Accompanied by Commodore Alcaraz and wife Conching, we huddled in our thick winter coats for the winter chill penetrated the 10,000 windows of the all-glass cover of the Crystal Cathedral. We were among the audience of 2,736 people from all over the world fortunate to see this divine spectacle on Chapman Avenue at Garden Grove in Los Angeles, opposite the direction of Disneyland. While Disney maybe "the happiest place on earth," the delight it imparts to people is surpassed by the "Glory of Christmas" at Crystal Cathedral.
Later, when Joseph and Mary were in the holy cave awaiting the "sacred moment when the Savior would step down on earth," heavenly voices filled up the cathedral as the 10 choirs of the Music Ministry, accompanied by the largest church pipe organ in the world, conceived by famed organ virtuoso Virgil Fox, filled the glass dome, while six beautiful angels with huge golden wings and robes swung high above so gracefully. Then the Holy Babe was born. (During the just past Holy Week, the Cathedral showed The Glory of Easter.)
The gentlemen ushers in red suits happily showed us to our seats. Two 90-foot-tall doors open electronically behind the pulpit to allow the morning sunlight and warm breeze to enhance the worship services held at 9:30 and 11 every Sunday morning. The entire service can be viewed on a giant indoor Sony Jumbotron television screen, which measures 11x15 ft. This is the first of its kind to be used for worship purposes. The service can also be seen on a giant Nit-Star screen directly adjacent to the Cathedral, for "drive-in" worshippers who choose to sit in their cars. Certainly, this is a far cry from Pastor Sculler’s first drive-in church.
The Hour of Power television ministry began broadcasting on one television station in Los Angeles and is now broadcasting on hundreds of stations worldwide. It can be seen on nearly 185 stations in the United States and Canada. Additional 17 countries reach an estimated audience approaching 10 million people as selected by the American Forces Network to be broadcast around the world to cities and bases in over 165 countries.
Robert Harold Schuller was born in Alton, Iowa on September 16, 1926 to farmers Anthony and Jenny Schuller. From the age of four, young Schuller knew that he wanted to be a minister. In spite of many difficulties, he fulfilled that dream in 1950 when he was ordained by the Reformed Church in America after receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree from Hope College, and a Masters of Divinity from Western Theological Seminary, both in Holland and in Michigan.
In 1955, Robert Schuller was called by the Reformed Church in America to begin a new church in Garden Grove with his wife Arvella as organist and US$500 in assets. He rented the Orange Drive-In Theater and conducted Sunday service from the tar-paper roof of the snack bar. That first Sunday, 100 persons – all sitting in their cars – attended. Dr. Schuller, who believes this outdoor ministry experience helped inspire him to later build the first-ever, all-glass Crystal Cathedral, often states, "It was there I fell in love with the sky!"
The very first of the 23 holy monuments at the OB Montessori campus was finished just before the 1986 EDSA Revolution. This is the huge grotto with Our Lord of Sacrifice seated with Blessed Mother where she repeated the messages of "Pray so that the country can undergo an inner transformation, so everyone can unite. I am saddened by the tendency to make a cult of me by putting up my image without Our Savior. It is my Son who should be worshipped." She advised that she should be regarded as the personal intercessor for mankind.
As we celebrated the Year of the Family, I thought I would focus on the Holy Family Shrine. Photographs are frequently taken of the Holy Family Shrine along the front gate of the school. This is the grandest of the 23 holy figures inside and outside the school that make up the mystical sanctuary along the Shrine Avenue. These statues and murals were done by the artist team of Punay Kabayao-Fernandez and Pempe Floriano between the period of the 1986 EDSA Revolution and 1997. Unlike the statuaries of Crystal Cathedral, which are made of bronze, the holy figures in the Shrine Avenue are made of concrete reinforced by steel rods with all the details of color and shape, and human expressions specified by the Blessed Mother.
The well-traveled foreigners and balikbayans readily sense the similarities of the spectacular eight-foot-tall Pharisees and holy ones surrounding the 12-year-old Jesus with Michelangelo’s Moses, Rodin’s powerful men and Raphael’s Mother and Child. One can truly say that the mystical monuments of Shrine Avenue have brought to our midst the famous landmarks of the Vatican in Rome and the sculptures of the Louvre in Paris, Prado in Madrid and the British Museum.