The married life
In a small farming town in North Carolina, Siler City, I once had the opportunity to teach a child about our Catholic faith. The experience helped me appreciate how much Our Lord values every child, and how important our modest efforts for them can be.
Siler City is the town where Aunt Bee from “The Andy Griffith Show” lived, and the town reminded me of that show. Life seemed to slow down there.
In the 1970s there were not enough Catholics living in Siler City to have a full parish with a priest, so it was designated as a mission parish. They had a little white church, with a basement and simple classrooms downstairs.
The Newman Center at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill was tasked with helping serve this mission church. Our pastor asked for volunteers, and three other college students and I signed up to help.
The four of us students, along with a priest and a nun from the Newman Center, would meet on Saturday afternoons and drive together for 45 minutes to Siler City. Upon arrival we would open the church, and at 5 p.m. we taught religious education classes to the children of the parishioners. At 6 p.m. the priest celebrated Mass, and afterward the six of us were always invited to a family’s home for dinner. We’d return to the Newman Center, getting back around 10 p.m.
I taught the youngest children, aged 4 to 6. We always started our lesson with a song, such as “Rise and Shine,” using hand motions, followed by prayer. Most of our lessons were based on Bible stories, and we would draw or color pictures of the scenes we talked about. We concluded by saying the Our Father.
The format was simple, but it usually took me a couple hours on Saturday morning to prepare.
When we started teaching I had four students. Over time the number dwindled until I was left with just one student, who was quiet and reserved. After several months I began to wonder if it was worth spending all my Saturdays, which seemed like an all-day event, for this one student.
The very day I began questioning my decision, we were invited to my student’s home for dinner. Johnny was a serious boy, short and stout, who looked and walked just like his father. He had short blond hair and often had his hands in his pockets, making him look like a little man. Because he was quiet, with solemn eyes, I could never figure out what he was thinking. Occasionally he would ask me a question.
During dinner the boy’s father told us all the story of how he came to Siler City. He was originally from Poland, and wanted to flee the Nazi occupation during World War II. As a young man he left Poland on his own, hiding in ditches and climbing fences to get out of the country. He eventually made his way to America. It was an amazing story of courage and faith.
Once in America he worked on farms and looked for a place to settle. He chose Siler City because it was a farming community, which had been his lifestyle in Poland. It was there he married and started a family of his own.
Then, after dinner Johnny’s mother said to me, “I want to show you something.” She took me into her son’s room and opened his top dresser drawer. There, neatly folded and stacked, was a pile of papers. She opened one of the sheets, and I saw it was a picture from one of our most recent religion lessons. She told me that her son had saved every page from the lessons since we started. It was clearly very important to him, and to his parents as well.
I knew then that yes, sharing Jesus with this one young boy was worth every Saturday.
Whenever we act on behalf of a child the Lord is present. We may not see the results of our efforts. We may even feel rebuffed or ignored. But good seeds often take a long time to sprout, and we can trust that the Lord is always at work.
Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” (Mt. 25:40)
