San Mateo's feast
Village celebrates autumn event with Vesoers, Mass
Dena Diaz, left and Evangeline Barela lead the procession carrying the statue of Saint Matthew during the Festival of Saint Matthew Visperas Procession in San Mateo, Saturday. — © 2008 Gallup Independent / Cable Hoover

Copyright © 2008
Gallup IndependentBy Helen Davis
Cibola County Bureau

SAN MATEO — In a sense, the Rev. Matthew Keller came home for the feast of namesake St. Matthew in the tiny village of San Mateo over the weekend.

Keller, who now serves in a parish in Gallup, was ordained and gave his first Mass at the village church six years age, shortly before the old church burned. This past weekend he returned to join celebrants for the annual feast of San Mateo, or St. Matthew, visiting the new church he helped to raise funds to build.

Keller said the old adobe church was built in the 1880s but caught fire when a power surge ignited wiring and was mostly destroyed several years ago. What fire did not burn, water from firefighting melted. The wooden pews, the hand-carved church door and a few other figures were rescued, but the altar and other figures came from St. Eleanor’s Parish in Fort Wingate when St. Eleanor’s closed.

The fire also spared the parish’s original statue of St. Matthew. The saint was hand made of wood in the 1880s and usually resides in a nook behind the altar. On feast and festival days, church members take St. Matthew down from his nook, dress the statue in garments appropriate to the holy day and carry him on a wooden platform with them as part of the celebration in the streets.

Keller said that the statue was usually dressed in red because the martyred saints wear red. The priest explained that hands-on devotional work like caring for the statue and making the garments he wears helped Catholics in remote area maintain their religion and faith in the absence of clergy, when priests were scarce.

After Vespers on Saturday, St. Matthew’s celebration continued in the streets of the village when the congregation, clergy and visitors took St. Matthew on a processional, lit by what Keller called small bonfires, luminarias or farolitos. Late Sunday afternoon, the little ashes from the fires could still be seen on the road through San Mateo.

Sunday, the day before the autumnal equinox, brought more than 100 people to Mass with the Rev. Alberto Avilla of St. Theresa’s of Grants, who celebrated the Mass, as well as Father Keller and another visiting priest. The celebration extended into a long, relaxing end-of-summer afternoon with a roast beef dinner, local musicians providing dance music and games for adults and children.

Church member Phillip Sandoval, who lives a few miles out of San Mateo, said the feast attracted around 300 for the several events, including the rodeo on Saturday. Celebration volunteer and director of the Cibola Senior Center, Dorie Sandoval, said the turnout included visitors from Gallup and Albuquerque and many family members who had left the area but return for the feast to honor St. Matthew.