June 2019
Glenmary Home Missioners
Helping Tell Our Story
Lord, Teach Us to Pray
Glenmary is well known not only for developing mission communities in Appalachia and the South, but also for its role in mission education. From the beginning, 80 years ago, founder Father William Howard Bishop sought to turn the eyes of the Church in this country to the needs of regions where the Church was barely present as Roman Catholic. Father Bishop pursued two central strategies in this teaching ministry. One was his famous “No Priest Land U.S.A.” maps. He knew that there is nothing like a good graphic to lay out a challenge in a glance. The maps program grew into the Glenmary Research Center, under the leadership of Fathers James Kelly then Bernard Quinn, and lay staff behind them. They developed all manner of maps and booklets, some which are still in use today. Father Bishops’ other method was a magazine named for the effort itself: the Glenmary Challenge. In it Father Bishop sought to tell the home-mission story through narrative stories of the people Glenmary serves. Over the years, especially thanks to the artistic genius of the late Father Patrick O’Donnell, the magazine became known for great photography, too. Today’s lay Challenge editors, under guidance of an editorial board of Glenmarians, follow in those footsteps. So it was natural that, when accomplished storyteller Dale Harnett started talking with Glenmary Father Neil Pezzulo one day, it wasn’t long before Dale was headed to Glenmary country “to go and find people, find out what their hot button is, and try to convey the meaning of what Glenmary’s presence in their community has meant to them.” Dale is retired professor of journalism at State University of New York (SUNY), Geneseo campus. It’s true that the area he grew up is in the northern tier of Appalachia, far from Glenmary’s missions.
Every four years the Glenmary society elects new leadership—a president and two vice presidents. I was asked by our members to lead our society, along with vice presidents Fr. Aaron Wessman and Br. Larry Johnson. I pray that we will be open to the calling of the Holy Spirit as we lead Glenmary through the next four years. Prayer, after all, is our fourth Glenmary Oath. All religious communities take oaths or vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Glenmary adds that fourth oath of prayer for a special need of our apostolate. People everywhere pray, of course, but our missioners are sometimes working far from other Glenmarians, living extremely busy lives building communities. We need to pray all the more, and we make a pledge to do so. I ask you to join our prayer. Pray that we will fulfill God’s mission for Glenmary, and that each of us will hear and respond to God working in our lives. I’ve included a part of our Home Mission Prayer, on the back of this page, to help. We are praying for you, too, in our daily prayer at Our Lady of the Fields Chapel, and at our missions. And let’s congratulate the seven men who, a few weeks ago, took oaths to our society, two for the first time and five renewing temporrary oaths, a step along their way toward pledging a lifelong commitment to Glenmary.
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Yours in Christ,
Father Dan Dorsey President