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By Priscilla Greear, Staff Writer
ALPHARETTA—Strengthening their Catholic identity in Rome and
stretching across the Christian denominational divide in Appalachia, members of
the Life Teen program at St. Thomas Aquinas Church have had an active Jubilee
Year of service and spirituality.
A group went on a pilgrimage to Rome June 5-12. Teens also raised
about $14,000 for their annual mission trip July 17-23 to increasingly
impoverished Whitesville, West Virginia. At least 20 people took part in both
trips.
“The Rome trip really filled them with the richness of our
faith, the legacy and the tradition that Catholicism affords them. It really
opened their eyes to appreciate the tremendous gift that they have in the
Catholic faith,” said Life Teen coordinator Carmen Lerma. “The other
one really opened their eyes, as well as their hearts, to the need for justice,
to be aware of their brothers and sisters. And the most important thing is
(realizing that) being jubilee people is not just for the adults in the
Catholic faith ... They as teens are called to live jubilee justice as
well.”
After raising over $20,000, a group of about 40 adults and teens
led by Lerma and Father Al Jowdy, pastor of St. Thomas Aquinas, went on the
pilgrimage to Italy. Based at a retreat center, they visited St. Peter’s
Basilica, the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel, the Coliseum, the Catacombs,
the Forum and the basilicas of St. John Lateran, St. Paul Outside the Walls and
St. Mary Major, all Jubilee pilgrimage sites. In Assisi they visited the tomb
of St. Francis and the basilicas of St. Mary of the Angels and St. Clare.
Visiting the Coliseum where Christians were martyred, touring an
excavation site beneath the Vatican and taking part in Mass at St. Peter’s
tomb and, on the feast of Pentecost, at St. Peter’s Basilica, were
highlights, Lerma said.
“We were very close to the Holy Father and having Mass
celebrated in so many languages was just breathtaking,” she said. “We
took pilgrims to all the sacred sites of our church, the historic areas of
Rome. It was a very spiritually renewing experience.”
Her son Arthur said the trip was a challenge, a joy and an
opportunity to receive the Jubilee Year indulgence in the place designated by
the pope as a pilgrimage site.
“The artwork and the beauty of all the buildings, the statues
in St. Peter’s, the history of our church’s first saints and martyrs
left one in total awe of it all ... Because we’re marking the 2000th
anniversary of Christ’s birth, where better to celebrate the roots of our
faith? The Eternal City is where our faith took root for the first time, and
where it continues, guiding the church into the next millennium,” he wrote
in the Life Teen newsletter.
Then Lerma, Father Jesus Trujillo-Luna, parochial vicar at St.
Thomas Aquinas, and 32 others participated in the annual mission trip to
Whitesville, a community primarily of senior citizens who receive public
assistance.
Sleeping in a community hall, the group landscaped and made
various repairs to St. Joseph the Worker Church, building a ramp for the
disabled, installing roofing and repainting the emergency food pantry and soup
kitchen.
Group members directed by parishioner Billy Carman, a building
contractor, also built an addition to the kitchen of the Church of God of
Prophecy a half mile down the road. The work enabled the Protestant evangelical
church near St. Joseph’s to offer a soup kitchen of its own. St.
Joseph’s initiated the collaboration to better serve the poor and elderly,
as its food pantry and emergency soup kitchen are unable to fully meet
community needs. In winter these services are vital, as roads become
treacherous in the mountain towns.
“(The evangelical church) wanted to provide a soup kitchen
for their neighbors and friends. The will was there, but they didn’t have
the ability to make it happen. They needed our help,” Lerma said.
“Now they’re both going to be working side by side as partners.”
The group also repaired the roof, painted and landscaped the
evangelical church and grounds and donated paper goods, toiletries and Bible
school supplies. Megan Harney, a senior at Roswell High School, particularly
enjoyed the interaction. The group participated in a prayer service at the
evangelical church while Protestants attended a Catholic liturgy. Families from
both congregations gathered at St. Joseph’s one night for a potluck dinner
and prayer service in the mission team’s honor.
“The people of Whitesville could not have been more pleased
that we came, and they showed us in so many ways ... They showed us through
their hospitality especially and snacks when we dropped by for our annual
visit. And most importantly, they showed us through their desire to make one
family,” Harney wrote in the newsletter.
It was “a mission of building one community from two. The
point that I remember hearing all week from our leaders and members of both
churches was ‘we’re all worshiping the same God.’ And when
Whitesville residents asked us, teary-eyed, to sing for them at the potluck
dinner on the last night, the lyrics ‘We Are One Body’ could not have
been truer.”
The prayer service “was a big accomplishment,” Lerma
said. “The sisters said that had never happened before. Two communities
from that area with very different faith (traditions) came together to thank
God and to feed a group of teens. They shared their music with us. We shared
our songs with them. We ate together and formed one community.”
Lerma said the Life Teen program this year emphasized social
justice. She was amazed at how much the group accomplished in three days and
described the mission trip as “ a very holy experience” which led
some youth to consider greater service to the church. The difference teens made
affirmed their calling to serve and their equally great contributions in the
body of Christ as those of adults, Lerma said. “We have been given a
wonderful legacy by our holy ancestors and it’s up to us to keep it
moving.”
The next Jubilee Year event of the program is the fourth annual
Cardboard Campout on Dec. 2, where teens will sleep overnight in cardboard
shacks to raise awareness of and money to fight homelessness.
“We’re anticipating about 125 people in the Cardboard
Campout,” she said. “(They) spend the night outside to raise
awareness first of all and to be in community with their homeless brothers and
sisters, but more than anything to raise funds for various agencies that
service the needs of the poor especially during winter months.” |
