On Wednesday, December 13th over 100 people gathered at Emmanuel Episcopal Church for the first celebration of the Feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The evening began with a community meal of homemade tamales and enchiladas by Mexican parishioners. A mariachi band from Sacred Heart Church in Oklahoma CIty performed traditional Guadalupe Feast Day hymns and the majority of the service was spoken in Spanish. Native Puerto Rican and Dominican priest, Fr. William Font, from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Oklahoma City was the guest preacher.
The idea to celebrate this particular Feast of Mary was thanks to a Vestry meeting in which members, Jill Tate and Brian Scott brainstormed ways the church could reach out to the local Hispanic and Latino community. Several Vestry members attended Canon Steven Carlsen’s, (canon for congregational vitality) presentation on evangelizing to Spanish speaking communities last year and wanted to give some of his suggestions a try in the context of Shawnee. In the Catholic Church Tradition, the Feast is called Our Lady of Guadalupe and is celebrated annually in most Spanish Speaking countries around the world especially in Mexico where the legend of peasant Juan Diego’s apparitions of Mary happened.
Emmanuel members invited local Hispanic and Latino communities to the Feast and engaged their Spanish speaking members into the service. Fr. William remarked this about the service, “It was an honor to be part of a joyful and blessed celebration. Emmanuel people, you were already possessed by the Spirit of the Magnificat.” Even the Anglo members enjoyed singing along to the songs and bearing witness to encountering a new cultural expression of our shared faith. Father Tom, the Rector of Emmanuel Shawnee, said his favorite part of the evening (besides the food) was hearing the people of the parish trying so hard to pronounce the words of the Spanish responses and responding with such joy.