When a delivery man drops off pizzas in the vestibule between the second reading and the Gospel, genuflecting as he does so, you know you’re in New Orleans. Specifically, you’re at Holy Name of Jesus, the stately red brick Jesuit church at the front of Loyola University’s campus.
The Sunday evening pizzas, after the 6 p.m. Mass, are a relatively recent ministry, begun last summer as students were returning to campus for the fall semester. They’re part of a wider effort at building community within the parish — which calls itself “a community for others” — that centers largely on shared meals. Which feels right, considering the culinary history of New Orleans and the city’s well-earned reputation as a welcoming place where there is always room for one more at the table.
Pizza nights have joined regular holiday meals — Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter — along with quarterly community dinners and first Friday breakfasts as cornerstones of the parish’s hospitality. Run by volunteers, and with the backing of Fr. Mark Thibodeaux, SJ, pastor, the meals bring people together in a way that seems to meet a yearning need for connection in an evermore disconnected world.
“What is the parish doing?”
It started simply enough, before the pandemic, before “epidemic of loneliness” became a familiar term. Fr. Thibodeaux, a Louisiana native, was faced with a situation he’d somehow never encountered, and it shook him.
Although he’d spent years as a novice director, spiritual director, high school campus minister, and author of multiple books on prayer and spirituality, Fr. Thibodeaux began his first-ever parish assignment as pastor of Holy Name in 2019.
He met an older man, in his 70s or 80s, he’d not seen before or since. “With a broken heart, he said to me, ‘I found myself with no place to go for Thanksgiving. I didn’t have anybody to celebrate with, no meal for the whole day,’” recounts Fr. Thibodeaux. “It really hit me hard.”
The youngest of five brothers, Fr. Thibodeaux entered the Society after high school. “To be honest, it had never occurred to me that someone would have no place to go for the holidays. It’s just so far from my experience,” to not be in community, he says. He has never lacked for invitations.
Neither has Patty Mathes, who was baptized at Holy Name 78 years ago. A New Orleans native, her parents and grandparents were married there; her father was head usher, and she has been a parishioner for more than 50 years. In 2016, she started volunteering with the religious education program.
A familiar face in the church, Mathes began to get questions from other parishioners. “People would call me around holiday time and say, ‘What does the parish have for Easter? What is the parish doing for Christmas?’” she recalls. The answer she gave them — the Mass schedule — did not suffice. “They’d say, ‘That’s not what I mean. What are they doing?’”
So Mathes — whose parents’ house had been the holiday gathering spot for their extended family, which included 16 first cousins — started inviting parishioners to her own home. The first Christmas, there were five people and two filet mignons to divide among them. A few Christmases later, when she hosted the last holiday at her home before the meals moved to the parish center, there were 17.
“I live in a bungalow. That’s a lot of people,” she says wryly. But somehow, “It worked. It was a very pleasant night.”
Mathes had been sharing meals with a small, but growing, number of visitors for a few years when Fr. Thibodeaux had his epiphany with the older gentleman, and it was then that the two combined forces. What had been an informal, but regular, occurrence at her home transitioned to a parish program, which Fr. Thibodeaux embraced wholeheartedly.
“Most parish priests are really exhausted from all the liturgies,” at the holidays, he says. “The last thing they want to do is host an event, but I felt called to it.”
The Human Connection
Mathes directs a growing cast of other volunteers who convene at the parish center, a few blocks from the church. The invitation to holiday meals is issued from the pulpit at Mass and in flyers handed to parishioners with a personal invitation to attend. Guests walk over together after Mass.
That human connection is so important, says Mathes. “They know they’re welcome. They know it’s not for somebody else,” when you look someone in the eye and say you hope they’ll come. “People are just numbers until somebody speaks to them.”
There have been smaller gatherings, and there have been Thanksgiving brunches with 40 people, enough that they’ve spilled out onto the center’s front porch. What Fr. Thibodeaux first thought might end up just being donuts and coffee has morphed into stone soup-type gatherings, with parishioners contributing entrees, side dishes, pastries, flowers, decorations — whatever is needed to make others feel welcome.
Guests have included older couples whose kids didn’t make it back to New Orleans for the holidays, newlyweds who weren’t traveling, parishioners with no family, parishioners with family who popped by anyway, and Loyola students who stayed on campus instead of going home. Many are regulars, and some struggle with food insecurity, so being able to help them out with leftovers is another part of the parish’s hospitality ministry.
The last few meals have included two tables intentionally set aside for students and older community members to meet and talk. Cards with icebreaker topics help to facilitate the inter-generational conversation, says Jane McMurray. “We have some really awesome parish members,” and they wanted to get to know the students better.
A retired nurse, McMurray moved to New Orleans with her husband, Scott, six years ago. They’ve become regular volunteers, and guests, at the meals. She also founded a parish group called WOW, Women of Wisdom, for women in the second half of their lives.
“I think the opportunity to be able to serve those people is such a gift,” she says. “You look around the room, and it’s just so nice. You get the same people year after year, so it becomes its own little community. We all support each other.”
“Room for Everybody”
Hosting these meals has given Fr. Thibodeaux a new understanding of Holy Name’s role in the lives of parishioners. Specifically, its role in creating and nurturing community.
“Of the Jesuit apostolates, parishes are kind of the redheaded stepchildren. Everybody talks about universities and the Spiritual Exercises,” he says. “We have high schools and universities, but parishes are the only places that welcome everybody. None of the other apostolates can say that.”
That, as much as his encounter with the lonely gentleman, has opened his eyes and his heart, says Fr. Thibodeaux. It’s helped him realize that some people — perhaps because of social awkwardness or mental health issues — always seem to end up on the outside of the friend group. They’re the ones who don’t get invited. If there’s no place for them at church, then what is church there for?
“At Holy Name, everybody is always welcome. You can be as extraordinarily irritating as you want to be, and you’re still in. You’re still part of the community,” he says with a laugh, even as he knows it’s serious business. “It was a new reflection on the Catholic Church for me. The Catholic parish is kind of the last resort for some people who don’t have any place else to go.”
He hadn’t really thought of it before he became a pastor, and now he knows it in his heart. “There’s room for everybody.”
