When I sat down to lunch today during my visitation at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church/Iglesia San Miguel Arcángel in Anaheim, the man at my left said ICE had captured his son and incarcerated him in Colorado. At my right, a woman said her daughter was recently deported to Mexico. I’m sorry to have to stress, for the sake of the skeptical reader, that neither of their children is a criminal.
That’s how it is these days at many of our missions and parishes in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles — wherever English isn’t the principal language of worship. Some people are scared to come to church. When they do, they often have these sad stories to tell.
I had a long talk with Sandra, a housing and immigration activist who struggled to get her green card many years ago and advocates for others in the hope that it will be better for them. For now, it’s getting worse. Thanks to SCOTUS’s Kavanaugh rule, which permits racial profiling, it’s like it was back when Sandra was pulled over 30 years ago during a traffic stop. Because of the color of her skin, police were allowed to ask for her papers instead of her license.
Sandra’s daughter, Janessa, was among 36 whom the Holy Spirit confirmed today. She listen to our conversation and smiled when Sandra said she visits her school to talk about immigration. When I asked Sandra how many St. Michael’s people were directly or indirectly affected by ICE’s cruel, racist kidnappings, she said between 30-40%.
Immigration policy aside, our government didn’t always feel this way about our Orange County neighbors of Latino and Latina descent. During Covid, they got a promotion. Immigrant workers, documented or not, were culturally reclassified as essential workers. That meant they had to go to work while people such as I zoomed from the safety of our homes. Essentiality had its risks. At St. Michael’s, 13 people died during the pandemic, more, I believe, than at any other mission or parish in our diocese.
The virus stalked them then. Now the president does. And yet on this beautiful winter morning at Anaheim, with the sun bathing the beautifully tended, historic campus, nothing could contain the congregation’s exuberance as they celebrated those who were committing their lives to Jesus Christ. We posed for pictures, exchanged blessings, prayed for surgeries, and blessed necklaces and rosaries.
A brilliant pastor and organizer, the Rev. Juan Jimenez, 81, has served as vicar for over 25 years. His spouse, Jan, and their daughter, Elizabeth, assisted today. Juan’s find hand was in everything. The liturgy and confirmation certificates were beautifully designed, the bilingual service, where I presided and preached, carefully choreographed. Bishop’s warden Eleuterio Muñoz, who repairs and adjusts high-end blood lab equipment when he’s not volunteering around campus, was my gracious chaplain. He showed me the memorial garden and said that when a tree fell recently, a heavy branch miraculously threaded the needle between two angel sculptures. Neither was damaged.
It was my last official visitation at St. Michael’s before retirement — mi jubilación, como decimos en español. Fr. Juan and I have the same taste in journalism and politics, so we exchange reading suggestions. I’ll miss our conversations over breakfast at Mimi’s, hard by Disneyland. He and the people of St. Michael’s are eager to find a way to host affordable housing on campus, to care for their neighbors and support their ministries. For now, they enjoy generous fraternal support from St. James Episcopal Church in Newport Beach. As one of our liveliest, best attended congregations, the leading indicators are encouraging indeed, our government’s defiance of human decency notwithstanding.
