West Virginia mountains preach the Lenten message:
We die in order to live!

Father Dan Dorsey, Father Bob Poandl and I make periodic (and welcome!) trips away from our Executive Council duties in Cincinnati to visit our fellow missioners in their mission counties. Seeing rural scenery is a rejuvenating part of these trips!

Father Bob especially loves driving through West Virginia where he says he often experiences the “face of God in the face of the mountains.” He sees that “face of God” in a special way when he visits Glenmary’s mission in Chapmanville. That church has a picture window right behind the altar, providing a sweeping view of the Appalachians and making that beauty an integral part of the worship space.

Father Tom Charters, pastor of this mission, says the barren view during Lent is particularly relevant. It preaches the lesson of dying in order to rise—without requiring him to say a word! “During the winter the mountain is dead and gray,” he says. “But in the spring it will be alive again. It’s a great meditation on life.”

This visual image of dying and rising also says something important about Logan County and its three missions (Chapmanville, Man and Logan), all pastored by Father Tom. When coal mines employed many local people, these parishes were large and growing. But as the industry became mechanized—mining more coal with fewer people—the parishes declined as young people moved away in search of jobs. In recent years the Catholic population has decreased by nearly 40 percent. Despite this decline—or maybe because of it!—Glenmary felt called to serve this area in order to preserve a Catholic presence in these impoverished mountain communities.

Father Tom needs your help to bring hope where there is so much despair and new life where there is so much dying. In the spirit of Lenten almsgiving, I ask that you make a generous gift today, so that Father Tom can continue to serve the spiritual and material needs of the people of Logan County, W.Va.—and so Glenmary can continue to serve neglected communities throughout Mission Land, USA.

As Father Tom struggles to bring new life to the communities of Logan County, he finds that the people, especially the people in Chapmanville, give life to him. This small congregation comes together at noon on Sunday for Mass, and then they share food and fellowship for most of the afternoon. “That’s the Glenmary model,” Father Tom says. “People pulling together to be family.”

People coming together as “parish family” has become increasingly important as young people have left parents and grandparents behind. Father Tom says that caring for the elderly in the county could be a full-time job. And that caring is what makes up much of the ministry of Glenmary Brother Mike Springer who lives and works at the mission in Chapmanville. Brother Mike’s degree in gerontology (focusing on the biological, psychological and social aspects of the aging process) equips him well for this work.

Father Tom, who lives in Logan, visits as many elderly as he can in the Logan County missions. He relies a great deal on the assistance of Connie Bazzilla, a longtime county resident and a member of the Logan parish. She sponsors a monthly meal for the elderly of the county and, at the end, they play bingo. And Connie makes sure everybody wins. That “everybody wins” mentality is just one of the ways that she makes sure that each elderly person feels special and cherished.

Such individual attention can be seen in all the Logan County missions. Because the parishes are so small, missioners are able to really get to know the people.

Because of the “family” relationships created in their mission communities, Father Tom and Brother Mike—and all our Glenmary priests, brothers and coworkers—are able to bring hope and new life to mission areas like Logan County. But they all depend on your special relationship to Glenmary. I pray that your desire to support our home mission ministry will be intensified during this Lenten season—and that you will respond with a generous gift in the enclosed envelope.

I realize that the people in our West Virginia missions aren’t the only ones struggling to find hope. We all struggle, and that search for hope is part of our Lenten journey. As you move through Lent this year, I invite you to imagine sitting in that mission church in Chapmanville, looking at the barren mountain through its picture window. Let it preach its Lenten lesson to you: that we must die in order to live!

May your Lent be one of prayerful sacrifice and reflection so that your Easter celebration will bloom like that mountainside in Logan County!

Your brother in mission,

Father Dominic Duggins
Director of Development

P.S. I hope you will continue to remember me and all Glenmary missioners in your prayers. Know that all of our supporters are remembered daily in our prayers.