SKETCHPADBY EDWARDSTEED
LANDFILL
side, our church was open and heated.
So I brought them in—thirty or forty
families in all. I tried to separate them
into family groups and keep the groups
apart from one another. Some I led
up to the balcony, and some to the class-
rooms on the third floor. I called our
members, and they began to arrive im-
mediately, with clothes and food. We
took precautions, but these people
needed care right then. We fed and
clothed them, and later in the day most
of them could go back into their build-
ing. That taught me something. As Paul
says in Second Corinthians, ‘When I
am weak, then I am strong.’ I was feel-
ing thwarted and helpless, but if I’d
been making hospital visits that morn-
ing I would not have been here to help
those people.”
St. Augustine-Our Lady of Victory
does its feast-day celebrations up big.
On Easter, the African-American
women wear elaborate hats, the Gari-
funa dress in their culture’s signature
yellow and black, and some of the Ni-
gerians who are chiefs put on their tra-
ditional robes. The boys wear suits, and
the girls are brightly beribboned. This
year, Father Stewart will do the Easter
service in the church by himself online,
via his phone, which he sets on a tri-
pod that he uses to hold his bicycle.
“It’s strange when I’m preaching and
just looking at my phone, but I know
my words are going out to our mem-
bers, and I know they’re with me,” he
said. “This is a very poor part of the
Bronx. The people are resilient and re-
sourceful and hopeful, and they have
everything to teach us. I want to al-
ways walk with them.”
Some of the members don’t have
computers or iPhones, but they do have
flip phones. Maria Peguero, the church’s
pastoral associate, who was born in the
Dominican Republic, leads small-group
prayer meetings every day. “I don’t know
what to do, so I ask Father Stewart,
and he says, ‘Pray more,’” she said. “I
pray so hard, every day. I pray by my-
self, and with my husband. I call four
or five members at one time, and we
pray on a conference call. So many peo-
ple right now are living in suffering and
darkness, but that is not the last word,
because God is in charge with us, and
he will bring us something better.”
—Ian Frazier