TLDR: I was tired, concerned, and very frustrated when I flew to New Jersey on Sunday, November 4th for my Fall continuing education class. Sadly, while I was consumed with senseless worries, there were people of all ages at my brother’s pantry worried about diapers, antibiotics, and a little bit of food. I learned a profound lesson that week. Please read on for more.
When I left Belgium in 1991, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Paterson, NJ, sent me to live at the Rectory of Saint Nicholas Catholic Church in Passaic, NJ, with the Rector and two Associates. The plan called for me to serve the church on Weekends and have a civilian job during the week for an entire year, after which I was to return to the seminary. This “Pastoral Year” was meant to be a time of discernment, rest, ministry, family, and “real life” experience before I was ordained a priest. For a civilian job, I was sent to the Father English Community Center in Paterson, where my parents and siblings lived. My time was divided between a shelter for homeless teenagers and the Father English food pantry, which was a small room with several grocery store shelves stocked with canned goods. The elderly Puerto Rican man who oversaw the pantry was in the process of retiring, and within three months, I was running the program from 9:00am-12:00noon and working at the shelter from 1:00-6:00pm, six days a week.
I worked these two jobs for about three months, until the Center hired my brother, Carlos, as a full-time Coordinator, around the same time the shelter made me their weekend manager. Several months later, my future wife became a volunteer at the shelter, I left Saint Nicholas’ rectory and rented my first apartment, and I made the decision not to return to seminary in Belgium. The rest, as they say, is history. Thirty-three years later, the Father English Food Pantry has become the largest pantry system in New Jersey with branches in Passaic, Sussex, and Morris counties, dozens of volunteers, over twenty paid employees, and a score of short-term aides sent by the local Welfare office, Urban League, and Probation department to fulfil the work-requirements of their programs. Serving over 20,000 people a month and about 24,000 in the months of November and December, the pantries have become an important safety net for the homeless and the working poor of Northern New Jersey. I have written about Carlos elsewhere (SEE HERE). I want to share my experience of working with Carlos last week at his Paterson pantry.
I was tired, concerned, and very frustrated when I flew to New Jersey on Sunday, November 4th for my Fall continuing education class. I had purchased, “Simply Jesus” a course by professor N. T. Wright, and my brother generously set up a workstation for me at the pantry, so that we could visit while I was taking this online class. In between sessions, I would spend a couple of hours each day stocking shelves or distributing food to the hundreds of people who line up hours before the pantry opens at 8:00am. Reconnecting with my early days of Social Work at the pantry helped my mind recover from the fog it was in. Physical labor is in fact therapeutic!
At our last Town Hall meeting, I shared with the parish the Architect’s rough estimate of 6.3 million dollars to complete Phase One of our Site Master Project. I asked you not to be overly intimidated by the rough number because Tellepsen, our builder, would have to price the entire design to give us actual costs. They had thirty days to accomplish this task, and it was my hope, and that of the building committee, that this figure would come down to within $5.5-6.0 million, a figure that would be an ambitious, but achievable goal for us. On October 30th, several days before my trip, at a combined meeting with Tellepsen Builders and Merryman Holt Powell architects we learned that the true cost of Phase One would be at least $3.3 million higher than the architects rough estimates. Even after we exercise all owner contingencies (parts of Phase One we chose not to do now), the figure would still be high. My frustration can be summarized the following way: We hired architects to design a five-to-six-million-dollar project and were presented with an almost ten-million-dollar proposal. Try as hard as I might, I saw no way to move forward with the existing Phase One project. To me, this proposal was dead on arrival.
So, I went to be with the poorest of the poor with a mind filled with worries about buildings, feeling defeated and disappointed. My brother, noticing my pensive mood, asked my to “walk the line” with him every day before the pantry opened. As he stood to speak with his people about their lives, their health, their family members he had not seen in a while, and their current problems and fears, I began to notice the love in his voice, his affable demeanor and easy manner, his willingness to hug people I was trying hard to keep my distance from, and his wise council. Often, he would say, “You’ve dealt with this before. You’ve got this!” Other times, he would say, “I know you; you are a person of faith, everything will be okay.” And at other times, he would smile and say, “Do you know how much God loves you? Let me tell you why. I just received a big donation of diapers (or clothes, or shoes, or whatever the need was). Ask for me when you come to the front, and I will take care of you. Everything will be okay.”
I was hearing Jesus of Nazareth through my brother’s words, “You are a person of faith, everything will be okay!” The truth is that while I was consumed with worry about another building, there were people of all ages worried about diapers, antibiotics, a little bit of food, or a warm hug from someone who has come to love them as indispensable members of his family. I also realized that I needed to reconnect with what truly brings joy into my life which is serving people, preaching the Gospel of salvation, meeting people at the crossroads of their life, and elevating our corporate needs to God in prayer.
The Master Plan is alive, and we will regroup, identify a more appropriate set of needs, start our Capital Campaign, and do what we can do with the resources God will give us. And we will be stronger and more united because of it. It is true that the “Church is the people and not the steeple.” Please join me in giving thanks to God for a valuable lesson last week and pray that I may continue to reconnect with the heart of my ministry.
May God continue to bless you,
Fr. Roman+
