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But San Fernando had its dignity. It was a church where people were someone. It was very similar to the Black churches in this country, where people could be themselves. San Fernando at one time had been one of those places, but it was dying. So I came in, and started to recreate the rituals. How would people like to do it? I didn't tell them how to do it, I stimulated their ritual imagination. So we started creating rituals. We started with a whole year based on popular rituals. I can say that we had four things: popular rituals; art, where we invited artists to come and paint different scenes the way they would see them today; traditional music that people remembered and wanted to maintain; and new music. This was a combination of the traditional and the new, of continuity and transformation. And we had very good biblical preaching. I find it very important to correlate the good biblical preaching with different aspects of people. Believe me, the response was phenomenal. Pretty soon the church started to be filled. We started televising the local Mass, which became so popular that it was picked up by the networks.—So we're coming to your area!—At one time we had a bigger Sunday audience than the pope. People thought of it as a very festive service, very Latino, with a lot of singing, and decorations, and special events, special celebrations. For example, on the feast of the Presentation of the child Jesus, February 2, we invited all the families with babies one year and younger to the television Mass, and we had a prayer offering to God the gift God had lost. It was really moving, really beautiful. At another time a famous singer died, and we had a special memorial television Mass for Celina. The Mass celebrated the events of the community, whether sorrow, joy, or success. One of the things that we started was around the events of Holy Week. We were doing this just around our neighborhood when I realized that earlier those processions had been done right in central San Antonio. Those streets are part of our history. The street with the park is named Della Rosa. The street in front of the cathedral is called La Soledad, Our Lady of Solitude. But they wouldn't let us take over the city "because it was a religions event." I said, "No, look, this is not a religious event, it's just a cultural event. You won't find this in any official ritual book in Roman Catholicism, and so it's not an official ritual of Catholicism." And they said, "Oh, O.K." I said, "It's an event for tourism." And they said, "Oh, that's great." The first time we did it we were scared of how people would react. Six thousand people turned out. Last year over thirty thousand people came at ten on Good Friday morning, of all denominations and all backgrounds. In fact one of the leading Baptist churches, Emmanuel Baptist Church, canceled their Good Friday service and joined us in the procession. After we finished our official liturgical service, they had their service right there also. It was a beautiful unity in the cross. The most moving event we had during my tenure there was at the beginning of the First Gulf War, when these two or three guys came to me and said, "Father, we're going to the Gulf War, give us a blessing." I said I'd be happy to give them a blessing, even though I did not approve of the war; I'd give them a blessing. And I said, "Let me give the blessing on Sunday, on television, when the three of you will pray for everyone who's going to the Gulf War." They got permission, then called back later and asked, "Can a few of our friends come with us?" By that evening the whole battalion was coming! We called the press, and we asked the people if we could have the service outside because the whole battalion was coming. Well, they came in their fatigues, and they all came, Jews and Catholics and non-believers, blacks, whites, browns, everyone came, and at the end everyone prayed over the men that God would protect them and guide them. It was a very moving moment. We even had mariachi bands in the plaza. At the end the buses came and took them to the airport. In that way the church celebrated things in the community. We weren't afraid to challenge people. For example, in the Latino community one of two big problems is the high school dropout rate, which is very scary to us. The other is that we don't vote. That's part of our social responsibility. Yes, we feel grateful to God, but praise and privilege have responsibilities. I got two letters that I'll never forget. One was from an English-speaking lady who watched Irish television. She wrote, "I'm an elderly Irish person, and if heaven is going to be anything like your liturgies, then I can't wait to get there." The other one was from a fellow who said he was an atheist. "I was flipping channels one Sunday morning and ran into the program. And I found it so human, so unplastic, so real, that I fell in love with it, and I watch it every Sunday. Here's $1000 to keep it going, from a self-proclaimed atheist." Most of this came from the heart. Latino worship is from the deep heart: it's festive, communicative, incarnational. So that's the way we got the cathedral going; it was all through ritual, dance, music, art, good preaching, and trusting the people. We said "How would you like to do it?" They tried some things that I didn't care too much about, but they worked out. We did well. Then the Lilly Foundation got very interested in what we were doing, and commissioned a study. They were able to bring in scholars of different disciplines, anthropologists, religious scholars, artists, news directors, business people, so that they could experience one of the great religious celebrations, the feast of Our Lady of Guadelupe or Holy Week. We paid their way, gave them a stipend; they didn't have to pay for anything. They lived with the people; then afterwards we did a debriefing with them, and it helped us reflect on what they were seeing, feeling, experiencing. We had several of those, and then we put together a theological study of our parish. It was a theological reflection on how a dying parish was transformed into a vital community. So that's the story of San Fernando Cathedral. Virgilio Elizondo is a diocesan priest of the archdiocese of San Antonio. He holds a PhD/STD from the Institut Catholique de Paris. He is the founder of the Mexican American Cultural Center, and Professor of Pastoral and Hispanic Theology at Notre Dame. Among his honors are the Catholic University of America award for creative contribution to theology, and the University of Notre Dame's "Latarae Medal"—the University's highest honor. He is the author of Galilean Journey: The Mexican American Promise; Gudalupe: Mother of the New Creation; and A God of Incredible Surprises: Jesus of Galilee, as well as several other books, and has edited 20 issues of Concilium. |
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