Boost-a-Month Club October 2018

October 2018

Glenmary Home Missioners

Where there is need we say, ‘mission possible’

W

hat is a missioner? We asked that question to Glenmary Father John Brown recently. He left his parish in Blakely, Georgia, not too long ago, and is being assigned to serve a new Glenmary mission, Holy Trinity parish, in eastern North Carolina.

For Father John, it’s a bittersweet experience. “I’ve always hated leaving a mission like south Georgia,” he says.

He knows he won’t live amonghis parishioners there again.

But, “God is everywhere,” he reminds us. “You go to the next place because you are called. So I’m going to this town, Williamston, North Carolina, which is a whole new experience for me.”

No easy life, the missioner’s. Father John remembers when he was in college, back in Worcester, Mass., not far from his Cambridge home, dreaming of becoming a doctor, with a nice family, thinking about what kind of house or cars he might own. (The house of his dreams was an old two-story, with a wrap-around porch, topped with an imposing turret.)

“I was at Sunday Mass one day, and I heard something within, clear as can be, as the priest was lifting the host, saying, ‘You should be doing this. There are people all over the world who don’t have the sacraments, who don’t have the presence of the Church.’” John left Church that day with a new sense of his life’s direction, and would eventually end up at Glenmary. Now, that’s a calling!

But calling happens again and again for the missioner, just as it does for each of us. Father John is heading to Martin County, North Carolina to follow his calling yet again. There he’ll find people, in his words, “Who don’t have the sacraments, who don’t have the gathering, who don’t have the fullness of the Church, who are struggling because they live in a place where more than 90 percent of the people don’t understand the faith. The kids are the only Catholics in the school, the parents are the only Catholic at work. People have doubts about the Catholic faith.”

In this area, northeastern North Carolina, once home to slave plantations, then textile mills, about 21 percent of (continued on reverse side)

Supporting New Missions

T

ake a bow, Boost-a-Month supporters!

It is through your donations, and others’, that Glenmary is able to step into new mission territories to bring the Good News.

As you can see from the article in this issue, we’re taking another step into northeastern North Carolina.

It is there that our missioners decided, some years ago, to expand the work of Glenmary beyond areas where perhaps we’ve become more comfortable. (Admittedly, our idea of comfort may be less comfortable than some others.)

We base our choice of mission territory on certain factors: Where is the Catholic presence sparse (frequently less than 1 percent of the local population)? Where is there a high number of people with no religious affiliation at all? Where is there a high degree of poverty (often double the national average)?

We settled on northeastern North Carolina as a new mission focus for Glenmary. It’s an area, once predominated by slave-driven cotton plantations, then by transient textile mills, where there are great needs. And it’s an area which the Catholic Diocese of Raleigh cannot fully serve.

I can tell you certainly: We would not be shoring up the mission of the Church in North Carolina without your support. What you share with us, we share with the people we serve. Thank you, fellow missioners!

Yours in Christ,

Father Chet Artysiewicz President

‘The urgency of the Church’s mission is obvious’

Father John Brown, Glenmary missioner: “You go to the next place because you are called.”

people live in poverty.

Holy Trinity, in the Diocese of Raleigh, has been around for many years, but in recent years the community has depended upon a visiting priest for Sunday Mass. Currently a priest from 30 miles away makes the trek to tend to the parish. Several Catholic sisters served as lay pastoral staff for some years, before their reassignments. Today the absence of a resident, official Catholic minister makes it hard to maintain a community of faith.

In the absence of pastoral staff, Father John hears that a handful of what was once 100 families attend the parish. He’ll find out the true numbers after he sets up shop. But the pastoral reality here, as in many Glenmary areas is changing. “There are about 60 people who speak Spanish,” reports Father John, due to an influx of agricultural workers in recent years who

BAM Spotlight

have settled in the area.

This trend is true in much of the South, where skilled Hispanic, agricultural workers are willing to do the work others reject, often at very low wages. Many, if not most, of these immigrants are committed Catholics.

Walking into that, though, Father John has a missioner’s dream for the parish. “A year from now,” he hopes, “people will say, ‘We’re glad Father John came, because now we have our own person here, flesh and blood.’ I’m hoping in a year that the new pastoral Council they started this year is thriving. I’m hoping that the English-speaking and Spanish-speaking people, who are now friendly to each other, will find ways to cross the language barrier.”

He hopes that will happen through programs he has seen elsewhere, in which grandparents from each group adopt, in a sense, young people from the other.

The young people spend time with the others’ elders.

Barriers fall as the families become friends.

As Pope St. John Paul II wrote in his encyclical on the mission of the Church, “When we consider the immense portion of humanity which is loved by the Father and for whom he sent his Son, the urgency of the Church’s mission is obvious.”

That urgency of mission is what compels Father John, along with all Glenmarians, to step beyond the boundaries of comfort. But Father John doesn’t see things in such lofty terms.

He’ll just show up. That’s what a missioner does.

He tells how it happens: “I’ll be able to say, ‘Hi, I’m the new priest.’ And they’ll say, ‘We have a priest again here!’”

That will the starting point for Father John to start building the parish up the Glenmary way: one family at a time.

Name: Veronica Pheney Hometown: Rockford, Illinois Occupation: Accountant (retired)

At age 103, we think Veronica’s our oldest donor. She spent her career traveling the world with the Army Corps of Engineers. Says this Illinois native, “I felt like a foreigner when I was stationed in Alabama.” She was invited to the mountains—“out in the woods somewhere!”—to see the drama about the expulsion of Native Americans. She was worried there would be no Mass nearby, but Glenmary was there. That was in 1970. “I never forgot it,” she says. She has been a supporter since.

This newsletter is published monthly by Glenmary Home Missioners, P.O. Box 465618, Cincinnati, OH 45246-5618 • www.glenmary.org.

For more information about the Boost-A-Month Club, contact Father Don Tranel, dtranel@glenmary.org, 800-935-0975.