En Todo Amar y Servir: In All Things to Love and Serve

by Henry Frank

This story appeared in the Winter 2021 issue of “Jesuits” magazine, put out by the USA East Jesuit Province.

Study after study in the past decade has documented demographic trends in the American Catholic church that confirm what many already know — people are leaving. Wherever the church goes from here, two things seem clear: first, parish life could use some help, and second, Hispanics will play a major role.

More than one-third of US Catholics identify as Hispanic. Among millennials, it is more than half. While church participation among Hispanics is also declining, it is generally not declining as steeply as among non-Hispanics, and Hispanic youth are more likely than their non-Hispanic peers to remain Catholic as adults.

How exactly the institutional Church can or should respond is a huge question. More digestible is “how are the Jesuits on the East Coast responding?”

One new initiative is the Office of Ignatian Spirituality’s Comunidades Hispanas Ignacianas (Ignatian Hispanic Communities), which launched in the fall of 2019. The comunidades are groups of about a dozen people who gather to deepen their faith, accompany one another on their spiritual journeys, and put their faith into action. Each comunidad is led by a trained guide, who facilitates the group in Spanish. Currently, there are comunidades at four Jesuit sites: the Parish of St. Ignatius of Loyola in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts; the Loyola Jesuit Center in Morristown, New Jersey; the Parish of St. Francis Xavier in New York; and St. Mary of the Assumption-Our Lady of Mount Carmel-St. Benedicta Jesuit Parish in Staten Island, New York.

Two elements of the Comunidades Hispanas Ignacianas make them particularly remarkable. The first is their community approach to Ignatian spirituality ministry. The second is their proximity to those on the margins of society.

Participants meet monthly for prayer and discussion on topics such the promotion of justice and the role of laity in the church. Prior to the pandemic, these meetings frequently involved a pot-luck meal. They now continue to meet online. Between meetings, members are given resources to help them deepen their practice of Ignatian spirituality.

One year in, the ministry is already bearing fruit. “Through the comunidades we are promoting what the Society of Jesus wants us to do: working and walking with the poor,” said Fr. Hernan Paredes, SJ, pastor of St. Mary of the Assumption-Our Lady of Mount Carmel-St. Benedicta Jesuit Parish. Fr. Paredes oversees two comunidades at the parish, one facilitated in Spanish and the other in Mixtec, an indigenous language from Oaxaca, a state in southern Mexico.

The pandemic has brought the two comunidades in Staten Island together. Many members of the Mixtec comunidad speak neither Spanish nor English, and, already struggling, have been hit particularly hard by the pandemic economy. So, the members of the Spanish comunidad, alongside other parishioners and Catholic Charities New York, have rallied to provide food and financial support to the Mixtec comunidad. “This parish is where we touch the heels of the poor,” Fr. Paredes explained. “We are closer to the poor here than in any other place. We are working with the poor and the immigrants, the people on the margins.”

The Parish of St. Ignatius of Loyola in Chestnut Hill has seen a growing number of Hispanic parishioners for more than a decade. Establishing a comunidad has created a deeper sense of community. Members come from different countries — Guatemala, Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico — and from diverse backgrounds, according to Rita Rodriguez, who is the coordinator for the comunidad at St. Ignatius. “It is also quite diverse in terms of socio-economic class.”

Despite being forced to move their meetings online, the comunidad at St. Ignatius decided to take action as a group. Through a Jesuit at Boston College, they connected via Zoom with Fr. Francisco Javier Calvillo Salazar, director of the Casa del Migrante in Juárez, Mexico, which houses about 250 people who have been deported from the US or are seeking asylum. Fr. Calvillo informed the comunidad of the pressing need to pay for medical staff hours, about two hundred dollars a month.

The comunidad decided they could meet this need if each member offered $20 monthly. “For most of them, that was a real stretch,” said Ms. Rodriguez. “Someone called to tell me their check was good, which means that most of the time they don’t have $20 in the bank.” A shared spirituality and a common cause have enlivened the comunidad.

The mission of the Comunidades Hispanas Ignacianas is summarized in the program’s mantra, en todo amar y servir (to love and to serve in all things). Service inspired by the love of God and rooted in a relationship with Jesus, that is what the comunidades aim to achieve — in other words, a faith that does justice.

A dozen people at a time, the Comunidades Hispanas Ignacianas are helping Hispanic Catholics deepen their faith and stay connected with the church. It is still a new and growing initiative for the Jesuits on the East Coast. But then again, St. Ignatius himself started out with only two companions.