A People in charge of their Faith

The Road to Marion: From Guests to Family

The pastoral goal of any ecclesial activity is to call together believers so that a community of faith may be built: where the faith celebrated publicly might echo the lives of those who come together, might strengthen their experience of God, and develop their capacities for service to their families and to the people with whom they come in contact. When a community expresses its life in its celebrations of faith, that life itself grows and reflects a blessed presence which is the very presence of the living God.
In this way life and faith go hand in hand, faith nourishing life and life transformed into a joyful experience of dignity and brotherhood.
For more than a decade the Hispanic/Latino population of the Catholic tradition arriving in the area of Wayne County began to gather to reconnect with their experience of faith, the experience that they had once welcomed in their places of origin.
Men, women, girls and boys, entire families coming from different parts of Latin America, the majority from Mexico and a variety of brothers and sisters from Central America.
A decade of life together has given a face to this community of male and female workers. A precious experience, human and pastoral, taking shape within the difficult situations of the life of the migrant population.
As a population that arrives from elsewhere, our community has been gathering in a church and a parish center belonging to an English speaking Catholic community. It is interesting to recall that the people of Epiphany Church are in their turn descendents of immigrants who arrived from Europe during the past century. This local and formerly migrant community shared its religious space with the more recently arriving migrant population.
Fr. Robert Kreckel initiated this process, a pioneer in this area. He began to invite Mexican people to hold Mass occasionally in the town of Sodus, at Epiphany Church. With the passing of the years the group expanded. In 1998 Sr. Luci and Fr. Jesús Flores joined the others on their journey.
Fr. Bob’s initiative and people’s response to it has been a very rich experience. Yet in various ways we still feel ourselves to be a marginal community, one lacking the full right of God’s people to celebrate its faith and life according to its own religious-culture heritage.
It will never be the same for us as for those who form their community in a space the people know is their own. To know that we are always “invited” limits the development of our potenial.
In September 2009 the Hispanic/Latino population entered a new stage. They came to an agreement with the parish of St. Anne of Palmyra to make use of the church and the building located in Marion that had been closed in accordance with St. Anne’s strategic plan. After evaluating the fitness and possibilities, as much for the communities of the new configuration of St. Anne and St. Patrick as for the Latino community, all of those involved reached the decision to transfer the Latino community to St. Gregory church.
From the first day, in the Eucharist over which presided Bishop Matthew Clark, everyone saw that the Latino community was experiencing a strong sense of belonging. No longer simply guests, strange to the place, but feeling already that this church and its buildings welcomed its families, allowing them to grow and to develop their potential as a community in whose life is sown the seed of the Good News of Jesus Christ.

You can see a gallery of photos of the event at the following site:

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