The Long Island Catholic
May 13, 2009 | Vol. 48, No. 8
In the Footsteps of St. Paul
Local volunteers work with the poor in Kingston, Jamaica
By Mary Gorry
gorry@licatholic.org
FRANKLIN SQUARE — The people filling the rectory room at St. Catherine of Sienna Church here March 27 were a mixed group — young and old, strangers and friends, and from parishes all around Long Island. They all came to talk about their mission experience helping the Missionaries of the Poor in Kingston, Jamaica, and how it has changed their lives.
Since 1996, Msgr. Richard Figliozzi, pastor of St. Catherine of Sienna and former director of the diocesan mission office, and Annette Ferrarella of Our Holy Redeemer Church in Freeport, have been bringing Catholics from Long Island down to Kingston, usually during Lent, to serve with the Missionaries of the Poor, an international monastic order of brothers headquartered there. The brothers maintain six free mission homes in Kingston for the homeless, destitute, and terminally ill, and welcome visitors to come and help them with their work.
This year, “we were a group of 15, including six people from St. Catherine’s,” noted Patricia Ryer, a parishioner of St. Catherine of Sienna who made her first trip this year. “We stayed in a monastery and rotated each day to serve in various centers. My first assignment was working with abandoned and disabled infants and children. We dressed, fed, and held them.”
The group spent other days working with the adults that the brothers take in. “They were so welcoming and happy to see us,” said Ryer. “Whatever we did for them, they were appreciative. I truly believe from what I experienced in the brothers’ way of life that the quote, ‘whatever you do unto the least of my brothers, you do unto me,’ applies to the Missionaries of the Poor.”
“You don’t even realize how much we take for granted and how much some people are willing to give up in order to serve others and serve God,” said Victoria Proto, another parishioner of St. Catherine’s who made her first trip to Kingston this year and who, at 20, was one of the youngest to go. “A lot of the brothers don’t get to see their families for about 10 years from the time they enter. It’s amazing how loving the brothers are. They manage to find time to give attention to each and every person.”
“Once you go,” she added, tearing up as she spoke, “I feel like, how could you not go back? You’re going there to help, but you’re bringing so much more back in return. You form these bonds with everybody. They see you and they want to hug you and they want you to play with them or read to them, and then at the end of the day you think, ‘I need to stay here. I need to keep doing this.’ And you can’t. I didn’t want to leave.”
Elizabeth Arden, a first-timer from St. Joseph’s Church in Kings Park, also got choked up with emotion as she recalled her trip. “I’m 58 years old and I’ve never experienced anything like this before,” she said. “One of the most amazing things to me was that they are so much like us. They’re loving, they get angry, they have all the same emotions that we have. And of course, there’s Jesus. I saw him everywhere. I have never seen him so much in my life as I saw him down there.”
“Jesus becomes so present for us in that type of experience,” agreed Msgr. Figliozzi, “that we realize the same Jesus is here to see, but we’re able to recognize him here now because of what we were allowed to experience there. You can be anywhere and bring the spirit of what we had down there with us. The way we saw the brothers love the poor, love the deformed, love the emotionally disturbed, where they made the love of God so visible, enables us to hopefully see Christ in one another here. There’s brokenness of body there, but maybe there’s more brokenness of spirit here.”
Norma Sanchez, a parishioner of Our Holy Redeemer, has made the journey to Kingston about eight times and every time, she said, “The brothers minister to me much more than I can help or do anything there. From the moment one encounters the brothers, I know I’m in the presence of God. The experience of working with the Missionaries of the Poor has been a wonderful journey for me all these years. The first time it was an emotional and spiritual experience, a time to cry and to rejoice in the work God does in us through his spirit. But every time I go, it’s the same experience — the same spirit, the same joy, the same love and compassion that I saw the first time.”
“I love to hear (the brothers) sing, I love the prayer services, and I love their joy,” she added. “Most of all I enjoy working with the residents in the various houses. I realize these residents don’t have very much. They don’t need very much. All I can give them is love. Mother Teresa says that the poor are beautiful people, that they can make us do great things, and that’s how I feel when I come back. I feel like I can move the world. I just don’t want to come down from that high. I want people to enjoy that part of our faith, of serving others and seeing Christ in all these poor people who are in our midst” even at home.
This year was St. Catherine of Sienna parishioner Nuala Devaney’s second time to Jamaica. “I thought it would be easier,” she said, “but it wasn’t. It’s so hard to see these children the way they are. It upsets me when I think of them there and me here. I give credit to the brothers, because they are amazing. They are true disciples. They’re always smiling. Nothing ever seems to bring them down. (When I’m there helping them), I just feel like I’m doing a little bit of what I’m supposed to have been doing my whole life, and somewhere in my being I wanted to do my whole life. It is the greatest thing.”
To learn more about the Missionaries of the Poor, visit www.missionariesofthepoor.org.
