Military families tend to make friends quickly. When deployments and PCS’s loom large, wasting time isn’t an option. You have to make yourself available and actively seek out relationships, or you risk many years of loneliness in places far from home.
Although we’ve only been living the military life for a short while, we are impressed by the same urgent dynamism within our parish community. Since our very first Sunday on base, my family has been overwhelmed by the generosity, zeal, and genuine charity of our fellow parishioners. St. Mary’s is, of course, filled with imperfect people. The same conflicts and petty squabbles happen here as they do at any parish, but I want to share a few unique habits of my fellow parishioners that make the base chapel an extraordinary locus of evangelism.
1. They pick their pews.
Beale is 24/7 intelligence base. Airmen are always on duty, which means dads and moms miss Sunday Mass for months at a time. At most parishes, congregants hang towards the back. At St. Mary’s, families with older children look for parents with little ones in need of help. If my husband has a Sunday shift, I go to Mass without the fear of wrangling an antsy toddler and a six-month-old on my own. Someone (or two) will slide into our pew and play with the baby or read the children’s Mass book to my son.
2. They get involved.
RCIA at St. Mary’s gathers quite a crowd. At the moment, we only have one catechumen, but the classroom is always full of parishioners wanting to know their Faith better. Church isn’t just for Sundays. The ladies meet for a Bible study and a night of prayer for our children and one family hosts a Rosary night each week. Parishioners find their own ways – big or small – to contribute to the life of the parish.
3. They have a heightened sense of the sanctity of life.
Probably half the parishioners at St. Mary’s are kids. There is no cry room and Sunday Mass can get quite noisy. Nobody cares. In fact, people – especially our pastor — revel in the life present in the church. Father beams from the pulpit when a toddler tantrum interrupts his homily. Mothers calmly tend to crying babies in the pew instead of making the walk of shame to the back. Perhaps it’s because military families have a familiarity with death unknown to the general population that they are able to delight in the exuberance of the little ones.
3 thoughts on “Parish Life on a Military Base”
Great little article. As a Catholic chaplain, I thank you for giving others a few snippets on the differences and life that we see in the chapel community.
I traveled as an independent contractor visiting a new Air Force base each week. What stood out to me most, was that at each base anyone new or visiting at Mass was invited to introduce themselves and tell something about what brought them to the base. I enjoyed the community during long months of travel!
Faith and hope is used to make people disposable and obedient. It does not surprise me that the military has always been so saturated with religion.