My Life at Magnificat

Magnificat House is an institution born in the 60"s as a result of resolutions of theSecond Vatican Council, promoted by  Pope John XXIII  whom I also call The Templar Pope, in my book Temple vrs. Temple.

During the time of the Council, my life was busy, exploring other environments different than those from family, in company of my new peers at college, and we were experiencing new paths, suitable of our youth.

 

I never realized when the Council convened by Pope John XXIII started or ended.

My remoteness of the Church and many principles acquired in childhood, seem to make no sense in this age where reason and intelligence seemed to outdo the imagination.

In those days, I was obsessed to read Marx, Camus, Sartre , Otrega y Gasset, Nietzsche, Goethe, Sheller, Herman Hess and all those entire, crazy, cool precursors of modernism.

My generation had reached the top of the roof and the student movement had already started in France, and was about to flourish in Latin American Countries like Mexico.

 

In industrial Countries, they seem to be in the form of music and drugs, through movements like the Hippie generation.

The United States was crossing the  Viet Nam War  and thousands of young people in that Country, expressed their dissatisfaction with that absurd war.

 

The rationalism seemed to have fully succeeded over the Faith and John XXIII knew that he would face this new situation.

The books of the French Jesuit, Theilard of Chardin were published several years after his death, breaking religious barriers to new scientific Discoveries and theories of evolution as proposed by Darwin . This new Christology was expressed by President Kennedy when in one of his speeches call to jump barriers to achieve Peace.

In China, where the youth revolution had taken the causes of a Cultural Revolution, promoted by the Maoist regime,Thomas Merton, an American Trappist monk, seen with great distrust by the CIA, died electrocuted in an "accident" while trying to fix a fan in one of the Buddhist Temples where he was trying to find similarities between the Buddhist Meditation and Christian Silence prayer, where he focused his ideas and whose books from that facts were widely disseminated.

 

In Mexico, the student movement became guerilla and promising young people as Ignacio Ontiveros, student of Economics and member of the high society of Monterrey, Mexico, was killed by government forces and the Jesuits to be blame for the affiliation of many of these young people to the guerillas, were expelled from this city by its conservative Bishop.

 

I knew that several of them had emigrated to Central America where some of them were killed.

In those years I moved to the National School of Architecture at the UNAM, the largest university in Mexico and I was able to find several of my colleages who had been studying architecture at Monterrey and had moved to Mexico City to continue their studies at The Major Seminary of the Jesuits while complete their careers.

Carlos, one of them I remember most, he made extraordinary efforts to invite me to join the Company and with that purpose, he invited me to visit him often and showed me the library in the last underground level of this building that they used to call "The little Hell"   where they placed most of the books published by all these crazy cool modernist geniuses mentioned before and that they could be accessed only by special permission of their spiritual director or co-adjutor, who supervised and assisted in the reading and comprehension of them.

He gave me some books of the great mystics of the Church, as Saint Teresa of Avila,Saint John of the Cross, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, St, Francis of Assis, Saint Catherine of Sienna, Saint Theresa of Lisieux and many others that formed in my mind, my counterweight to socialism and modernism.

 

The Bishops who supported the Liberation Theology, began to appear in the poorest areas of Latin-America, the assembly of Latin American Episcopal Conference-CELAM, in Rio de Janeiro, Medellin. Mar de Plata, Puebla, Calli and some other ones that took place, gave more emphasis to this movement reaffirming its preference for the poor.

 

During the time after The Second Vatican Council, there was a big drop of vocations in seminars and convents.

I remember that in the 90"s, I visited with a friend, the great University center and Abbey of one of the oldest religious orders of the Church, "the Benedictines", Saint Gregory"s Abbey  which is located in Chawnee, near Tulsa Oklahoma.

I remember I talked with the retired abbot, Father Philip Berning,  who had resigned his post overwhelmed of the great drop of seminarians and priests as well as brothers and sisters who lived enshrined in convents scattered in the vast territory of the province"s ruling, which reached California and other states that had his headquarters in this quiet and important place of Faith.

 

I have never criticized the errors of Pope John XXIII and praised many of his results,  but; the fact is that when he opened the window of the Church to get a bit of fresh air, also entered a dense black smoke that Paul VI called The Smoke of Satan.

This cloud and other things which are among the signs of our time, I will relate more extensively in my book Temple vrs. Temple.

 

 When I was a child, my grandmother inspired to me a religious vocation. When she died, I was a 13 years old child who murmured on her ear, embraced on her lifeless body still on her bed, she died that night,  "Grandma, I will be a priest" and those words sealed a promise.

In my Children"s mind, one of the signs of the priesthood more tided to my imagination was that the priest was the only person authorized by the Church to touch with his hands the Eucharistic, so this act was for me a symbol of his anointing.

I lost this desire even without a full understanding, it was as if God doesn"t need me for that mission.

So, when attending mass for the first time after many years in the dining room  of Loaves and Fishes, my mind refuse to extend my hands to take the Eucharistic as most people did when they were taking communion and overcoming to my fears, I finally extended my hands and it was as if that time, I had fulfilled the promise made to my Grandmother on her deathbed and I felt full of joy and thanked God for this reform made by The Second Vatican Council that I had lived without giving an account of its reforms. 

 

Time went slowly and in my relationship with Magnificat, I was learning little by little more about its founder.

 

Rose Mary Badami, a young woman who had lost her only brother on 1947, because of the polio and who promised to be a priest. She was the only daughter of an Italian family that moved from Denisson Texas where she was born, to Houston when they were reached by the economic depression of those years.

She graduated from college at Saint Thomas University in the area of Social Work and now holds the title of Doctor in Letters Honoris Causa, which was granted by her merits and was evaluated by the prestigious University led by Basilian religious priests which thus showed their appreciation to this favorite daughter who they are backing up, in her work as chaplains of Magnificat.

The work of Rose Mary, regarded as a State and Federal model, started in a residence acquired in the Hispanic ward of Magnolia.

Its first residences were women with family problems or no resources and with children. Absorbed in this mission, surrendered completely to it, she never got married, she was spreading her ministry and hence the properties that now make up this organization.

Her work inspired by previous organizations started in the 30"s like The Catholic Worker in New York, and Madonna House in Canada, related to Magnificat, as secular community, serving the poor.

 

Unfortunately, the family structure that characterizes these communities, is gradually disappearing from Magnificat, reflected in the new terminology adopted by new staff members of her team, who are seeing this organization, as an institution for transitory housing more than a temporary substitute home for its residents.

 

Currently, the Magnificat"s Ministry is to help the elderly, men and women uncapable of taking care of themselves, patients with mental disabilities or chronic illnesses, people with terminally ill or infected with HIV, adults with problems of alcoholism or drug addiction, people on parole probation, overnight shelter for women on the streets and it is a refuge for many people during time of cold or emergencies in addition of the Soup Kitchen that feeds hundreds of people per week.

 

I told Rose Mary one time, "Perhaps the Church which is considering Dorothy Day and,Catherine Doherty  pioneers of this Ministry in this Country, as candidates for sainthood, one day it considers you too, but; for me, I already consider you the most wonderful women I have known in my life and your example has inspired many of the things that I wish to have, they are your compassion, your search for Jesus in the poor and homeless  and your spirit of Robin Hood which makes bold actions in the great desire to serve the unwanted, the disable, who needs love and consolation, although many times you have faced major problems in helping them".

 

The figure of Rose Mary reminds me of a leafy tree, with its roots planted in good ground and its branches extended toward the sky, where thousands of   birds seek refuge and rest. This is Magnificat in Rose Mary, the image of God"s Kingdom on earth.

 

The community has several facilities, namely Anawim, Ave Maria, Bethany, Susanna, Providence, Galeele, St. Joseph Club House, Visitation Convent, St Francis, Loaves and Fishes, Miryam"s  Hostel, Anawim Thrift Store, Holy Family staff apartments, Emmanuel main office, Emmaus, Opus Maria Center, Maranatha, Duchesen, A new adquisition un-named yet, Brennan Park, Goodman park, Joseph kapik garden, and two empty lots for a Multipurpose building project and the volunteers center project.

 

In these early years in Magnificat, I was still searching for Jesus presence in our neighbors, but; he hasn't came to meet me yet.