Warrenton, TX: To be named and loved

 

David: By all appearances, and her own brief accounting of her life during an afternoon visit, Ms. Miller has not had an easy life. Let's call her "Mary."

Brought to Texas from Missouri when she was in grade school, her parents then moved her four times before she graduated from high school. After graduation, she moved to Oklahoma, then Alaska, to help brothers get businesses off the ground. Finally she made her own choice - to join the US Air Force. She was stationed in Virginia. I asked her if she made a career of that. She looked at me and simply said “No.”

I don’t know what she did next. But 10 years ago she moved back to Texas to take care of her dying mother. Now she is caring for her father, who is challenged, as a double amputee with diabetes, to care for himself.

Mary likes to take care of other people. She finds an outlet for that desire by tending the gravestones of parishioners buried at St. Martin’s Catholic Church in Warrenton, Texas. 

 

What first caught my eye was the road sign announcing the world’s smallest Catholic Church with an active worshiping congregation.

Mary caught my eye next. She was bent over coaxing her weed wacker to start. But when it kicked in, she simply moved away from the van and went to work in the same position. Mary works stooped over, almost horizontal to the ground, although she straightened up for a picture. 

Mary was happy to share the history of this church - her church. The brief version: the people in this area, predominantly Slavic, built St. Martins, a substantial building, in 1888. They were under the Bishop of Galveston at that time. In 1915, the Bishop decided to tear down St. Martins and use the wood to build a parochial school serving a larger town some miles away. According to the records, the congregation was obedient - it is not clear they could have resisted. What they did, though, was to gather up all the scraps of wood that were not carted away for the new school, and the statues and paintings that were not needed for the new school. And that same year, they recreated this tiny church in which they have been meeting ever since.   

Mary said they meet once a month. They have Mass for the “intentions” that members, and visitors, write in small notebooks on the altar rail at the front of the church.  These are prayer requests made by people who love each other, and who often name each other:

“Pray for Noah in his grief.”

“For Mary Grulkowski and son Mullet, who are visiting, and our dearly departed.”

“Pray for my Dad - for God to take him peacefully.”

“Pray for all those who are seen as lesser beings. We all need your peace, love and guidance in this world.”

“Pray for our boys and grandchildren. May they be their best selves, and live for a higher purpose, loving themselves, and others.” (And then we added all their names-since this is what we wrote.)

Mary is also a member at St. John’s Catholic Church in Fayetteville, the larger Parish that got the wood from St. Martins all those years ago. Mary attends St. Martin’s once a month for Mass, because she is known here - known by name - and loved. Mary trims the grass around the graves of members of St. Martin’s, people whose names she knows, and people she loves.


Mary has not had an easy life, but she has filled her life with meaning.