Finding My Way to [a] Church
by Michael Lacovara
Life sometimes seems a series of mixed blessings. One such blessing in my life has been the ability (need) to travel extensively for work, enabling me to see much of our country, and our world. Sometimes, my schedule requires me to travel over a weekend, which takes me away from family and from our parish.
But it does give me the chance to find my way to a new church. I have been to the cathedral in Helena, Montana (a gorgeous structure built with the donations of silver miners, who traveled by foot for miles to get to Mass on the one day each week they could otherwise have rested), and I have been to Mass in a schoolroom in Northern Mississippi, where Catholics are sparse and many thus cannot celebrate in churches at all.
And I have had the great fortune to worship all over the world, many times in places where I didn’t speak the local language. It is a joy and a deep comfort to be able to follow the Mass in Cantonese, Mandarin, or Magyar (Hungarian) – even though I am totally lost in those languages – or to worship in other languages in which I can manage a word or two. Experiencing those Masses underscores to me the universality of our faith and the equal spiritual majesty of the cathedral and the simple country church.
But it also humbles me, as I realize how cosseted I have been, with my ‘Church around the corner’.
Never was this clearer to me than when I found myself sweltering through Ramadan in Qatar, a tiny country on the Arabian Peninsula. Qatar is an odd place – there are only about 300,000 Qataris, but almost 3 million people live there. A few of those 2.7 million non-citizens are high-flying (mostly European, American and Australian) executives. More than 90%, though, are guest workers; they do the most thankless, menial jobs, often in oppressive conditions – building soccer stadiums in the desert heat (Qatar will host the World Cup next year), serving as household servants, sweeping the streets. And many are Christians, including tens of thousands of Catholics from East Africa, Goa and other parts of India, and the Philippines. Guest workers generally work 6.5 days a week, sending virtually all of their wages home to support their families.
And what do Catholic workers in Qatar do with their half-day off? They travel – by foot, by bus, or in shared hired cars – to Our Lady of the Rosary, the only Catholic church built in the Arabian Peninsula since the Muslim conquest about 1300 years ago. The church is a giant, simple structure, with an interior that looks pretty much like a high school auditorium. The church, and a few other Christian churches, sit behind high walls outside of Doha. Why the walls? To ensure that Muslims do not have to see Christian churches, and to protect the worshipers from acts of violence against them for practicing their Christian faith.
It’s a pain in the neck for most worshipers to get to that church – doing so can consume virtually all of a worker’s disposable wages. But go they do – by the thousands. And when one arrives and Mass begins, it’s a singing, dancing (yes, dancing!) multi-lingual experience of faith, joy, community, and refuge. It is a moment when an utterly disparate and dislocated group of people, united by collective separation from family and the consolation of shared faith, feel the love of our Lord and their love for each other. It is the Eucharist and the Universal Church resplendent.
And it’s a hike!
I was reflecting on the sacrifices – and the evident joy – of the parishioners at Our Lady of the Rosary a few weeks ago while I was in a tent (the one on the grass at St. Agnes. . .). How did my mind get to Qatar? First, I listened to the Scripture about mustard seeds and cedar trees and realized how much of our Lord’s teachings use botanical imagery – and thought ‘what better place to reflect on those images than with the grass under my feet and the trees around me?’ Next, I looked at our Pastor and thought ‘he does some pretty good preaching outside, as did our Lord, come to think of it, over there in the Middle East . . .’.
And that took me back to Qatar – and I felt a little ashamed.
You see, I have sometimes thought of myself as a ‘St. Catherine’s person’ and of St. Agnes as inconvenient. (I think it’s a 9-minute drive from my house.) I am not, or should not call myself, a ‘St. Catherine’s person.’ I am a Catholic, which is a universal faith citizenship. And whether I worship in a school, a tent, a (frankly lovely) converted Greenwich carriage house, or that church with the classic white steeple on the hill, what matters is only that I am there (wherever ‘there’ is) and that I share in the gift of the Eucharist with my co-religionists. It’s easy to forget that sometimes, but I am indebted to the parishioners of Our Lady of the Rosary – about 7,000 miles from here – for reminding me of what really matters whenever I can find my way to [a] church.
