woke him to report the church was on fire.
Díaz, his son-in-law and two other parishioners arrived to see flames licking at a wooden roof near the church’s boiler room. They broke burning shingles off the roof and hosed it down until the flames were out. Within minutes of their arrival, eight homes in front of and across the church broke out in flames, explosions punctuating the danger.
In the church parking lot, Diaz said plants in flames made it seem like fire was on the ground. Mini-tornados whished at his feet.
“I raised my arms and said, ‘What now, God?’ and the wind moved away,” Diaz said. “People tell me I am a hero or an angel but I don’t feel like that. I am just doing the things God told me.”
Ordained a permanent deacon for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in 2015, Diaz and his wife Maria Esther, have lived in Altadena since 1989, raising their four children there. Still living in hotels two months after the fire, the Diazes hope to return to their home this week.
A retired machinist who finds comfort in reading the Psalms, Diaz said the church, still showing burns from the fire, draws a full house at the 9 a.m. Mass every Sunday.
While the parish hall, rectory and convent were being cleaned, the congregation found a temporary home at St. Andrew Church in Pasadena. The Altadena church reopened on Feb. 2.
“People, even when they have to come from where they live now, they are here,” he said, “and we are staying here always.”
In a Santa Monica church, loving their neighbors as themselves
The plights of victims of the nearby Palisades fire continue to dwell in the minds of congregants at St. Monica’s Catholic Church.
More than 100 early risers began their day on Wednesday with a 6:30 a.m. service at the Santa Monica church that has long hosted members from nearby Pacific Palisades.
“It’s Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent,” declared Silvia Sanchez of Santa Monica. “We just pray for people to get better and get back on their feet.”
“It’s really hard,” she said. “It’s really hard for our community.”
Back in January, St. Monica’s parishioners welcomed their peers from Corpus Christi Church. The 60-year-old church was destroyed by the wind-propelled firestorm that tore through the community.
“When you get the ashes placed on your forehead, they say, ‘Remember, from dust you came, and to dust you’ll return,’” said Sean Delehunt of Los Angeles, “so I just think about the kind of fleeting nature of life and it’s a reminder.”
“I’m in my 40s, so I don’t really think about death, (but) one day I’ll be gone, I’ll be dead, I’ll be ash or nothing, so it’s just kind of a reminder of the present moment,” he said.
It was a relatively short ceremony led by Rev. Vince Kuna. While he didn’t touch on the Palisades fire, he advised parishioners that it was appropriate to proudly wear the mark of the ash in order to show off their faith on this particular day.
“Some say it’s okay to be a little bit public now and then, and to blow that trumpet … Yes, I want to be counted in that when the saints go marching in,” he said.
Hillary McCarthy of Santa Monica noted the metaphoric connection of the fire as it relates to ash and loss of earthly possessions.
“I guess part of the ash is kind of reminding us that life is short and you can’t take it with you,” she said.
“To ashes we shall return, so with the fires, thankfully most of the people are safe, but all the possession didn’t make it,” McCarthy said. “So it’s like, Okay, even though that’s really tough, that’s not the most important thing.”
Moved by the examples she has seen set by victims of the fire that she knows, Marisa Christina Ramos of Santa Monica said the resiliency and sense of perspective they’ve exhibited is remarkable.
“I’ve seen nothing but hope from the people that have had to leave their church,” she said of people she knows from the Palisades, including parishioners from Corpus Christi Church, which was lost in the fire. “They’ve had to leave their church and come here.”
“It’s been amazing,” Ramos said. “I’ve heard people speak whose houses are ashes now and they talk like nothing even happened to them. It’s really inspiring, because we’re so caught up in our materialistic things.”
“The Lord,” she added, “works in mysterious ways.”
LAS VEGAS — Rickea Jackson had the hot hand for the Sparks on Wednesday night.
Jackson scored a career-high 30 points and grabbed seven rebounds, Azura Stevens had 19 points and 10 rebounds and the Sparks scorched the nets early before holding on to beat the Las Vegas Aces, 97-89, on Wednesday at Michelob ULTRA Arena.
The Aces were without three-time WNBA MVP A’ja Wilson for the final 11 minutes of the game after she left with 1:17 left in the third quarter with a head injury. She was accidentally hit in the face on a drive to the basket by Sparks forward Dearica Hamby.
Jackson shot 11 for 17 from the field, including 4 for 8 from 3-point range, and went 4 for 5 at the free-throw line to top her previous best of 25 points against Dallas last season.
Hamby scored 19 points to go with eight rebounds and seven assists for the Sparks (4-7). Kelsey Plum had 13 points and nine assists in her second game in Las Vegas since being traded to the Sparks in the offseason.
The Sparks shot 56.9% from the field, including a 9-for-20 showing from 3-point range and outrebounded the Aces 38-28.
Jackie Young tied her career high with 34 points and Chelsea Gray made six 3-pointers and added 28 points for Las Vegas (4-4), which has lost two straight games. Wilson was 2 for 12 from the field and 9 for 10 at the free-throw line to finish with 13 points, eight rebounds, five assists and four blocked shots in 28 minutes.
Young, who added eight rebounds, four assists and three steals, scored 14 straight Las Vegas points in the second quarter.
A 3-pointer by Gray pulled Las Vegas within 60-56 with 3:11 left in the third quarter, but the Sparks scored seven of the next 10 points with Jackson’s three-point play giving the Sparks a 67-59 lead with 1:12 remaining.
The Sparks led 71-65 entering the fourth quarter but opened a 14-point lead before the midway point of the period. Hamby made back-to-back shots to start a 10-2 run and Jackson’s basket finished it to give the Sparks an 86-72 lead with 5:22 left.
The Aces made a charge and used a 3-pointer from Gray and a basket by Young to move within 93-87 with 1:44 left.
Plum put the game away with two free throws with 20.1 seconds left. Plum made all nine of her free throws.
The Sparks were especially hot over the first 14 minutes, making 15 of their first 18 field goal attempts (83.3%), including 7 of 8 from 3-point range, on their way to a 39-19 lead in the second quarter. Las Vegas responded with an 11-0 run to get back in the game.
The Sparks finished with 24 assists on their 33 field goals while going 22 for 27 from the free-throw line.
The Aces shot just 37.5% from field, including 9 for 35 from behind the arc. They went 26 for 29 from the free-throw line.
The Sparks improved to 2-2 in Commissioner’s Cup play, while the Aces dropped to 1-2.
Local News
‘ICE Out of OC’: In Santa Ana, roughly 300 people protest immigration raids as National Guard watches on
Roughly 300 people gathered Wednesday evening outside the Ronald Reagan Federal Building and Courthouse in Santa Ana to protest the ongoing mass immigration raids in Orange County.
The peaceful protest began shortly after 6 p.m. and soon tripled in size as people from all walks of life congregated in front of a road closure, occupied by at least six members of the California National Guard on North Birch and 4th Street. Chants such as “ICE Out of OC” and “Trump Out of OC” could be heard throughout the group as people held up various creative signs and carried Mexican and American flags.
Donned in a cowboy hat, Navy veteran Jason Martinez, 28, stood in front of the National Guard with an American flag that read “I’m More American.” His parents were both deported in 2011, a few years before his military enlistment in 2015. “I still think this country can be great,” said Martinez. “There’s no borders up in heaven, there shouldn’t be (borders) here either,” he added.
Several people holding megaphones urged the crowd to “keep things peaceful” as at least 15 officers from the Irvine Police Department, dressed in riot gear, stood back around the perimeter of the protest. One person carried a Salvadorian flag while another waved a joint American-Pride flag.
For 28-year-old former Santa Ana resident David Vasquez, the protest was an opportunity to show support for the broader immigrant community.
The Corona resident carried a large cardboard poster with historic images depicting the displacement and mistreatment of Hispanic immigrants in America. “These people never got justice,” he said. Vasquez added that his mother was undocumented and had picked fruits and vegetables as an agricultural worker in the 90s, often for little to no pay. At times, he said his mother’s employers would call ICE to “chase out” the workers to avoid paying them.
“It feels like the federal government is trying to be as dramatic as possible to elicit a response from people,” said 30-year-old Kelsey Leach from Orange. “It’s important to come out and nonviolently exercise our First Amendment rights.”
The sound of engines revving and cars honking in support echoed in the background.
By TIM REYNOLDS AP Basketball Writer
INDIANAPOLIS — Every time the Indiana Pacers have lost a game in the last three months, they have come back to win the next one.
Even in the NBA Finals – against a huge favorite who the Pacers now have in some trouble.
Bennedict Mathurin scored 27 points off the bench, Tyrese Haliburton finished with 22 points, 11 assists and nine rebounds, and the Pacers retook the lead in the NBA Finals by beating the Oklahoma City Thunder, 116-107, in Game 3 on Wednesday night.
“This is the kind of team that we are,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “We need everybody to be ready. It’s not always going to be exactly the same guys that are stepping up with scoring and stuff like that. But this is how we’ve got to do it.”
Pascal Siakam scored 21 for Indiana, which enjoyed a whopping 49-18 edge in bench points. The Pacers, who lost Game 2 in Oklahoma City, improved to 10-0 since mid-March in the game immediately following a loss.
“So many different guys chipped in,” Haliburton said.
Jalen Williams scored 26 points, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander added 24 and Chet Holmgren had 20 for the Thunder, who led by five going into the fourth.
Game 4 is back in Indiana on Friday night.
“We had a lot of good stretches of the game,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “But they had more good stretches than we did – and outplayed us over the course of 48 minutes.”
History says the Pacers are in control now; in the 41 previous NBA Finals that were tied at a game apiece, the Game 3 winner went on to hoist the trophy 33 times – an 80.5% clip.
Advantage, Pacers.
It was back-and-forth much of the way. There were 15 ties; to put that in perspective, there were 13 ties in the five-game entirety of last year’s Finals between Boston and Dallas. The last time there was a Finals game with more ties: Game 1 between Cleveland and Golden State in 2018, which was knotted 17 times and included a 51-point effort from LeBron James before the Warriors held on in overtime.
TJ McConnell finished with 10 points, five assists and five steals for Indiana; since all those stats started being charted, nobody had ever come off the bench and done all that in an NBA Finals game.
“We just had guys make plays after plays,” Haliburton said. “Our bench was amazing.”
The Thunder were 61-2 when leading going into the fourth quarter in the regular season. They’re 1-2 when leading going into the fourth quarter in this series. Indiana – at home in an NBA Finals game for the first time in 25 years, with Caitlin Clark, Reggie Miller, Oscar Robertson and many other stars in the crowd – simply owned the final 12 minutes.
Oklahoma City, often playing against full-court pressure after allowing the Pacers to score, missed nine of its final 10 shots from the floor. That ugly stretch started after a Williams floater pulled the Thunder within a point of the Pacers with 5:58 remaining.
The Thunder’s only basket down the stretch was a midrange pull-up by Gilgeous-Alexander, but that was the league MVP’s only field goal in the fourth quarter. He was held to three points on 1-of-3 shooting with no assists in the final frame.
“They were aggressive,” Gilgeous-Alexander said of the Pacers’ defense. “I’m not sure how many points they had, but it felt like when they scored, we’re going against a set defense, and it’s always harder against a set defense.”
Indiana outscored OKC 32-18 in the fourth, holding the Thunder to 35% shooting with the game and control of the series on the line.
“There’s a lot of areas we can clean up,” Holmgren said. “Everybody who stepped out there can be better.”
FAMILIAR TERRITORY
Game 1, a loss on the opposition’s final shot. Game 2, an easy win. Game 3, another loss to fall behind in the series again.
This formula is not the one that would be considered optimal by the Thunder, especially in the NBA Finals. But if there is some consolation for the overall No. 1 seed in these playoffs, it’s this: the Thunder have been in this exact spot before and found a way to prevail.
That resiliency will be tested yet again.
“I thought it was an uncharacteristic night in a lot of ways for us,” Daigneault said. “We got to learn from it and then tap back into being who we are in Game 4. If we do that, I think we’ll have a much better chance to win.”
It was not very Thunder-like in Game 3. They blew a fourth quarter lead for the second time in the series and gave up 21 points off turnovers.
“We’ll watch it. It wasn’t all bad,” Daigneault said. “But we definitely have to play our style and impose our will for more of the 48 minutes if we want to come on the road and get a win.”
There are uncanny similarities between the first three games of this series and the first three games of the Western Conference semifinal matchup between Oklahoma City and Denver.
• In Game 1 of the West semifinals, Aaron Gordon hit a 3-pointer with about 3 seconds left to give the Nuggets a win in Oklahoma City. In Game 1 of the NBA Finals, Haliburton hit a jumper with 0.3 seconds left to give the Pacers a win in OKC.
• In Game 2 of the West semifinals, the Thunder evened things up with an easy win. In Game 2 of the NBA Finals, the Thunder evened the series with an easy win.
• In Game 3 of the West semifinals, Denver – at home for the first time in that series – played from behind most of the night before fighting into overtime and eventually getting a win for a 2-1 series lead. In Game 3 of the NBA Finals, Indiana – at home for the first time in the series – trailed for much of the first half before eventually getting a win for a 2-1 series lead.
The Thunder dug their way out of that hole against the Nuggets. And now, the same task awaits – with an NBA title at stake.
“I wouldn’t say that now is the time for emotions, to be thinking about how you’re feeling, emotional this, emotional that,” Holmgren said. “You kind of have to cut that out and look at the substance of what it is. We have a great opportunity here and the great thing is we have another game coming up, Game 4.”
GUEST LIST
Clark – wearing a yellow T-shirt emblazoned with the famed “In 49 other states it’s just basketball. But this is Indiana” saying along with a finals logo – was seated with Indiana Fever teammates Aliyah Boston and Natasha Howard for the game, in the same end of the court as the Pacers’ bench.
In addition to Hall of Famers Robertson and Miller, both seated near the court as well, former Pacers Mark Jackson, Dale Davis were also on hand. Former Indianapolis Colts running back Edgerrin James and Alex Palou, the winner of this year’s Indianapolis 500, were also in the arena. Palou arrived for the game in a pace car from Indianapolis Motor Speedway, which was lit up in gold for the evening as a Pacers tribute.
-
Politics5 months agoCalifornia’s Affordability Crisis: Can Governor Newsom’s Reforms Ease the Burden?
-
Local News4 months agoBishop Amat boys soccer leaves no doubt with rout of El Segundo in Division 1 semifinals
-
Crime News5 months agoSan francisco sees major crime drop: 601 arrests and 73 firearms seized in 2024
-
Crime News5 months agoEight charged in los angeles wildfires for arson and looting
-
Local News5 months agoCalifornia’s AB 413: New crosswalk parking law aims to boost pedestrian safety
-
Crime News5 months agoSan francisco man faces felony theft charges after shoplifting in colma
-
Crime News5 months agoSan diego woman struck and killed by pickup truck in hit-and-run
-
Business5 months agoMajor banks offer 90-day mortgage forbearance for l.A. Fire survivors