Hitchhike to New Orleans
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September 15, 2023On Sunday September 10th, 2023,
Br. Alexander, Meg and I hitchhiked from Houma to New Orleans. It was Meg’s first experience of hitchhiking. We were heading to New Orleans because a young man in vocational research who studies at Ole Miss was visiting Notre Dame Seminary for the weekend with his friends. He is in vocational discernment with our community. He had sent a message to my Servant Superior, Fr. Antonio, saying that he would be in New Orleans for the weekend, and was asking if he would be able to see any of us. We recognized this as a good way to evangelize people and spend time with a potential vocation.
In Houma we got a ride from a man and his son (or possibly his grandson). We got in the bed of his truck. They brought us a little past the town of Matthews. When we got out I gave him a flyer and evangelized a little bit, and I thanked him. Then we put our thumb out for a little while. A woman picked us up who was on her way to a NFL New Orleans Saints game. She was a Catholic, however, she told us that she skipped Mass that weekend to go to the football game. I was telling her that she still had the opportunity to go to a Sunday evening Mass. I explained how on her diocese website that they have the Mass times of some different parishes, even in the evening. Br. Alexander respectfully explained how missing Sunday Mass without a legitimate excuse is a mortal sin. Then I explained how I have heard in community the word Eucharist in Greek means thanksgiving. So going to Mass is the way to thank God. So I told her that that evening she can go to Mass and thank God if the Saints win, and if they lose she can still go to Mass and thank God that she got to go to the game.
She dropped us off at Notre Dame Seminary more or less an hour before Sunday Mass at the Seminary. This gave us enough time to visit with the young man and to speak with him about his vocational discernment. After Mass we had a brunch with him and the sem
inarians.
After brunch we left. We then said goodbye to our friend in vocational research, and we decided to visit Xavier University and evangelize some there because Br. Alexander and I had met the Dominican priest who is the chaplain there over a year ago, and he told us we could visit whenever we wanted. We had met this Dominican priest when Sr. Susanna, Br. Alexander, and I hitchhiked to New Orleans in the past to evangelize some of the students at Tulane University’s Catholic Center and the Dominican friars gave us hospitality for the night. This friar invited us to Xavier then. So this time in New Orleans we visited him and spoke to some of the students there who gathered after the Sunday Mass for a lunch. Then we decided to hitchhike back. There were a lot of cars that passed us, but very few that picked us up. After more or less an hour a man gave us a more or less 5-minute ride to a different spot in New Orleans. In this new spot we prayed the rosary, and vespers. People stopped to ask who we are and what we were doing, but they did not give us a ride. We were there for a long time. As it was getting late, we chose to call a friend who ended up coming to pick us up. We walked back to Xavier University to meet this friend who then drove us back home.
Friar Gabriel M.N. Dupre9/15/2023
