Lent was a time full of challenges and opportunities. In our new church in Mastic Point, one of our members has begun bringing all the children in her neighborhood to church, which can be a challenge for one person to manage 7-8 little ones. She does a pretty good job, but when she can't come she sends them with her 8th grader and the whole pack may show up on their bikes. Without an adult that IS a challenge.
This week when I was speaking to her one of the kids came up to me and asked if he could be baptized. He wants to become a member! This is not the first time a child has come up and asked for baptism without their parent. Well it turns out his mother is Catholic and, in fact, several parents of these kids are Catholic but haven't shown up yet.
You must realize that for the church to have been absent from this end of the island for so long that many parents joined other churches and, after awhile they become members of those faith communities. With their children coming to Catholic services, while the parents were baptized as Catholics, the question is will they now return. It just may be that the baptism of the children may be the catalyst to make this happen. For example, several non-Catholic denominations "Christen" children but don't baptize until they're teens. So while these kids may be Christened, they have not been baptized - AND THE KIDS HAVE FIGURED THIS OUT!
Hopefully our Lent with these kids will lead to the Easter joy of Baptism, and the return of their families to the Catholic Church.
This year we were blessed to have a priest join us for Easter. We were thrilled and prepared the people for all the various roles, from Holy Thursday, Good Friday, the Easter Vigil and Easter Day services. Then on Tuesday we hear that his mother has taken ill and may not be coming
Fr.Mike was a joy and it was very easy to work with him. He arrived on Holy Thursday just a few hours before the first of what would be 7 liturgies in 3 days from one end of Andros to the other. We didn't get pics of Holy Thursday and Good Friday but we did get some of the Vigil and the baptisms we celebrated, both during the Vigil and on Easter Day - so here goes.
The Vigil Started with blessing the fire - here I light my taper to get the fire going, and then -
Fr. Mike says the prayer of blessing as the flames begin to take off
Then came the blessing of the Easter Candle
I was able to process in with the candle and the fires spread to the individual candles of all the members (no pics here, Ginni was a bit busy trying to get back to her guitar) I was able to sing the Exsultet and then our lectors did a great job reading all 8 readings of the Vigil with Fr. Mike doing a wonderful homily, followed by the baptism of little Lloydea.
We started the Baptism Rite with Fr. Mike leading the church in the renewal of their baptismal promises and then I was able to baptize her.
After the Vigil was over we were able to take a few posed pics of Lloydea and her family.
Easter Day was a busy one - we started at AUTEC with an 8:30 service preceded by Confession (without a priest since February this was the first opportunity many people had for Confession). After the AUTEC Easter service we went to the Dining Hall for an early lunch since we would have no opportunity to eat until that night. We then drove to Cargill Creek (30 mins south) for Easter Day service where, with great joy, we welcomed little Eric Jr. to the church with his baptism.
Just like during the Vigil, Fr. Mike led the renewal of baptismal promises and I was able to baptize Eric. Here he is being anointed with Chrism.
And here again is the posed pic after the service with his family
From here we drove 2 hours north for Easter at Our Lady of Hope in Mastic Point. I was thrilled that so many of our Haitian friends were able to join us - our altar boy did double duty, not only as server for the Mass, but also playing a Junkanoo drum to compliment Ginni's guitar, and I helped Fr. Mike with some of the responses in Creole (no I don't speak Creole but I am getting better at the responses at certain parts of the Mass).
Well, having finished our 3rd service of the day we were finally done - exhausted, but done. Rather than drive the 2 hours home and then cook dinner we decided to stop at one of our favorite spots, a resort called 'Love At First Sight'. We know the owner, who is also a great cook. We ended up having the dining room to ourselves for a fantastic chicken dinner, and she surprised us with a dessert of rum-raison ice cream topped with toasted coconut - yum.
Here are a few pics of us on the deck as the sun was going down, just before we had dinner.
As you can tell it was a great day and we felt abundantly blessed - but it wasn't over yet. On the way home Fr. Mike told us he was very impressed with the people here and in our ministry and that he would welcome the opportunity to come back and do it again next year - how great is that!!
Next week is the annual Archdiocese of Nassau Clergy Retreat and I will get a chance to tell the Vicar of Fr. Mike's offer and, if all goes well, we should have next Easter's priest committed a year in advance -- amazing, unheard of, unthinkable -- but that is our God. Amazing and ever faithful.
Keep us in your prayers, we certainly need it.
Till next time
Peace
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