Ministering to migrants in a carport cathedral

The Eucharist is always a mutual gift, breaking bread and sharing cup, a holy communion of God and God’s people. It marks a two-way moment of dignity and respect among the Mexican workers and the American residents as the words of the Last Supper resonate: “I will not abandon you.” 

ON A MID-AUGUST DAY, a tiny caravan sets out from small-town Plymouth, North Carolina for an hour’s drive across soy fields, then salty marshes to an isolated seafood processing plant near the Atlantic coast. Today the men and women who live and work at Mattamuskeet Seafood will celebrate the Eucharist. For many years, any Mass at all has been a rarity for these Mexican seasonal workers in a Catholic-minority area.

Glenmary Home Missioners serving in the area have taken on this mission within a mission, now coming twice monthly. Today it’s two SUVs, two priests, and a handful of parishioners from their parishes, 80 families combined across two counties. They are doing what Catholic missionary priests, brothers, and sisters do, both home and abroad. As Pope Francis says, they are “going to the peripheries.”