By Sister Linda Stilling, SSND
Sister Linda Stilling is the Spanish Language and Culture program coordinator at Notre Dame of Maryland University in Baltimore, Maryland. Prior to this, she ministered in Camden, New Jersey for nearly 30 years. She taught religious education at Holy Name parish and provided pastoral ministry to Latino patients at Camden County Community Health Center from 1975 – 1985. She returned in the summer of 1986 and ministered as pastoral associate and director of Religious Education at Holy Name Church for twenty more years. A native of Baltimore, Sister Linda celebrated her 50th jubilee in 2012. This article was first published in The Catholic Review on October 9, 1996.
“Hermana Linda,” I hear called to me by my newly arrived Mexican friends as I walk the streets of Camden, New Jersey, a small city of 87,000 people that is racked by poverty and violence but not without hope.
Camden’s Latino population of 30,000 will have a sizable impact on the future of this city – and the future of this country. By 2025, Hispanics will become the country’s largest minority group. The demographic face of our country is rapidly changing - by 2050, whites today at 72 percent, will make up only 50 percent of the United States.
In our province, School Sisters of Notre Dame minister with Hispanics in Philadelphia, Baltimore and parts of Florida. And, for the past 17 years, I have walked with Camden’s Latinos as they struggle to achieve their dreams.
Holy Name Church in North Camden is part of the JUST team - Jesuit Urban Service Team - which supplements parish activities with medical, legal and social services. I am the director of religious education at Holy Name and oversee the class preparation of 35 teachers and the religious development of 350 children and their parents. Each year upwards of 90 children receive First Communion.
Most of the summer, I walk the streets visiting the families of religious education children. The “Hijas de Maria,” Daughters of Mary, is a 40-member group of young Latina women I mentor. The Hijas meet monthly and immerse themselves in intense personal and religious formation. Last year after seeing the need to reach young women at an even younger age, we started the “Hijitas.” Little Daughters, for ages 10-12.
In many ways, I am a parish “minister” at Holy Name. I lead worship and preach the Word in innovative ways, from liturgical dance to leading the praying of the rosary on drug-infested street corners. The liturgy committee I co-chair with a woman from the paris presents small gospel “dramitas,” dramas enacting the Sunday gospel, bringing the word of God to life in our sanctuary. On Good Friday, we present a re-enactment of our Lord’s Passion through the streets of North Camden.
Through Holy Name, I completed training as a director of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, and many parishioners have been led in Ignatian retreats. I spend hours counseling people in my small parish office: women who are victims of domestic abuse; a young boy despondent over a low grade in math; a teenage girl caught up in the turmoil of first love; a mother of three, working minimum wage, who has no food for her children.
To balance the hard moments, there is much joy in a parish like Holy Name. Graduation parties, weddings and anniversaries are moments when “fiesta” reigns and God is truly present. Relationship, in a word, describes my ministry. Relationships with people are the paramount gifts of my work for the Lord in Camden.
Miledys, a woman from the Dominican Republic, has blossomed into a parish leader. Her husband works long hours to make ends meet and her oldest child just won a scholarship to Camden Catholic, where he will be the first in his family to attend high school.
Norberta and Cristobal are prayerful Puerto Rican elders. At their 50th wedding anniversary, in front of their 10 children and friends and relatives, Cristobal’s hands, weathered by years at his landscaping business, took Norberta’s fingers, so often folded in prayer, and told her he loved her “mas que nunca,” more than ever.
Maribel, mother of three, worked her way off welfare and has immersed herself in the Ignatian exercises.
Zenaida struggles to raise three teenage boys by herself and helps me tremendously with home visitation in one of the rougher public housing projects in the city. Mine is a ministry of presence to the people of God. At Holy Name, we walk with people who are in pain until we feel the warm glow of Christ’s resurrection in our lives.Camden, the nation’s fifth poorest city, is an ideal location for striving to fulfill the SSND mandate to make the concerns of the poor our own.
Sister Linda, reflecting on 30 years of ministry with the Latino community in Camden, New Jersey, describes those times, "It was my Camelot - one of the greatest blessings of my life without a doubt. Holy Name is filled with wonderful people. It is a privilege to serve them as sister, as minister, as mentor, as guide, as friend, as apostle. In them I find our Lord. My ministry of mutuality is one in which I receive so much more than I give".
Last Saturday, 10 of the women, now in their 30s and 40s, traveled to Villa Assumpta for a special retreat and reunion - "blessing upon blessing from beginning to end." Sister Linda had ministered to this group, "Hijas de Maria," during their high school years some 20 years ago. "It was so moving for me to see how these women have grown in their spirituality and relationship with God. It touched me to my core. I am so grateful and so privileged to be part of their journey," Sister Linda said. The women were overwhelmed by the kindness and love shown them - from Sister Betty's facility preparations, to the SSND blessing they received at Mass, and Sister Theodore's famous handmade pizzelles, packaged in cellophane bags tied with ribbon for each. To the sisters who so warmly welcomed them, the "Hijas de Maria" extend their heartfelt thanks, "¡Mil gracias!" To view photos click here
