Paul Brant, SJ -- Johnny Appleseed in NC

Johnny Appleseed - Newton Grove and the Station in Four Oaks, NC

Since returning to the Diocese of Raleigh, NC after a nine month hitch working in Charlottesville and Galax, VA as the field practitioner for IMCM, I have been assigned to the Parish of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Newton Grove, NC, which has for more than 20 years been a central point for Hispanic Ministry in the Diocese. Except for three months when I was subbing for the pastor, I have been engaged in my “Johnny Appleseed” ministry once again, including responsibility for establishing a mission in the town of Four Oaks, 18 miles distant, in the midst of 12,000 Spanish-speaking residents and a couple thousand migrants served by OLG and the Church in Smithfield which I once pastored. My official assignment is as “parochial vicar.” There’s no canonical slot for what I actually do!

I resonate with much of what Bill and Shay and Bruce have written about the “parish ministry” aspects of their own assignments. The differences I will leave to discuss on another occasion. But I can’t overemphasize the importance of ministering personally to Latinos, getting to know their families, even if it means visiting them in their country of origin. When I visit a family in Mexico, for instance, I learn about the context in which their US resident children and grandchildren were raised and to which they still principally relate, even though because of our immigration laws, many haven’t has a “home visit” for 10-20 years. I ask the parents for permission to “jalar las orejas” (pull the ears) of their children here and usually get it. When I return, in loco parentis I use that permission to get them back to the sacraments, especially marriage in the Church. The parents give me their authority and I am able to exercise it without being a part of the tangle of family conflicts and resentment, which I have usually also learned about, not to mention lack of geographical proximity, which when the parents try long-distance, frequently weakens it.

First Aspect: "Planting of a church."

There are two features of my ministry which I would like to elaborate on in this blog. The first deals with the “planting of a church.” The process in the Diocese is first “station,” then “mission”, then parish. The station is essentially a “mass of convenience” in a place apart from the parish church which sponsors it, and if oriented to establishing a “mission”, includes extensive outreach to the Catholic (and non-Catholic) population. In my previous incarnation in the Raleigh Diocese, I established five stations “Down East” (New Bern Deanery, of which three were discontinued because the people were able to get to the Parish church. These were in existence from between 3 months to 2-1/2 years. Two other stations were combined into one mission (Sta. Teresita) in Pink Hill, NC which is now attached to a large Hispanic Parish 20 minutes away. Footnote: I also worked with parish leadership in seven other parishes belonging to the Deanery (well, almost!) to establish a weekly Spanish Mass and sacramental preparation.

The station in Four Oaks is under the patronage of St. Francis Xavier (if anyone reading this knows of a spare statue of FX that could be donated, please let me know). We began with a meeting of members attending Mass at Saint Ann’s, Smithfield and Our Lady of Guadalupe. Neither parish has a complete registry of Hispanic members, so we went to the phone book and wrote out as much information as we could find of those Hispanic-surnamed individuals living in the Four Oaks/Smithfield/Selma area, and then arranged the cards by street to identify the areas of denser Hispanic population. We add to the cards as we turn up new data, especially from those people bringing children for baptism. There is a nice clustering. (Our information is confidential, so that ICE can’t use it to round up the undocumented).

On Palm Sunday, April 1, we inaugurated the new station with a procession from the Elementary School to a park in “downtown” Four Oaks. About 200 people participated in the Mass. No other location was available. We have had Mass outside in the park since then, except for 10 occasions when we have been able to obtain the American Legion Hall. It’s hard to believe that seven months have passed. We’re in the midst of an extreme drought in NC, so rain hasn’t been a problem since April.

In May, the St Francis Xavier leadership and I arranged for processions with the Missionary Image of OL of Guadalupe (who has traveled with me for 10 years!) in several trailer parks to advertise the Mass and to get to know and animate the people to practice their faith. Singing hymns and praying the Rosary, we went from trailer to trailer, knocking on the doors of those who had indicated an interest in being visited and blessing habitation, inhabitants and everything else in sight. Like the Pied Piper, Our Lady drew a larger and larger crowd. Children carried baskets for donations, and I had a chance in the few brief moments of personal contact in each trailer, to address solutions to some of the problems which the people raised with me, or I with them. The result was a better attendance at the Sunday Mass and lots more work at the Parish. Our monthly baptisms now average 18, up from 10. We have a marriage or two scheduled on most Saturdays, mostly convalidations.

In March, we dutifully prayed the Novena of Grace asking St. Francis Xavier to help us find a place with a roof over it , and set out optimistically looking for the place. It couldn’t be a storefront (Town ordinance), or in public school space (custodians don’t work on Sunday), American Legion (a couple of Sundays month they rent for family reunions, etc.) or the Methodist and Baptist churches (although the pastors were open, they have too many Sunday afternoon activities to promise us a regular use)

Then, the Baptist pastor suggested I contact Rev. Nick Dejesus, at Beulah Hill Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) a mile outside of Four Oaks. Nick was enthused at the possibility of having us there, and I am waiting the response of his Board to our request and his recommendation as I write this blog.

I should have seen the connection, whether St. Xavier had anything to do with it or not. Beulah Hill! My first station in eastern NC was in a laundromat at Beulaville. A year later, we were invited to use Beulaville Presbyterian Church, where we stayed for four years, until the congregation merged with Pink Hill. And, my (unpaid, volunteer) pastoral assistant at St Ann’s in Smithfield (1993-6) was the saintly, peppery Beulah Abdalla, whose parents migrated from Lebanon to NC and were in the business of planting Catholic, Roman if not Maronite, churches.

Nick Dejesus is a Four Oaks native whose grandfather was Puerto Rican. In five years as pastor, he has overseen the growth of Beulah Hill Christian’s congregation from 20 active to 90 active. The facility is made to order for us. Thanks be to St. Xavier and St. Beulah!

Second Aspect: The Cursillo, Confessions, Aschenbrenner’s 3-level diagram, on the way to Development of Spiritual Leadership and a link to the Spiritual Exercises.

I lived my Cursillo experience in NC (1963) several years before entering the Jesuits and then lost track of the movement as I became more and more immersed in giving the Spiritual Exercises during the 70's and 80's. In January, 1997, on a visit to Luvianos, Edo. Mex. In the Diocese of Ciudad Altamirano, Mexico, by chance (!!). I was pressed into service almost from the moment I arrived by the spiritual director of a Cursillo in his Parish, Fr. Gabriel Jaimes, who had pneumonia. First hearing confessions, then staying up late to prepare a talk so he could get some rest, then subbing for him at the Sunday Masses and hearing confessions in between in his Parish where I came to know the lives and spirituality of the people of “La Tierra Caliente.” It’s not just a place, it’s a culture. The first Bishop of the Diocese sums up what has been my experience of this people, whom I have come to love: “Never have I met a people who are so good and who do such bad things.” (Bp. Juan Navarro). I was struck by the response of these macho types to the message of Christ’s love as presented by Fr. Gabriel, and I arranged with him to come to NC and revive the Hispanic Cursillo, which had fallen on hard days. In October, 1997, he came. We divided the 60 candidates into male and female and arranged the schedule at the Retreat Center, so they wouldn’t interact. Fr. Gabriel did both, with a little help from me. Since that time, we have had at least 30 Cursillos in Spanish for men and another 30 for women, with over 1,700 participants. Many have become the backbone of ministry to Spanish-speaking in their parishes.

The Cursillo provides an opportunity for the candidates to come to terms with their life situations, deal with resentments and conflicts left over from childhood (abuse is a big one) and poisoning their lives and their marriages, to start off anew with a sense of Christ’s love and their mission. I’ve found George Aschenbrenner’s scheme (please pardon the imprecision, George) involving moving from the surface of our lives through the nexus of conflict and resentments which block our access to the place of communion with God to provide a graphic way to persuade people set aside their worries long enough to touch down in their real center where God resides. It pays off in real interior peace.

Confession has a special place in the Cursillo, and I spend as long as 15 hours of the 80 hours the Cursillo lasts “in the confessional.” If there’s a second priest available, it may go up to 25 hours. These confessions (some are the first since First Communion) are not only an opportunity for the candidates to desahogarse (unburden themselves, catharsis), but to experience the mercy of the Lord, perhaps for the first time in their lives, and to begin to undo their resentments by pardoning others. The rest of the Cursillo provides them with a chance to cement the foundation of a real conversion to the Lord.

In our Raleigh Diocese Cursillo operation, we need more attention to preparation of candidates and follow-up. In Cursillo lingo, that’s Pre-Cursillo and Pos-Cursillo, and it involves a lot of discernment. I realized in a pinch on one Cursillo when I had 50 candidates, several emergencies and I was the only confessor, that a lot of what happens in a Cursillo confession (apart from absolution) could be done by people who were adept in distinguishing the stages of the spiritual life and knew a little about discernment (i.e. incipient spiritual directors). So I asked several of the women on team, whom I knew very well, if they would be comfortable “having a spiritual conversation” with some of the candidates who needed to desahogarse, or who couldn’t receive absolution because of their marriage situation, and were not likely to enter the confessional. Some said yes. Their experience was humbling and wonderful (as was that of the candidates), and it opened these wise and well-anchored people to want to learn and do more. So I invited a group of 40 of them, men and women, some of them married couples, to meet monthly to learn the basics of spiritual counseling, discernment and how to when they should draw the line and refer the people they were working with to a priest or someone with more experience. Thirty-five of them finished the 8-month course and they are still working inside and outside the Three Days of the Cursillo. It’s time for a second round of training.

One of the best of these leaders is a man, beset by a host of health problems which keep him very close to the Lord, who when he finished his Cursillo 8 years ago, couldn’t read any of the materials and could barely write. He developed a system of hieroglyphics to jot down his notes until his wife and daughters helped him learn the alphabet and recognize a basic Cursillo vocabulary. He now reads the Bible and is a master speaker, but is even more effective at spotting people who need immediate attention during the Three Days. He talks to them in his simple, respectful and very humble manner and they open up to him. Just this past weekend, he interrupted the line waiting for me to bring a young man (whom I had known for 12 years, since he was a child) in for confession, and a life was saved and a disciple formed, just like that. When Don Sigi speaks, I listen!

I will write more next time about the connection I see between the Cursillo with its phases: Pre-Cursillo, Three Days (tightly structured to enable a process of conversion) and the Pos/Cursillo (Fourth Day) and the Spiritual Exercises, and its phases: Pre-Exercises, The Four Weeks, and the Fifth Week.

Fr. Edgar Sepulveda, a priest of the Diocese imbedded in the Charismatic renewal, is fascinated by the process of the Cursillo and the connection which can be made of both movements to the SpEx. The Renewal also has the problem of what to do with the leaders who emerge from its basic training to help them continue their growth in the spiritual life. There’s the link!

So, in a future blog, some thoughts on movements and the Spiritual Exercises and how we might help intercalate them.

Paul Brant, sj

Bill Rickle's note: Please post your comments here on the blog, or respond to Paul directly at paulbrantsj@yahoo.com