What caused me to notice that quote was the fact that I was involved in a similar mission of "passing on the culture." I have just finished leading the process of giving my old grade school and childhood parish rectory a new mission and a complete renovation. The old school has become a Family Life Center for the whole community and the old rectory has become a Guest House for retreats, visiting priests and presenters in the Family Life Center.
On the right, as soon as you enter the new museum room at the newly-finished St. Theresa Family Life Center in Rhodelia, there is a sign with those challenging words from Deuteronomy.
Be on your guard and be very careful not to forget the things your own eyes have seen, nor let them slip from your heart as long as you live, but make them known to your children and to your children’s children.
That quote summarizes very well what my intentions were when I talked the Parish Council into turning the old no-longer-used school into a Family Life Center to serve people of all ages in the surrounding community.
I grew up as a Catholic in Rhodelia in the 1940s and 1950s. I was a member of St. Theresa Church and attended St. Theresa Academy first, then St. Theresa School and finally Cross Roads School when it became a "public school." It was the same school with different names. Growing up, I never knew much about our history. We treated our situation like it had always been there and would always continue to be there! We didn't have much of a sense of our own history.
Growing up, I didn't know that we had several vocations from our parish: 37 sisters, 8 priests and 1 religious Brother. I didn't know that all of our first pastors were immigrants: Germany, Ireland, Belgium, France, the Netherlands and England. I didn't know that my grade school had once been a boarding school for boys and girls as well as a day school. I didn't know that 222 slaves were baptized in St. Theresa Church and attended Mass both in the second log cabin church and the present brick church. I didn't know that slaves most probably helped build the present brick church. I didn't know that some of those slaves were buried in our old St. Theresa Cemetery. I didn't know that the slave mother of America's first known black priest, a saint-to-be, was an active member of our parish until she reached age seventeen when she was forced to move to Missouri by her "owners." I didn't know that the grandmother and step-grandmother of that same saint-to-be are actually buried in our old cemetery. I didn't know that there was yet another "slave cemetery" over the hill behind the church where others have been buried.
My original vision was to help revitalize the parish that had been shrinking even though there are new houses on both sides of the road that were never there when I was growing up. The more I studied our history, the more I realized that there was so much I did not know. The more I discovered and uncovered, the more I knew that our path to revitalization would involve teaching the present generation about its own history and about what had been passed on to them that was gradually slipping away. During this process, I met many young adults who have no memory of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth even though 97 of them served there for 123 years! According to my view of the situation, whether this amazing history and this wonderful spiritual tradition is passed on to the next generation, is similar to the one facing many other small faith communities. In many of these small faith communities, securing a hopeful future appears to be little more than wishful thinking unless someone takes some drastic steps now to intervene.
I am hoping that, by educating the whole community in its own amazing history, these renovations might inspire, motivate and encourage people toward a new enthusiasm for protecting its rich history and securing a prosperous future. This situation could be yet another classic case of entropy in action. Entropy is the natural process of decay and decline unless there is a stronger force pushing against it. Upkeep is the absolutely necessary effort for keeping any building or community from falling into ruin. To put it in non-technical terms, "If you snooze, you lose!" I am hoping this project will be helpful to the two present communities of St. Theresa and St. Mary in their heroic efforts to stay alive going forward.
In light of what I have said above, I would call myself "traditional." I reject the idea that "traditional" means "wanting to go back in time." To me, "traditional" means "wanting to hand it forward." It was Gustav Mahler, the Austrian conductor and composer of symphonies, who said “Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.” In this project, I never imagined building a museum that merely celebrated 19th century Catholic Christianity and how it used to be lived in our area. I wanted to help fire-up a two-hundred-year-old community where Catholic Christianity is well-lived today and into the future.
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