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As children growing up in Glenmary missions, John Paul Lawhead, Matt Smith and Adriana Trigiani found a refuge from a greater community that asked them
questions like: ‘Do Catholics celebrate Christmas?’
By Margaret Gabriel

Young Server: Because there weren’t any older boys in Glenmary’s Hayesville, N.C., mission, Matt Smith (with the small processional cross especially made so he could carry it!) began serving at age five.

John Paul Lawhead, currently a first-year novice with Glenmary, grew up in a Glenmary mission in Russellville, Ala. He recalls discussing religion in a high school world history class and as the teacher clicked off the names of various religious denominations, students were asked to raise their hands to identify which denomination they belonged to.

“The teacher started with Southern Baptists. Then he asked for Methodists, Presbyterians, members of the Church of Christ,” says John Paul. “When the teacher finished and turned back to the blackboard, I said, ‘I’m Catholic.’ There was a hush in the classroom and someone said, ‘Don’t you all wear those little beanies?’”

John Paul explained to that student and to the class that those “beanies” were called yarmulkes and that they are worn by Jewish men. Further discussion about the Catholic faith and traditions followed, John Paul says, with some people agreeing with what he said and others not. “But I felt (through the discussion) that each person in that room had a new perspective.”

Because Glenmary serves in counties where less than three percent of the population is Catholic, children growing up in a Glenmary mission don’t have many Catholic peers.

For example, in John Paul’s high school there were over 500 students, of which only four were Catholic. But those four children, and many like them across Mission Land, USA, were nurtured by Glenmary mission communities.

John Paul, Matt Smith and Adriana Trigiani grew up in Glenmary missions in Alabama, North Carolina and Virginia, respectively. Despite the geographic differences and the eras in which they grew up, their stories of being Catholic in a home mission county are very similar as is their gratitude to Glenmary for providing communities that, as Matt Smith’s mother says, “gave them a safe refuge from a greater community that asked them questions like: ‘Do Catholics celebrate Christmas?’”

F?or the Smith family, a move from the northeast to North Carolina in the late 1970s was quite a cultural shock. But Steve and Mary Smith found Immaculate Heart of Mary, a small Glenmary mission in Hayesville and it became their haven as they struggled to learn to be part of a population that didn’t understand Catholicism.

The Smith children, including oldest son Matt, were the only children in the mission community so Matt, as the oldest boy, began serving Mass at age five. Mary Smith says the people in the parish definitely “became role models for our kids and they became our family. We found that our faith became central to our family life.” Today, the Smith’s belong to another former Glenmary mission in Hiawassee, Ga.

Matt Smith didn’t meet a Catholic peer until he began college. Today, he lives in Arizona where he works as director of Internet ministries and as a national spokesperson for Life Teen, an international Catholic movement that provides resources and faith experiences to help teens grow closer to Christ. He has appeared on MTV’s Real World and routinely speaks to teens at events across the country.

Matt says he and his brothers and sisters took for granted that talking and visiting with others in the parish was what everyone did on Sunday morning after attending Mass.

“As a child, surrounded by adults, I learned to communicate on a different level,” Matt says. “My mother remembers seeing me fully engaged in a conversation with a 75-year-old man on Sunday morning. I still love talking to all kinds of people and that started at Immaculate Heart of Mary.”

Both Matt and his mother agree that his experience growing up in a Glenmary mission set the foundation for his current ministry. It was in that mission setting that he learned the importance of community and of community building. In his current position, he says, “building community is what I spend most of my day doing.”

Matt’s goal for the Life Teen Web site is to make Catholic teens aware that there are other Catholic teens in places all over the world—including Glenmary’s home mission counties—with whom they can relate. Through his efforts at Life Teen, Catholic kids everywhere can tap into this virtual community.

Author Adriana Trigiani echoes Mary Smith’s thoughts on the centrality of the Glenmary mission in the life of her family. Adriana grew up in Glenmary missions in Appalachia, Big Stone Gap and Norton, Va., and as a child-member of these mission communities, Adriana says she felt “safe, protected and full of joy.”

Adriana weaves that experience of growing up in a small Appalachian town and former Glenmary missions into her best-selling novels that include Big Stone Gap, Big Cherry Holler, Milk Glass Moon and Home to Big Stone Gap. And she incorporates the Glenmary priests she knew growing up in several of the books.

For example in her first novel, Big Stone Gap, Adriana describes the local high school’s practice of inviting a different preacher each week to speak to the student body, a custom that she draws from experience.

When the fictional preacher falls ill one week, Father Rausch, the local priest from Glenmary (“an order of poor, carpenter priests”) fills in. The physical description of the fictional Father Rausch differs slightly from the real-life Father John Rausch, but the real Father John says that their spirits are the same.

Yet she does more than integrate these missioners into her books. She has integrated the social justice education she received as a child from missioners like Father John and Father Les Schmidt into her personal and professional life.

“Glenmary taught me that the whole idea of becoming a person of faith was about reaching out to others,” she says. “Solitude, reflection, examination of conscience all were important, but none of the introspection mattered unless it led to action in the world.”

John Paul, Matt and Adriana each say that as children they were exposed to other religions and attended their friends’ churches. Oftentimes those experiences caused them to look more deeply and critically at Catholicism.

Matt says he was “enthralled” by Protestant pastors and exposure to other denominations gave him a basis for comparison. While in high school he says he began to recognize the intellectual depth of the Catholic faith. “And as I grew older, I connected more deeply with my faith,” he says.

By their very nature as missionaries, Glenmarians don’t stay in mission areas for extended periods of time, but many leave lasting impressions on those they serve. John Paul credits the influence of his pastor, Father Bob Berson, for his decision to enter religious life. Father Bob and all the Glenmary priests John Paul has known were the role models who influenced his decision to pursue missionary priesthood.

For Adriana, a homily given by Father Les about the Catholic Worker Movement inspired her to read about the life of the movement’s founder, Dorothy Day. “One of the first things I did when I came to New York City was walk over to the Lower East Side and visit the shelter Dorothy Day founded for the poor,” she says.

That visit, she says, made her realize that no matter where she is—New York City or Big Stone Gap—people’s needs are the same. And all the things she learned as part of those small Southwest Virginia Glenmary missions—reaching out to others, community and service—apply wherever her life takes her.

John Paul and Matt have discovered the same in their lives. No matter where they live or what work they do, their lives continue to reflect the values they learned as children growing up in a Glenmary mission community.