BEND — Spring is taking its own very sweet time in coming. I have started the irrigation system on the acreage at my home but the overnight result is huge ice fields. The daytime sunshine turns the solid into liquid but I am more than ready for spring. Last week I took some time to clean out the irrigation pond removing ten to twelve wheelbarrow-loads of muck, pond slime, pine needles and willow branches. Strange as it may sound, I really enjoyed it! After fighting with lots of brittle willow branches both in the pond and around the trees I decided it was time for some very serious pruning. Those willows will not be a source of branches in the pond for some years to come. I still have some major clean-up to do after the pruning job but I feel as if I have made some progress in alleviating foreign matter from the pond.
Some of this work I did on Saturday morning and in the afternoon I began my weekend Confirmation journey. This week took me to Milton-Freewater for Confirmation and a centennial celebration. It was apparently in 1908 that the Diocese of Baker formally established the church in Freewater as a separate mission. As early as 1891 the Jesuit fathers who were serving at the Indian reservation near Pendleton would come to Freewater for an occasional Mass. While the town is now known as Milton-Freewater, it appears that prior to 1950 there were two separate and distinct villages, namely, Milton and Freewater. Freewater was first called New Walla Walla but within a year was renamed. Historians tell us that they merged or at least established a hyphenated post office in 1951.
Another interesting note about the church at Freewater and later Milton-Freewater is that it was originally established as Saint Joseph’s Church. This was the name of the mission from 1908 to 1953 when the new and present church, built under the title of Saint Francis of Assisi, was dedicated. So the town went from New Walla Walla, to Freewater to Milton-Freewater and the church went from Saint Joseph to Saint Francis. It would thus not be entirely accurate to say that Saint Francis Parish in Milton-Freewater is celebrating its centennial but rather that the parish is celebrating a century of official Catholic presence in the Milton-Freewater area. Nonetheless, the event was marked with a potluck, buffet and fiesta following the afternoon celebration of Confirmation.
In terms of the age of the world, a hundred years is certainly not a great expanse of time and yet when I reflect that the firm establishment of the Catholic faith in places like Milton-Freewater took place as little as one hundred years ago, two things strike me. The first is that Milton-Freewater, as a parish and we as a diocese are not all that far away from our roots. It was not all that long ago that Jesuits on horseback traveled two or three times each year to offer Mass for the few Catholic residents of the settlements at Freewater and Milton.
It was not all that long ago, just over 50 years, that the first residential pastor was appointed to the community of Freewater and to the Church of Saint Joseph. It was not all that long ago that the church and rectory currently in use were built. In terms of the Church of Rome, the church of Milton-Freewater is still quite young.
The second thing which strikes me, closely related to the first, is just how far the church at Milton-Freewater has come in these past one hundred years. The present building completed in 1953 has seen the revolution of the sixties, the dissent of the seventies, the papacy of the eighties, the modernization of the nineties, the turn of the millennium and now the challenges of that third millennium.
One of the most obvious changes is the changing cultural face of Milton-Freewater. One hundred years ago, no one could have envisioned the abundance of Mexican names in the Milton-Freewater directory. One hundred years ago no one would have predicted that in 2008 there would be a need for as many Masses in Spanish at Saint Francis as in English. No one would have predicted that the number of Spanish-speaking confirmands would outnumber the English-speaking confirmands by approximately 10 to one. Perhaps one looks at rural Oregon and has the sense that these places are too set in their ways to change. The truth, however, is that change and adaptation have been integral parts of the very root and history of these rural communities. It is the acceptance and even the embracing of the changes, and the challenges of those changes, which give these communities vibrancy and life. There is at Saint Francis in Milton-Freewater a joyful hopefulness which is marvelous to behold.
One of the challenges facing Saint Francis Parish is the need for an expanded church and an accessible social hall. I have every confidence that the people of God of Saint Francis, with their hope-filled spirit and can-do attitude, will strive and succeed in accomplishing that which the parish needs at this stage of its history.
The trip back to Bend, late into the evening, was made interestingly lively by my fellow passengers. I traveled with three priest members of the Nigerian religious community known as the Sons of Mary, Mother of Mercy, or SMMM for short. These are the latest three additions to the diocese, all newly arrived from Nigeria, who are now staying with me for a couple of weeks of cultural and diocesan orientation. They too represent a part of the changing face of the church in Eastern and Central Oregon. They join 17 other priests from Africa, primarily Nigeria, presently serving in the Diocese of Baker. The need for vocations to the priesthood from our own families and our own diocese is crucial but, in the absence of those vocations, I am most grateful to my brother priests from foreign lands who have come to us with big hearts and with a wonderful missionary spirit. Who would have imagined, a hundred years ago, that more than half of the priests serving in the diocese would be from a foreign land and that the foreign land would be Africa and not Ireland. It has to be God’s providence — no one else could have imagined it!
