After hosting events in New York City (in 2002) and in Boston (in 2008), the Magnificat Foundation is taking a giant step across the country — to Garden Grove.The organization — which promotes expressions of prayer and devotion to help others deepen their faith — will, in association with the Diocese of Orange, host a Day of Faith at the future Christ Cathedral on Nov. 3. It is a big move — not only geographically, but also culturally; but that’s part of the reason Magnificat Foundation president Pierre-Marie Dumont was determined to organize an event in Southern California. “French people have a thing for California,” the jovial Frenchman said through an interpreter. “In a sense, it reflects their own way of thinking, their own way of life, better than Anglo-Saxon New England.”The idea for a SoCal event came to him several years ago, during the Boston event, when Catholics from the Diocese of Orange approached him. “You need to come and do for us what you’ve done here,” they told him. “I didn’t expect to come to Orange County,” he admitted, but as his acquaintanceship with the Orange County residents grew into friendship, the idea took root. For two years, the staff of the Magnificat Foundation has been working to organize the event, which requires even more work than one might anticipate, Dumont said. “Magnificat is built on beauty and quality, and we want the event to look like Magnificat,” he said simply. The foundation was created to develop initiatives for the New Evangelization rooted in the same spirit that created the Magnificat magazine, of which Dumont is the founding publisher.The Day of Faith is a response to Pope Benedict XVI’s proclaiming the Year of Faith (Oct. 11, 2012-Nov. 24, 2013). The event will be a day of prayer and communion, drawing people together in the joyfulness of their Catholic faith. “We want to focus on preparing people to participate in everything the Year of Faith is,” explained Dumont, pointing out that contemporary culture often views people of faith as victims of some sort of deception, or hemmed in by long lists of commands and thou-shalt-nots. “We want to create an ambiance in which people can come together and be in communion with one another — to share experiences of beauty in music, spoken word, liturgy, and art. To discover the joy of believing.” Locals are eager to experience the Day of Faith for just that reason. TJ Berden, a member of Christ Cathedral Corporation’s Marketing and Use Committee, points out that though the faithful are promised to receive gifts a hundredfold in return for following Christ, “it seems easy in this day and age to settle for 30- or 40-fold. “We hope this day can be a taste of the hundredfold,” he says.The Day of Faith will feature a series of presentations by leading Catholic thinkers, with a keynote address by Father Peter John Cameron, OP, editor-in-chief of Magnificat magazine. There will be a particular emphasis on music, both sung together and prayed through the Liturgy of the Hours (and, culminating the event, a special performance of Bach’s “Magnificat”). Visual art will also be central to the day; banners featuring El Greco’s paintings of scenes from Christ’s and Our Lady’s lives will hang within the future Christ Cathedral, and the church’s Jumbotron will be well used as Dominican Father Michael Morris lectures on spiritual art. Father Robert Reed, president of the CatholicTV network, will emcee the Day of Faith, which will also feature a presentation by Clara Gaymard. The vice president of Government Strategy and Sales at GE International, and President and CEO of GE France, Gaymard is the mother of nine — and the daughter of Dr. Jerome Lejeune, who discovered the cause of Down Syndrome. (His cause for beatification was opened in 2007.) This will be the first public Catholic event at the future Christ Cathedral, and Dumont expects that the 3,000 anticipated attendees will be a sort of spiritual booster shot that will impact parishes across the diocese — and beyond. “We don’t come into a diocese to replace Catholic life in parishes or to be competitive,” he says. “We’re here to add a supplement — an experience that will return the people to their parishes with joy.”  For more information about the Magnificat Day of Faith, to be held Nov. 3 at the future Christ Cathedral, or to register to attend, go to http://www.magnificatday.com/.  {gallery width=100 height=100}gallery/2012/1102/magnificat/{/gallery}