Missionaries can teach a bishop about vigilant evangelization

 

Bishop Robert Vasa

 

07/07/2005

BEND — I feel a bit disconnected from the diocese due to having been intermittently out of the office for the past several weeks. Following the high school camp, I traveled to Chicago for a bishops’ meeting and then traveled to Cove for the end of family camp. I then spent one full day in the office before heading for junior-high retreat at Whitebranch.

Immediately following that, I spent a day in Eugene working on a settlement agreement for one of our remaining five abuse cases. I went directly from there to The Dalles, where I first celebrated Mass for a boys’ camp/retreat at Deschutes State Park sponsored by Regnum Christi and then stayed on at The Dalles to visit a migrant worker camp.

It was not until Thursday evening that I celebrated a Mass of first Communion and confirmation for those who had been catechized during the previous three weeks by a team of Redemptorist catechists.

Thus when I arrived back in the office on Friday, it was really only the second full day that I had the opportunity to spend in the office in almost three weeks. I feel very much like the itinerant workers whose camp I visited. Unfortunately, it appears that I will be out of the office again for a week, though this time the absence is one which is almost entirely recreational.

My travels this weekend will take me to Yellowstone National Park to spend a couple of days with my sister and her husband and my two nieces. After that the bishops of the Northwest are gathering at Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, for our annual Fourth of July summer outing. I am a bit ambivalent about the number of miles I will cover in the next few days, but I hope that even the travel time to Yellowstone, without the prospect of a meeting at the end, will be the beginning of a period of vacation which I am beginning to feel that I need.

The Mass at Deschutes State Park was a bit providential in that I came to the park at 7:30 a.m., with the expectation that Mass was scheduled for around 9 a.m. When I arrived, Mass was just about to begin, and so I was afforded the opportunity to celebrate for the more than 60 young men who had come to this Park from Washington, Idaho, Oregon and, I believe, California.

The camp was a bit of a cross between boot camp, recreational camping and a retreat. It was very interesting for me to observe the very different dynamic operational at this all boys’ camp, as opposed to the co-ed junior-high retreat I had been at the previous morning. While we most likely do not have the personnel resources needed to run separate boys’ and girls’ camps and retreats, my brief exposure to the Regnum Christi environment indicated to me that there is a definite value to gender segregated retreats and camps. At very least I will need to give serious consideration to the possibility of parallel, and therefore partially segregated, retreats and camps.

I spent a couple of relatively quiet days at St. Peter’s in The Dalles and though I felt a bit displaced waiting for the Thursday evening Mass, I believe the down time was good for me. I did visit one camp with the Redemptorist missionaries and watched as the young people of the team went from cabin to cabin inviting the temporary residents to a Mass that was to start in a few minutes. By the time Mass was ready to start, more than 100 persons, mostly men, had congregated in a shaded area for worship.

This was not one of the larger camps, and it was estimated that more than 85 percent of the men in the camp had come to Mass. It was most edifying to see. The work of these young people was edifying, and the attendance of the men was likewise both humbling and rewarding.

The next night was the Mass of confirmation and first Communion. Approximately 45 young people and adults were confirmed, with about 25, some who were also confirmed, making their first Communion.

The Redemptorist team worked with young children teaching them prayers, with adults instructing them for confirmation, with parents giving them pre-baptism instruction and with godparents assuring their suitability for this role. The workers indicated that this was not the best year for cherries, but there was no hint of complaint. Many had come from Mexico, but a greater number from California. Some had apparently been on the road for months already and were already planning to go down to California to pick peaches and then later back to Hood River for the harvest of pears. I suspect that the presence of these young evangelists in the camps is a source of joy and edification for those committed to the itinerant worker life. The opportunity to attend Mass in their own camp must be like finding a cool spring of water on a hot and dry day. These kind folks live a hard life. The work they do is hard work, tedious work, and they tend to it with resolve and without complaint.

Their gathering in that shady spot for Wednesday evening Mass, to hear the Word of God and to participate in Eucharist reminded me of our Lord’s itinerant preaching. People would stop what they were doing and sit and listen to the Lord for a time and be refreshed. They were like sheep without a shepherd. These workers would never have dreamed of asking that a priest come out to their camp to celebrate Mass for them — that would have been asking too much. Yet here he was. Here too was a young guitarist and singers lifting their own voices in praise to God. The workers stopped what they were doing and came to sit and to drink in the love of the Lord which was being transmitted in this very simple and heartfelt ministry.

I am exceedingly grateful to the Redemptorist missionaries who have come for years to exercise this catechetical and evangelizing effort in the midst of these itinerant workers during the time of their sojourn in the Diocese of Baker along the Columbia River. It is obvious that the experience of having Mass in their camps is not a usual one for these workers in their annual migratory tour following the harvest. These Redemptorist missionaries teach me the need for an ever increasingly vigilant catechetical and evangelizing effort. They show me that, just as in the time of Jesus, people are hungry for the word of God, hungry for Eucharist, hungry for an evangelizing outreach. In Jesus’ time and now, they are like sheep without a shepherd.