On Corpus Christi, Lay Leaders Step Up

The priest raised the wafer, whispering, ​“The body of Christ.” The faithful knelt. When they stood up to take communion, they found not the priest — but a 30-year old Guatemalan mother.

The woman was one of seven new communion ministers inducted Sunday during the regular Spanish-language mass at Saint Rose of Lima — filling a role that lay Catholics are increasingly playing to help a crucial ritual move at a reasonable pace.

The new ministers — Gady Aguilar, José García, Santos Muñoz, José Benitez, Herminia Benitez, Hermana Aparecida, and Máximo Romero — will join Saint Rose’s other 20 or so lay ministers to serve the congregation. According to church officials, more than 1,000 faithful hailing from 18 countries — most of them Spanish-speaking — come to mass at the parish every weekend.

The new ministers are not ordained priests, but rather lay members of the congregation who are authorized by the church to give communion in certain circumstances. When a priest is not available, for example, they can administer the sacrament to the sick, the dying, and those in prison. The ministers can also help during mass when the number of faithful is so large that the priest by himself cannot serve them efficiently. Both men and women can become communion ministers, and although all adults are welcome to join, most of the ones at Saint Rose are around 30 years old.

Father James Manship, who leads the congregation at Saint Rose, said that communion ministers are taken from ​“leaders in the community.”

“They are all very involved with the parish,” he said. ​“Many of them also participate in other ministries. They are catechists [Sunday school teachers], acolytes, or they work with the family life ministry.”

Manship explained that the ministers-to-be go through a training process in which they learn about their new role. After their induction, they meet as a a group on a weekly basis ​“to pray together, share their experiences, and learn more.”

The Feast of Corpus Christi

The date of the new ministers’ induction was no coincidence. It was the first Sunday after the Feast of Corpus Christi, a holiday in which the faithful celebrate the body of Christ. Catholics believe in the doctrine of “.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address),” which broadly speaking states that the bread and wine consumed in communion are actually the flesh and blood of Christ, and not just a symbolic representation.

Corpus Christi then proves a particularly suitable date for the induction of ministers charged with giving communion. Father Manship highlighted this in his sermon, which took place amongst incense smoke and traditional Latin American church music.

“Do you think that the disciples understood what the Lord told them during the Last Supper [about how the bread was his flesh and the wine his blood]?” Manship asked his congregation in his accented Spanish. ​“They didn’t; they were stubborn. They were still ignorant, because they hadn’t yet experienced the cross and the resurrection.”

Manship, who has been a prominent advocate of immigrant’s rights, also linked the meaning of the feast to the Catholic vocation for social service.

“Just as our Lord transforms himself in wine and bread, we must transform our lives and the world,” he said. ​“On one level, brothers and sisters, our faith is a private matter, in which the Lord presents Himself to us through the experiences in our lives. But our answer to the Lord is always public. We can only answer Him as members of a community.”

Catholics the world over celebrate Corpus Christi with processions, in which they take consecrated wafers out of the church and into their neighborhoods. After all, if Christ’s presence is ​“real,” it must also exist in the material world, outside of the four walls of the church. For Father Manship, his communion ministers, and the rest of his flock, this has in the past meant showing up at City Hall in the hundreds to support the Elm City Resident Card, or creating a ​“quick response group” to protect neighbors from the inhabitants of a troublesome house on Richard Street.

“Our worship impels us into the world,” Father Manship said in an interview in his office after mass.

Father Manship’s interpretation of the role of social justice in Catholic practice is based on the teachings of John Paul II, who argued that human dignity can exist only when people are subjects (the ones doing things) and not objects (the ones to whom things are done).

“If you are constantly reacting to the world, you are not free,” Father Manship explained. ​“Humans have to act out of their own consciousness, not just because an exterior force made them do something. What we need to do is act together to breach the gap between the world that is and the world that should be.”

18 Countries, One Parish

The community at Saint Rose is mostly Hispanic, a hub for cross-cultural exchange. Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Ecuadoreans, Guatemalans, Peruvians and many others worship together, sharing their own take on Catholicism with each other.

Among the local beliefs that have become common currency in the multinational parish is the veneration of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which originated in Mexico during the 16th century. According to tradition, the Virgin Mary appeared to an Aztec peasant on December 9, 1531. The young man saw a vision of the Virgin unlike any of the representations shown to him by the priests who had converted him to Catholicism — the Virgin was brown, like himself. The peasant became Saint Juan Diego, and Our Lady of Guadalupe the patron of all Latin Americans in general and Mexicans in particular.

Saint Rose has two images of Our Lady of Guadalupe, one of which hangs permanently in the left nave of the church. The other one, much smaller, is leant to a different family every week. The family takes the image home cares for it, often asking the Virgin for intercession with God on a particular matter.

This week it was the Xochipiltecatl family who took the Virgin home. Gregoria Xochipiltecatl (pictured above with her children) said that she has been coming to Saint Rose with her children for over ten years. She said that the parish felt like home away from their home in the Mexican state of Tlaxcala.

“We are going to make sure she always has flowers, and we’ve invited the neighbors to pray a rosary for her with us,” said Gregoria.

When this reporter asked if he could take a picture of the family, Gregoria agreed on the condition that they pose with the Virgin.

“Make sure she looks pretty,” she said.