At the end of every December, I take time to reflect on what happened during the year and set goals for the new one. Last December was not different. I set goals for my personal, academic, and professional life – not too many: no more than three — that would guide me throughout the year with focused attention. Then COVID-19 entered our daily lexicons. My personal and academic goals needed adaptation, but my professional ministerial goals went into complete disarray.

A big part of what the diocesan Office of Hispanic and Ethnic Ministry does is to create opportunities for faith formation and lay leadership development with Hispanic communities. Most of the activities take place in parishes or at the Blanchette Catholic Center. Then we received a shelter-in-place mandate as a precautionary measure to the imminent spread of COVID.

See my disarray?

At first, we rushed through the fears and anxieties caused by the deadly virus. We wanted to video meet with everyone, check and post regularly in social media, get information, and feel secure somehow. It did not bring any security. The weeks leading to Holy Week were stressful, but we knew we must learn, adapt, and go on. Willingly or not, we had to move to a new chapter in our office’s mission to foster pastoral en conjunto (collaborative ministry) and offer faith and leadership development opportunities to Spanish-speaking Latino/as.

The Diocese of Joliet created valuable resources online for times such as these. Specifically, the Office of Hispanic Ministry organized various community meetings with an average participation of 40; a recent Facebook Live with Bishop Richard Pates, our apostolic administrator, that has been viewed by nearly 2,000 people; we offered a webinar on Good Friday on the Passion Narratives in the Synoptics to live more intentionally during Holy Week with 100 participants, some were unable to access due to limitations in the webinar software used.

More consistently, we have created four online courses: study reading of the New Testament; the Creed as taught in the Catechism of the Catholic Church; introduction to the Bible; and Catholic Social Teaching using the DOCAT (the Catechism given by Pope Francis to the young people in World Youth Day 2016)

This rushed urgency to continue to accompany Latino/as in new ways in our diocese during the pandemic opened my mind to three important lessons:

“Technological fear and discrimination” are real but can be overcome. We have come to assume that younger generations are natural-born tech-savvy, and while that assertation is representative of reality, it implies that other generations should not even try. What I am seeing is that adults are willing to take the challenge to overcome prejudice, their fear towards technology, and their lack of experience with it. It has been a delight seeing how students are very shy in video classes at first but become more comfortable and enjoy the benefits of at-home faith growth thanks to technology. I’ve witnessed moms and dads requesting the help of their unwilling kids setting the learning environment, even being ridiculed, but decisively putting it up with this unacceptable behavior for the sake of their faith journey. (My hope is that the situation was dealt with appropriately after the class!)

The practice of community is finding new manifestations. Latino/as are community and family-oriented. I admit it, I was skeptical at the beginning to the idea that we will meet once a week via video conference with other 30-plus students to do a study reading of the Gospels, to deepen our understanding of the Creed, to learn how the Bible came about or how our social teaching can inspire and inform us how to be missionary disciples. But that’s exactly what is taking place. We learned video conference etiquette; we share how what we learn of our faith and doctrines affects our personal lives in virtual break-out rooms. We are building bonds of unity, now virtually, but well-grounded in our faith.

Creating access to opportunities is how the Church becomes missionary. One of the biggest characteristics of the Catholic Church in the U.S. is that a significant segment of its population is Spanish-only speaking, creating and offering opportunities curated for this population demonstrate the missionary identity of the Church that goes forth, out of its comfort zone. This is not to say that Spanish-speaking can have “their own.” We are studying the pillars of the faith of all Catholics. Therefore, this is a responsibility not only of my office but all Catholics in our diocese. Every parish, every pastor, every diocesan Curia office, every minister should be asking oneself: who has not been reached? Who could not have access to our programs and initiatives? If we only minister those we can, you are here challenged, like I was, to venture into new terrains of missionary discipleship activity.

Over 100 students have registered for online courses, some even from beyond the Diocese of Joliet. I am still at odds with “the new normal” buzzword, but I cannot deny that the call to missionary discipleship can take us to the unexpected paths and “new normal” realities.”

For details in all these courses visit:

http://www.dioceseofjoliet.org/hispanicministry/