"The number one thing is healing, healing our minds, our bodies, and our souls," says Ojibway Elder Stan LeGarde, member of the Jesuits' Kateri Centre in Thunder Bay, Ontario. He and Sarah Sabourin and their fellow Ojibway Elders lend guidance to their parish.
The center, set up in 1983 in rented offices, quickly became an oasis of spiritual and social support for the city's rapidly growing number of Native Catholics. It purchased permanent quarters in 1994 and became a diocesan parish this January.
The Kateri Centre is home for Native Catholics whose sense of who they are as a First Nation people and whose traditional spirituality have experienced a resurgence both within and beyond Kateri's Catholic community. Sacramental celebrations and preparation programs are the heart of the faith experience the center shares with Native Catholics, whose language, symbols, and healing and prayer circles are incorporated into liturgies and gatherings.
At the center, one room is for Native ceremonies, and another is a Legion of Mary chapel. In the center of the building is a chapel for celebrating the Eucharist, a place where Native and Catholic traditions are mingled, bringing together the best of both.
This mingling, not without its difficulties, is a task that Fr. Kroker works on in partnership with an active council whose members offer guidance through the tensions and anxieties of forming a Native Catholic Church. Ojibway elders among them play an important role in the faith life of the community.
I FIRST MET Ed six years ago. He told me of his strong spiritual experience and call by the creator, and his gift of healing medicines. We became friends and teamed up in our ministry. I still remember our first sojourn together, which nourished the seeds of my own faith. We prayed with a woman in a hospital who was in excruciating pain; her hands were crippled with arthritis. I anointed her with sacred oil, and Ed vigorously rubbed his medicine lotion over her hands. He told her the pain would be gone in fifteen minutes and she'd be able to move her hands again. Ed and I went for coffee in the cafeteria and returned to check on our patient. All smiles, she was wriggling her fingers with delight. I was amazed, but it was only the first of many healings I witnessed.
One of particular memory to me was that of my own mother, in severe pain after suffering 35 years with multiple sclerosis. By then she was immune to prescribed painkillers and would be awake at night, crying in agony. I brought Ed over; he repeated the same process, and in twenty minutes the pain at her surface nerve endings was gone. She went through several bottles of Ed's medicine in that last, miraculously painless, year of her life.
Ed always reminds people he visits that Jesus is the source of their healing. Once, when he was administering the medicine at a family home, a shy woman standing off to the side experienced the same healing as the person to whom Ed was ministering. Such was his spiritual presence and gift.
About two years ago, Ed strongly voiced the following: "There will not be a Native Catholic Church in Thunder Bay until the traditional medicines, the drum, and the pipe are part of our mass." Ed, with two youngsters of his own, is keen on youth development. He formed a group that drummed and sang an honor song at a dinner for Bp. John O'Mara. It went well, and their offering was appreciated.
But when the group came to drum at a regular Kateri Prayer Weekend, they were asked to leave. There had been a communication failure; the service's coordinator did not know they had been invited, but that did not change the fact that several were not open to this ceremony being plunked into their traditional way of praying.
This episode made it clear that inculturation is best served by not "parachuting" Native ceremonials into existing Catholic liturgies but by getting those who practice Native ceremonials together with me for a mass that included their ceremonials. The beauty and meaningfulness of these liturgies would then attract more participants, a Native liturgy would develop without bitterness, and the way would be paved for the kind of Catholic Church about which Ed felt so strongly.
AT OUR PARISH'S inaugural mass in January, Sarah Sabourin blessed a pipe that was then brought in procession and placed before the altar.
Five years earlier we had been given a pipe, but the bowl was split when an elder was purifying it in a freshwater stream. He claimed this happened because the pipe was not being properly cared for. I found this explanation hard to swallow at the time. Later, a new pipe was presented, and we were told to appoint someone to take care of it. Sarah accepted the task, but she soon came back to tell us that in her prayer the pipe told her that it was to be taken from the case where we had it on display and that it would have to be used, but it had to be feasted first. Then she came again, asking where the pipe came from and saying that it had to be given back. The stem and bowl could not be taken apart and so it could not be properly used.
I sheepishly said I had bought the pipe to replace the broken one, and I took it back. A new pipe was given that she said was very strong and would bring much blessing and healing. The pipe was blessed, ready for our beginnings as parish. A place was prepared before the east window of the elders' traditional room.
THEY RAISED Leonard Bananish in Reserve #58 in Longlac, Ontario. His father, Joe, had been the community prayer man for years when the people first came in from the bush, leading the Sunday prayers for the people in the absence of a priest.
Back in the early '70s, Leonard had joined our diaconate training program but left for a period of soul-searching. This changed when he came to grips with spiritual realities that were part of his ancestral past. In his dreams he was given a way to help his people toward healing: the Gathering Circle. His idea was to encourage Natives and non-Natives alike to share their life journeys. Participants gather around Leonard's blanket and medicine bundle and begin with a prayer to the creator and smudging ceremony. An eagle feather is then passed around, and whoever is holding it tells his or her story without interruption; it is a way of promoting healing by sharing unresolved grief and abuse issues in a supporting and confidential environment. Often, participants' stories are charged with pain and remorse, but with the trust and respect of the group, many experience journeys toward inner healing.
KATERI'S ELDERS, including Ed, Sarah, and Leonard, meet every First Friday for mass, a holy hour, a feast, and time for listening to and recording the life story of one of the elders. I listen carefully to their experiences of Church and traditions of the past, including the shaking tent, the sweat lodge, and the pipe.
Some have definite ideas of what should not be brought into the Church at this time. Others, with respiratory problems, have had to leave mass because of smoke from the purification ceremony. All Native traditions and ceremonies have to be carefully looked at in the process of combining Catholic and Native traditions. "Go slowly and listen to the elders" is a basic part of our parish's growth process and Native Rite development.