SPIRITOFST.FRANCIS | FOLLOWERS OF ST. FRANCIS
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Planting Seeds of Justice
By Janine Walsh
graduated on time at age 17 and applied to Baruch College in Manhattan, majoring in psychology. She attended classes for two days a week and worked three days a week at the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, where she learned communication skills rooted in mindfulness. In her mid-20s, while working in customer service at a tableware store, she injured her back after lifting a heavy box. The injury stayed with her, the pain intensifying as time passed. During the particularly painful nights, she began bargaining with the Lord. It worked. God took her pain away. She remembers distinctly praying late one night, “God, you’re really here,” and, as if standing next to her, she heard the Lord answer her, “My daughter, I’ve always been here.” Hearing the Lord’s voice caused a shift in her spiritual life. On one of her lunch breaks, she went into St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Not wanting to disrupt NEVER ONE TO SHY AWAY the noon Mass, she sat and listened. During FROM A CHALLENGE Carolyn Townes, OFS the homily, the priest said, “God loves you.” Carolyn attended Brooklyn Technical High Carolyn had never heard that before! She School for two years but ended up leaving was brought up hearing that she was a sinner and going to because the administration told her she wouldn’t graduate. hell. That simple phrase changed her. Every day after that She and her best friend found an alternative high school, she attended the noon Mass, which eventually led her to called City as School, where students got high school credit take an eight-week course on the sacraments. At the final for real-life work. During this time, she honed her skills for lesson, she learned about the Rite of Christian Initiation for working and teaching. “I took what the administrator for my Adults (RCIA). She didn’t know what that program would traditional high school said to me as a challenge,” she recalls. entail, but she loved learning about the Catholic sacraments, “I looked right at her and said, ‘Watch my smoke.’” She took so she joined the RCIA program. She did not walk into St. it upon herself to connect Columbia University with the City Patrick’s with the intent to become a Catholic. But God as School curriculum and was able to obtain her math and had other plans. English credits from Columbia at the university level. She
Carolyn Townes (left) celebrates with Kathleen Carsten, recipient of the 2018 JPIC Award, and US Secular Franciscan National Minister Jan Parker (right). 12 • February 2022 | StAnthonyMessenger.org
Carolyn was the featured speaker on the final day at the US Secular Franciscan Order’s Quinquennial Congress in July 2016.
ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF CAROLYN TOWNES/ROBERT STRONACH
arolyn Townes, OFS, was born in New York City in 1963 and had responsibilities from a very young age. There was a 35-year age difference between her parents. Her dad had a stroke and needed a caregiver while her mom worked, so Carolyn, at 4 years old, made sure he took his medicine and spent all her time with him. When she was 5 years old, her father died. The trauma of losing her father had a tremendous impact on her spiritual life. “Both of my parents were Baptist preachers, so church and Scripture were a regular part of my life,” Carolyn says. “We attended church regularly. When I was 18, I decided I had had enough. Now I know, deep down, I was angry at God for taking away my father.” However, she continued reading the Bible, especially the Psalms.
