Second in a series
Re “In the Midst of Bountiful Culver City, a Look at the Other Side”
[img]849|left|Sadie Cerda||no_popup[/img]Sadie Cerda, who will be 82 years old in July, is no more capable of proving to skeptics that there is a God than any other parishioners at St. Augustine Catholic Church.
But if the skeptic has any sense, he will just study Ms. Cerda’s lovely, smiling face and see that God, or someone like him, has wreathed this marvelous woman’s face with the markings of ineffable faith.
When she was honored at last week’s City Council meeting as Culver City’s Senior Citizen of the Year, she said, with enough warmth to heat Alaska, with enough sincerity to liberate the prisoners of San Quentin:
“God has been so wonderful to me to allow me to do this.’
In a few weeks, the magnificent mass feeding program that Ms. Cerda and her late husband Conrad began, will turn 37 years old.
In this slice of the Westside, nearly everyone whose stomach has growled has heard of SAVES, St. Augustine Volunteer Emergency Services, which feeds 800 families and individuals every month from the unglamourous but amazingly industrious parking lot at the church, at Washington and Jasmine.
Nearly everyone who has advanced through several grades in school is capable of doing what Ms. Cerda does — nourish the desperate.
Yes, nearly everyone could do it. For one day.
How She Is Special
No one except a person who possesses faith taller and broader than the Rockies could accomplish what Ms. Cerda has, daily, hourly, since 1973.
When you enter the parking lot, you don’t even have to know what Sadie Cerda looks like.
Just search for the lady who is as diminutive as she is enormous in importance and wears a benevolent smile etched over her face, forehead to chin, ear to ear. She probably sleeps with a smile, too, because surely she is at peace.
“When I think about what I have done,” she says, “I don’t even believe it.
“But it is true that God gave me the grace to be able to do it.”
When she says God’s name, you expect a golden halo to start revolving just above her kindly face. Instead, she beams brilliantly with a glow that would reverse vast darkness.
“God has been with me forever. So I have been able to do things that were almost unimaginable.
“It is my faith that drives me.
“Then when I look at the people,” and Ms Cerda glanced out the window at mounds of donated fresh fruit and vegetables, “there is so much generosity here. It is people from the community.
“I look at them and their contributions, and I say, ‘How awesome God is.’”
(To be continued)
