While the homebound ministers bring the Eucharist to all who make the request, the visits require meeting the recipients on their own terms. It’s wise to call ahead of a visit, the ministers note, and logistics of a visit can include negotiating icy driveways, yapping dogs and other obstacles. Inside the home, however, an underlying protocol of reverence applies.
Some Catholics take the challenges of making it to Sunday Mass head-on, quite literally. Such was the case with George Cebula — a 75-year-old who lives in remote McCarthy at the foot of Alaska’s Wrangell Mountains. On a recent Sunday he left his home at 6 a.m. and began the 130-mile trip to the nearest Catholic parish. Cebula regularly makes this four hour trip, which sometimes includes dealing with flat tires, stubborn buffalo, moose and other Alaska wildlife, road washouts and come what may in the form of obstacles between him and Holy Eucharist.
In a world that so often marginalizes and ignores matters of faith and religion, burning questions loom of the afterlife, of God, of a creator and how to live out fleeting lives here on Earth. For some that leads to questions about the Catholic Church. “Seekers,” a group that meets at St. Patrick Church in Anchorage, has gained momentum among Alaskans looking for answers to spirituality in general and interest in the Catholic faith.
In Alaska, thousands of miles to west, a friend is up in his years and living out his last week on earth. He is sick and dying, and I’m using the pangs of hunger throughout the day as a reminder to send “positive intentions” his way — more commonly known as prayers. But I am reluctant to call them that, just then. I have been reading some “out there stuff.” I have also studied the faith of the Mormons and of Jehovah Witnesses, and been comparing the two with my philosophical anchoring in a Lutheran church. I am contemplating an exhaustive study of Buddhism next.
I like my job. But truth be known, I have just spent the last hour and some odd minutes in the presence of Christ. Not figuratively. For real. Right there, not 30 feet away. I have just come from adoration, where I have knelt and prayed and felt the welling of emotions: glad for the gift of Eucharist, tearful and intimidated by Christ’s Passion, yet elated by what that means. Giddy that my faith grows with each visit, but mostly I feel an overwhelming internal warmth in the privilege of spending time in silence with him.