It had been rainy and windy here in Middle Tennessee.  But this Saturday morning in mid-March was filled with bright sunshine.  I had just arrived 3 weeks ago in Celina, a small town of approximately 1,400 people in the Cumberland mountains, near the Kentucky state line.  It was still a little chilly and a sweatshirt was needed.  I left the rectory to drive to the old courthouse, at the center of town, to attend the first ever Chocolate Gravy Festival.

Actually, I had never heard about chocolate gravy before coming to Tennessee.  Our landlady mentioned that this was a local tradition, and how much she enjoyed it growing up.  Turning to the internet, I got a quick instruction on chocolate gravy.  Many Southerners do biscuits with gravy – which is usually a milk-based gravy with small pieces of sausage.  But on occasions, a mother might make the gravy out of chocolate.  This was a real treat for the kids.  This was going to be the first annual festival for Clay County, TN.

Driving toward the courthouse, it was obvious that people had arrived early.  Finding a space in the grass parking lot next to the Chamber of Commerce, I parked the car.  I put on a sweatshirt, some sunglasses, and a ball cap.  Walking down the street, it was clearly getting crowded.  Turning the corner, the street to the old courthouse was packed.  I walked about half a block and noticed that there was a long line.  It went up to and around the original, small courthouse.  On the lawn around the courthouse were about two dozen tents, where families had prepared their recipe for chocolate gravy.  The people on the line were sampling various versions of this local delicacy.

It is common in our Glenmary missions to have a county festival.  And it is also common for Glenmary missioners and co-workers to spend some time there, simple to be visible in the community.  It is part of our evangelization efforts, to be visible in the community.  And often, as one spends time in a community, we see people that we know.  And we make some contacts with people who have not met a Catholic before.

It was clear that most of the folks had not seen a person with a clerical color and there were some very obvious stares.  But one woman expressed what many were thinking but were not saying.  She came around the corner of a building and was directly in front of me.  She said: “And who are we?”  I think that she had wanted to say was: “Who are you?” but softened it a bit by saying “Who are we?”  I introduced myself and said that I was new in town and was a Catholic priest serving Divine Savior Catholic Church.  She seemed satisfied with the answer.  I asked her name and then she walked away.  From my experience, I never know what will result from a contact like this.  It might be a forgotten conversation.  Or she may tell her family or some friends that she met a Catholic priest.  It is really up to the Holy Spirit to see what might transpire in the future.

After walking around for about an hour, I was about to walk back to the car when my cell phone rang.  It was a parishioner from my former parish in Georgia.  He had just come home from the Peanut Proud Festival in Blakely, and we had a brief conversation.  I mentioned that I was at the Chocolate Gravy Festival; and he had not heard of this tradition either.

I returned to the car, took off my ball cap, sunglasses, and sweatshirt and put on a black suit coat.  I picked up the book for the funeral liturgies and walked across the street to the Clay County Funeral Home.  The week previously, I received a call to come to the town of Livingston, 30 minutes to the south of Celina.  There was a man in the hospital who needed the last rites.  Before leaving town, I called my Glenmary co-worker Lorenzo Aju.  He has been in Livingston for three years starting a Catholic Church from scratch.  Lorenzo said that he would join me for the anointing at the hospital.  We arrived at the same time and went to the man’s room. His wife and a staff member were in the room.  We both spoke to them, we provided the Church’s sacrament of anointing, and we continued to have a nice the conversation for about a half hour.  I returned for the next two days to the hospital to visit him.  Then, he was transferred to the nursing home here in Celina.  He passed away several days later.

Now, family and friends had travelled to the small town of Celina, in the midst of this Chocolate Gravy Festival, to celebrate the life of this 69-year-old man.  It was a much smaller gathering than those down the street.  Here were about twenty people who had travelled from Indianna, Michigan and Arizona to celebrate the life of this man and to offer support to his grieving wife.  We waited a short bit for a family member who was still enroute and then we had a scripture-based service to celebrate his life in this world and his birth into everlasting life.  After the service, I sat with the wife who was having a lot of difficulty with her husband’s passing.

I walked back across the street to the car and could see the crowds down the street.  I decided to take one more pass at the festival and then drove an hour to the south to help a neighboring diocesan pastor who was out of town.  In his absence, he needed a priest to preside at a Spanish Mass on Saturday and again on Sunday.  I was enroute to that first Mass, filled with gratitude for being able to be a Glenmary missioner and for the tremendous variety of ministry that this offered.

In case you are curious about whether I got to sample any of the chocolate gravy.  Not this year.  But I am a man of faith and am hoping to be able to do that next year.  You might want to join me next year and sample this delicacy yourself.

– Glenmary Father Mike Kerin